Even though the combination of forest and health might suggest a certain resonance with Grotowski’s aim at escaping alienation to the forest, the question of health in The Real Health Center was not not quite as straightforward as this. In The Real Health Center – both the performance and the workshop – the aim was to create resonant situations that would raise questions about certain core issues: health, health in relation to the health of the planet, health in relation to co-creation between actor, articipant and environment. These questions are raised through a selection of paradoxes. There is a continuous discussion in Finland of the relationship between health and art where some justify art in relation to its health benefits and others in terms of its autonomous value in the sense that art’s place in society shouldn’t be determined by its instrumental value (see f.e. http://mustekala.info/teemanumerot/taide-ja-hyvinvointi-3-2016-vol-64/taidetta-taiteen-vai-hyvinvoinnin-vuoksi/ and https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2015/02/04/taide-vapautta-sivistysta-ja-rappiota-ja-silla-valia [accessed 1.8.2019]). One of the original impulses for making the performance of The Real Health Center was to reject this juxtaposition and try to work with simultaneity and paradox. We aimed to make a piece that could claim to show evidence of how a performance can have tangible health benefits, but at the same time would be critical of the tendency to justify art on those terms.
The questions in the performance about these issues are raised through concrete acts of taking people from the city into the forest and offering a possibility to reflect on this journey. It does bring about questions of the healthiness of forests, but the performance also uses mobile phones and a bus ride from the city so the environments it uses are not only the forest. I’m opening up the context of the whole performance concept to shed light on how it’s not presented only as a comment on how forests are healthy. And even though the context needs to be made clear, it’s equally important to remember that the focus of this research is not health per se, but on a system of training performers in participatory and immersive performances which aims to be applicable in relation to other environments as well. In addition, the main focus of the research was on the meeting with the doctor, which is the reason I’ve decided to leave further discussion about the performance outside this exposition – I will only elaborate on it when it relates to clarifying specific aspects of the training system in relation to how it was applied in the workshop of The Real Health Center.