Working with @WORK

I've began working with an international project called @WORK. I was invited by Nina Basset of Teaterkunst to join this project one rare sunny day of Denmark last July on the shore of Ørsund, Helsingør, looking at Sweden. I had just returned from Italy where I was working for Odin Theater’s Ur-Hamlet as a photographer. Ur-Hamlet was a huge international performance with 100+ people involved from all around the world. Coming back to the cold Denmark from the hot Italy after a great international encounter among other things, gave more then one reason to say “yeah, cool, let’s do it!” to Nina for this new international project. We talked about different aspect of the project and it sounded very interesting. And then there came the dreadful news: “we’ll have a workshop in Helsinki on December!” DECEMBER!?
Now we are going to Helsinki on Dec. 3rd where all the other partners of the project will be present. It seems that I am going to give a workshop, using the techniques of Theater of the Oppressed and what I have learned from Augusto Boal.
However, I called the embassy of Finland to make sure I can travel there without visa. The lady said yes “as long as you have a valid passport and a residency in Denmark you don’t need visa. But make sure that you put enough cloths on. When are you going there?”
“December!” I said. She said it could be extremely cold there on December and told me her story that she once came back from Asia for Christmas and it was minus 25 etc. and heart-warming information like that. Now, I hate applying visa; nothing is more painful than that because the visa people are normally fucking angry and want to get rid of you as quick as possible. After I finished my conversation with this nice lady, I was thinking to myself that it must be a pretty boring job to be a visa officer at the embassy of Finland. After all who the fuck wants to go to such a cold place. Maybe only Europeans go there and they don’t need visa anyway. So the lady was so happy—I assume—that a fucking Iranian called her asking about visa. I hope I didn’t disappoint her by not actually applying a visa!