Immersive performance and art installation, 13-29 August 2021, Turku.
Awarded with the Finnish National Performing Arts Price 2021.

Laura Naukkarinen coordinated the sound design which was made by herself, Hilla Väyrynen, Jaakko Salonen, Valtteri Alanen, Roosa Halme, Hannu Seppälä, Atte Häkkinen, Helka Ermala, Pentti Dassum and a few room designers who designed their rooms to work also as sound art objects or acoustic environments. Valtteri Alanen, Jarkko Forsman and Jaakko Salonen took care of the sound tech.

https://huoneidenkirja.fi/

A group of one hundred artists transforms an empty building and its surroundings into a multidisciplinary performance and art installation. The voluminous piece is filled with poetry, theatre, puppetry, dance, music and visual arts. It is an immersive multisensory experience one steps into.

Huoneiden kirja (Book of Rooms) is based on a book of prose poetry by Saila Susiluoto. The abandoned, wind-battered house consists of 64 rooms – a number that equals to the amount of symbols on a table that serves as a peculiar map for the building. The Book of rooms is an adventure that offers a break from the real world and a plunge into a fictive, yet equally tangible one. The house lures one in, to wander and to explore the unknown and the unexpected. Like the girl in the book, every person entering the Book of rooms will ask a personal question from the house. And by flipping a silver coin, they will find out which one of the 64 rooms in the house will – in its unique way – answer the posed question. Every room is a world apart, intertwined to form a route drawn by the wanderer entering the piece. The performance invites you to follow a route, but also stray from it! No one steps into the same building twice. An exploration and an adventure lies ahead.

“The independent performing arts sector in Turku demonstrated its collective creative power and collaborative abilities in August 2021. In a project entitled “Book of Rooms”, a group of more than one hundred artists transformed an empty building into a unique multisensory experience. The multi-artistic and immersive project inhabited the labyrinth of the former industrial premises from the closets to the roof and the courtyard, creating a multidimensional, mythical and impressive experiential journey through various forms of contemporary performing arts.

 

The project was inspired by a book of prose poetry by Saila Susiluoto from 2003. Like the book, the experiential art world of “Book of Rooms” was built in layers of 64 works or rooms. Each work was based on an associative interpretation of one of Susiluoto’s poems and created its own aesthetic and material stage world.

The playful audience relationship created in the work led attendees on a private, independent journey of experience to works ranging in size from intimate encounters to mass scenes.

 

“Book of Rooms” retained its ideological and artistic focus throughout the space. Thanks for this go to the core artistic and production working group that coordinated the individual working groups and the overall project.

 

Members of the core working group: Alma Rajala (artistic director), Johanna Latvala (scenography and visuals), Jarkko Forsman (lighting), Laura Naukkarinen (sound), Riikka Mäntymaa (costume design), Venla Luoma (audience experience and guide), Lee Lahikainen (movement), Maria Laitila (public outreach), Maiju Tainio (coordinator of butlers, Pia Puustelli (marketing and communications) and Sara Koiranen (production). “