Interview with shadow school convenors Noia Kekoni-Kattelus & Jessica Piasecki
Shadow School was held for the second time at Mad House on 10-14.11.2025.We interviewed the conveners of the school, Noia Kekoni-Kattelus and Jessica Piaseck, who told us what the week of Shadow School was like and what insights it generated.
Mad House: The shadowschool is a "back to school" larp for makesrs living between institutions, for precarious workers, activists and artists. You say you are studying to bring thinking outwards from yourselves. In what ways have you practised this and what kinds of thinking have you created and shared?
Noia Kekoni-Kattelus & Jessica Piasecki: We've been experimenting with a structure to support that aim: We start our school day at school by moving, which melts the first internal ice. Soul and flesh on the move. That once the blood is circulating and we've played together, it already feels a little more uncomfortable to go and get stuck in your own head. Then we do sparring in small groups with semi open-ended tasks about our own craft. Usually they are somehow related to process, finding direction, your own passions or tendencies. These moments get verbalised, and you might get tips from others for opening creative gates. One sparring session was so concrete where we held the couple's head while they thought, and then became their super-action-buddy-buddy, dynamic assistant. At the end of the day, after lunch and individual work time, we demo our day's tinkering to each other. Interaction with your own making feels vital, and the fact that we practice it through a structure seems to be a much needed. Even if you don't want any comments on unfinished work from others on your unfinished work, the act of showing it already moves something in you and in the process. We think that gatherings that lean on collectivity like this are themselvesa resource,
make space for our voices in a time when voices are being suppressed in various ways.
MH: You say you want to see each other succeed. What has success meant, for example?
J& N: Success can be such a rare experience in precarious conditions, like in a year-long effort you might ger a few closing thanks and a party. So this structure we've been testing tries to propose a kind of constant celebration of whatever you get done in the moment. In the warm-up we invite a sense of complete satidfaction with energy that arises. In the demo moments people received applause, compliments and exchanges ofthoughts when presenting, for instance, a piece of music, a performance demo, a workshop plan or idea, steps toward organising an event, crossingitems off a to-do list, or taking the necessary afternoon nap. At the end of the school day we seal the day together witha few goofy movements – patting the walls, stomping, handshakes – sothat the school day can be successfully left behind, letting evening, night and morning create new space in the body. The shadowschool experiment lasted one week for the second time, so we managed to graduate in a week! ;) Since attaendance isn't mandatory, a few people succeeded in graduateing by attending just one dya. With our November, class we managed to grasp the shared need for a more dunamic each one teach one technique. At the end of the school season there is of course the success ceremony – graduation – during which we walk through a corridorof honour formed by the group to receive our certificates, and we dance together. Success meant finding trust in oneself and each other; to quoteour certificate:We believe in you. Sincerely shadows.
