THE BLACK SQUARE & BETONI/CONCRETE

As part of the Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026 programme, AaltoSiilo hosted a weekend of performance, poetry and live media, on 28-29 March 2026, with THE BLACK SQUARE by Richard Strange and Antonio Olaio, accompanied by the poetry performance BETONI/CONCRETE by Eeva Maria al-Khazaali with live visuals by Jani Pitkänen.

Presented inside the monumental interior of the AaltoSiilo building, the event brought together theatre, sound, moving image and language in a setting where industrial architecture becomes a stage for new artistic encounters.

The Black Square was presented as a timely multi-media work combining text, film, song, live performance, artificial intelligence and live art. Conceived by British musician and actor Richard Strange together with Portuguese artist Antonio Olaio, the work explored one of the defining questions of the 21st century: who owns our memories?

Drawing unexpected connections between cave paintings, Jean-Luc Godard, art-school rock, Kim Kardashian, J. S. Bach, Walter Benjamin, 1984, Kazimir Malevich, Salvador Dalí and Albert Einstein, the performance unfolded as a playful yet unsettling collision of cultural references. Through song, narrative and projected imagery, Strange and Olaio constructed a vivid reflection on memory, authorship and the transformation of images in the digital age.

The evening also featured BETONI/CONCRETE, a bilingual (Finnish–English) performative poetry piece written and performed by Finnish poet Eeva Maria al-Khazaali. Developed in response to the restoration of the AaltoSiilo building, the work reflected on the structure’s different construction phases and the historical layers embedded within its concrete walls.

Accompanied by live visuals by VJ Jani Pitkänen (blending analogue liquid-visual traditions with glitch aesthetics) the performance transformed the silo into a spatial instrument of sound, language and light. In the poem, the building becomes both a physical structure and a vessel carrying memory, time and transformation.

Together, the two works created a dialogue between performance and architecture. Inside the vast cylindrical interior of the former cellulose silo, the audience was invited to experience language, image and sound as elements shaped by space, material and history.

This event formed part of AaltoSiilo’s evolving cultural programme within Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026, continuing the transformation of the historic industrial site into a platform for artistic experimentation, research and collaboration.

A collaboration between AaltoSiilo, Factum Foundation and Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026.

Event details

THE BLACK SQUARE (Language: English | Duration: 120min) and BETONI (Language: English/Finnish | Duration: 30min)

Dates: Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March 2026
Time: 18-2030hs
Where: AaltoSiilo, Alvar Aallon Katu 5, Meri-Toppila, Oulu