THE MOTHER
a performance
First performance 1999

Performer: Lea Kantonen
Manuscript: Lea ja Pekka Kantonen
Video projection and direction: Pekka Kantonen
Duration: 80 min.

The Mother is a poor woman´s multimedia opera. Through songs, mainly religious
hymns, it tells a life history of dreams not fulfilled. These hymns are an essential part
of Finnish subconscious.

The protagonist of the performance is my own mother who died in stomach cancer, w
hen I was 13. The last years of her life were dominated by the ecstatic and severe
religiousness, and she stayed at home with the children. Before her conversion she
was an art teacher, but her real dream was to become a singer. Why didn´t she realize
her own dream? Do I have to fulfill it instead? If a woman sacrifices her own life for her
child, she makes the child dependant on herself and they both feel unsatisfied.


Dramatically the performance is a Brechtian tragedy. The tragedy is cristalized in the
inevitability of death. Could she have been able to avoid the death in cancer, if she
would have dedicated her life to fulfil her dream?

The essence of the performance art is to prepare oneself for death. It is an exercise
for dying. The religious hymns are songs about death, of everlasting life. They prepare t
heir performer to death.

PERFORMANCES
2000: Laznia, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland (in Sept.)
Mäntän Kuvataideviikot, Finland
1999: Kiasma, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland (premiere)
Bilbaoarte, Spain.

”The Mother is maybe the the most ambitious performance in years in Finland...
The performance of Lea and Pekka Kantonen is an art work of the great middle day.
Only an artist at the peak of his/her powers can look at every direction: into the past,
into the background, into the not-yet-born, into the knowledge, into the faith, into the darkness.”
(Erkki Haapaniemi, Teatteri, the Theatre Magazine in Finland)

”Lea Kantonen sings about ten songs like meditating or improvising. This vocal extension
brings a celebration of sorrow to the performance.”
(Hannu Harju, Helsingin Sanomat)