World Village Festival: Plaza of Unruly Peace
What does peace feel like when it is not rooted in control, certainty, or harmony? Can we learn to be with each other—and with ourselves—without trying to fix, perform, or predict? Vallattoman rauhan aukio emerged as an invitation to pause these questions not in our minds, but in our bodies. It asked: What becomes possible when we stop managing life and start meeting it?
Plaza of Unruly Peace (Vallattoman rauhan aukio)
Maailma Kylässä Festival, Helsinki, May 2025
Public space installation and embodied invitation for relational experimentation
What
Plaza of Unruly Peace was a public space installation and participatory experience created for the World Village Festival in Helsinki. Framed as a relational compass, the plaza featured four experiential directions each offering festival-goers a different way to engage with the tensions and possibilities of being alive in complex times. At the plaza we explore what peace might mean when it is not about resolution, but about capacity—especially the capacity to stand inside uncertainty with presence, imagination, and care. Through poetic texts, interactive signage, and participatory rituals, the space encouraged people to soften their grip on certainty and engage in embodied, reciprocal encounters with themselves, others, and the world.
How
The plaza includes four experiential tents aka directions: Pause, Let Go, Connect and Play.
Pause: An invitation to interrupt urgency and rest inside stillness through audio tracks and meditations.
Let Go: A chance to release the illusion of control and soften into the uncertainty that life already holds.
Connect: A gentle provocation to encounter others without assumptions, letting curiosity replace the need to define.
Play: A space to imagine otherwise—through spontaneity, poetry, and the joyful art of not knowing.
Why
In a time when the dominant responses to global crisis rely on control, speed, and separation, this project offered a different approach. Plaza of Unruly Peace invites visitors into a space where not-knowing was welcomed, and where peace was understood not as the absence of conflict, but as the capacity to remain present in its midst. The aim was not to provide answers, but to create conditions where new forms of knowing, relating, and imagining could be rehearsed—together.