ecalling the artistic, literary, and feminist salons from 17th century France to queer New York City, The Attic Underground is a night of performances, facilitated conversation, and socialising that occurs in a Helsinki living room.
These events bridge the public and private spheres and offer an intimacy and lack of hierarchy between performer and audience that is not readily available elsewhere. Audience members also ask questions and participate in post-show discussions, providing a space for reflection and development for art forms that are left outside of art schools.
Produced by Mira Eskelinen, Eleanor Saitta, Anni Tolvanen, and James Lórien MacDonald, The Attic Underground is a space for queer political performance art.Its roots are in queer underground drag and political burlesque, but also in any performance art straddling the high/low divide, spoken word, slam poetry, contemporary dance, live music, etc. It is a queer space, first and foremost, but not every act must be queer. Ther goal is to create room for the kind of personal, edgy, or intimate acts that have a political point of view and are hard to put on in a larger space or in a more commercial venue.
Photos by Eleanor Saitta.
