Future Past in Linnaniemi
Future Past in Linnaniemi (2023) is a site-specific live performance and installation by Suvi Tuominen, created for the New Performance Turku Biennale 2023 to respond directly to the rapid urban transformation of the Linnaniemi port area and the development of the upcoming Museum of History and the Future in Turku, Finland. Engaging deeply with the maritime landscape and historical port district surrounding Turku Castle, the work questions the linear posture of thinking that assumes the past smoothly transforms into the future. By employing radically ultra-slow movements, Tuominen actively disrupts digital pacing and resists contemporary "presentism"—the constant state of urgency and instantaneity imposed by technological advancement—as well as "chronowashing," a deceptive practice where institutions use superficial long-term planning and monumental museum horizons, or temporal marketing to obscure immediate socio-political inequities. Through this physical disruption, the performance successfully punctures these sanitized institutional timelines, ultimately proposing non-linear, extended forms of experiencing time and space.
photos: Jesper Dolgov