13 – 16.8.2026

Thursday, August 13, at 5:30 p.m.
Friday, August 14, at 5:30 p.m.
Saturday, August 15, at 2:00 p.m. & 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 16, at 2:00 p.m.

LOCATION
Mustikkamaa

The audience will gather at the Kalasatama end of Isoisäsilta, from where we will proceed together to the performance site.

The performance is subject to weather conditions. If the performance must be canceled due to weather conditions, participants will be notified no later than two hours before the start of the performance.

Relax and observe.

The camouflaged creature is a silent trickster which creates ambiguity in visual perception. One cannot tell the reason for the hiding: is it a defense or is it a lure? The creature’s mission is to conceal and disappear, and by doing so, evoke histories of a site through its material specificity.

On this surface lie(s) horizontal, adhering, growing, porous thing(s).

MAR/MÆR has been researching Camouflage Strategies in a row of performance actions since 2017 in public spaces. The first was created Lapeyrouse Cemetery wall in Port of Spain in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, and the most recent work took place in Søndermarken Park in collaboration with oak trees, lichen, and the BLOOM festival. The seventh installment of the Camouflage Strategies series will be presented at Mustikkamaa in Helsinki.

The Camouflage performances series began from a desire to disappear fully, melt into the surroundings and become one with the site. By borrowning strategy from animal life we research camouflaging as an aim to transcend the borders between bodies and the space. Simultaneously, experience and perception of space becomes destabilized. Our practice is embedded in post-human and feminist practices and evokes expressions of in-betweenness and creatureness. Our current research focuses on fungi, particularly lichen, aiming toward being-with, thinking-with, and performing-with the organism for further learnings on complications of symbiosis.

MAR/MÆR is a performance art duo formed by Mari Pitkänen and Kaja Mærk Egeberg.

Sound Design: Tobias Shaw Petersen
Supporters:
Arts and Culture Agency
Arts Council Norway
Directorate of Culture: Government Grants for Artists
City of Helsinki