The process of opening and closing the navel with choreographic means: choreographic thinking with sculptures and bodies

Abstract

The artistic part of my thesis consisted of four parts: an open invitation letter to join in the project published in December 2022, a performative installation in which the people who answered to the open call were invited to come for navel mold casting took place in January 2023, a choreographic installation where 22 cast beeswax navels and 22 plaster castings of navels were exhibited from May to June 2023 and lastly in May a dance performance in which five of the people answering the open call were performing and leading the audience through the participatory work dealing with touch and connections around the navel. This multifaceted body of work, and, for most, a process that started publicly with an open invitation letter in December 2022, is called Aukeama - Opening space.

The open invitation letter was targeted to queer people who were interested in joining the process of exploring with the theme of navel gazing, touch and movement. The process consisted of 13 workshops that took place during the weekends and evenings from February to May. In addition, during January there was the first group meeting as well as one-on-one meetings with a mold making session to kick off the process around the themes of movement, touch and navel. The first meeting and mold making session took place during the Time and Space exhibition from 20th to 29th of January 2023 in Kuva/Tila where I had created a working space inside the exhibition. I used recycled and dyed fabrics to create thin, porous vertical surfaces that were both moving with the airwaves and offering a shelter for the navel mold making sessions. This was a one-to-one performance around touch that took place in a smaller exhibition space behind closed doors where we could hear the soundscapes coming from the other exhibition spaces.

The people who become the working group members of this project via open call were invited to work as part of the group throughout the spring from January to May in the workshop settings where a collaboratively created practice was formed. In May the practice was shared in the form of a public performance as part of the Kuvan Kevät 2023 exhibition. There were altogether three performances that took place at the UniArts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts on 14th, 21st and 28th of May 2023 at 2pm. The performance lasted around 75 minutes starting from the second-floor triangle shaped lobby space and ending in the Kuva/Tila gallery at the first-floor among the installation with navel sculptures.

The written component of the thesis goes through the whole process of creating the work from the first experiment of the navel mold making where the experiential led the way for the questions around the social, political and corporeal to arise. The writing part aims to unfold the choreographic thinking that is the reflection surface I work with. As an artist having my background in choreography and dance my ways of working often differ from the ones of my peers, professors and most of the visiting teachers. As a choreographer and dancer, I usually work with other people and the most crucial part of the artistic process is when people are together. The collaborative work goes through the whole process of artmaking which introduces a lot of questions around the ecology of the artmaking. The questions of roles in the working group and negotiating around differences in needs are not present when working individually, just to name a couple of things. And when working with others as a choreographer, especially with the performers whether they are professionals or not, there are the bodies, the corporeal being that I work with because when I think choreographically, I think about bodily relations. When I look at art works, I read the work in relation to my being, what the work does to me, how it calls for my attention and to what it cues me to be in relation to. The notions are of course also matters of interpretation, however, these are the questions I have when I meet an artwork. The questions an artist asks vary of course from artist to artist, but, in my approach, there is the thinking with the viscerality, corporeal and senses in relation to cultural and social cues of the environment. The way of working is shaped by my personal interests, dance related choreography education and over 20 years of dance practice. My desire is that the thesis as a whole could work as a mesh between my colleagues working in dance, choreography and fine arts especially in performance, sculpture and sound related practices.