artist statement

I am not a whore in the traditional sense. I want to give everything for free. I want to give everything. I want to give it to you, even if you do not want it. I need to give this to you,
Now. Because it matters.

My work is silent but loud. I want to gently strip away your skin and touch you underneath. I want to insert a needle, or maybe a thorn from a flower.
How do you feel?
Please tell me.
These dances come to existence from a need to speak, to ask, to participate. The form that they take is the form that offers itself for me to find a way in. I am looking for a way in, into your mind, your body. The work is created in our meeting. It does not exist without you.
I make work to understand the world around me, to make sense of what may have none. I dance to map what otherwise is incomprehensible to me. I am attempting to see the world through a poetics of the body, which is to feel and to be felt.
My work asks what is important. What do we care about? What were the choices that brought us here? They are questions I ask of myself, and I try to lie less every time I answer. I go towards discomfort, because it is a mobilizing force. I place naïveté above cynicism: it does not make me look good but it helps me see what is here. I move in a guise of confusion, of embarrassment and not knowing, because the constant reminder of how little I understand forces me to actually learn.


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

lolli pop art

so i imagined this thing called lolli pop art.
here's the rules for making your own:


eat lollipop.
unwrap the paper stick of the lollipop.
pick a random sentence from your journal and write it on the stick.
name the piece of art after the flavour of the lollipop.

Artificial Mystery Flavour


Artificial Cherry I


Artificial Cherry II



imovie update for CAP:

managed to get over the video camera issues
and have been experimenting with imovie hd.

the idea of skin and touch and the cardboard are coming together
(against all odds)
i want to make something awkward and uncomfortable
and i think it works
the sad thing is that i can't figure out how to layer images on imovie, maybe it is not possible with the version that i have... and cross fades are limited to 12 seconds of length. but i still think i will have something to make people feel uncomfortable to show on thursday.
it feels like it has to be as awkward as i feel around the subject, and around being in this country, and around languaging these issues and doing it in public. so, on one hand i want it to be smooth enough to work, but not smooth enough to swallow - that there is something wrong, something that you as a viewer will want to change.

the idea of clay has changed into dough in my mind, but i haven't figured out how to project the dough on the skin - and it has to be done on the same day because i want my audience to eat the bread that is the touch that is on the skin on the video. and bread has to be eaten fresh. eat me, a sharing of bread and of my body with you.

i also played with garageband to make a satisfyingly off sounding soundtrack.
it is all a draft but it feels good to be doing something, trying and erring and learning.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

imovie trial

very
first
imovie
CAP 24.09.09

my emotional shoulder
and some teeth with globalization

(also starring: simone, janice)

in motion

thinking about sensations on skin
about homelessness
about sleeping on a mattress of cardboard
about cold and numbness and the
simultaneous invisibility and visibility
having no privacy but no voice

thinking about how we 'grant' each other humanity
who do we see as our fellow citizens
and how that would change if there was a relationship
through a narrative, a history, a shared branch in the family tree

of recognition
not me recognizing you, but us recognizing each other
of possible connections

touch and movement with traditional medium










patterns


mostly, at this point, there are questions.






i am beginning to question my original idea for the project.
right now it seems more fruitful to look at the possibilities of the medium, to try out things and see what i can do - i feel like my ideas are getting too much in the way.






Thursday, September 17, 2009

imagining the skin as paper

what if the skin was clay
and you could run your finger in it
so that your touch left a scar?
what if every thought touched the skin
and marked it,
this white paper skin,
snow white -
how does your gaze define me
every second
identity
it is written on my skin

skin


skin
paper body.

what is projected on the skin
touches the skin,

changes the skin.

changes how it is
to be
inside that skin,

to be my skin.




Thursday, September 10, 2009

stop motion

tonight we played with photobooth.
simone taught us how to make a stop motion clip in 2 minutes.
i had a hard time understanding the concept of movement that is not dance, but eventually managed to do something anyway. looking at this, it is embarrassing how revealing it is. it is so noticeable here, how uncomfortable i am in front of the camera when i am not dancing, and how that changes when i dance.

touch

a rough sketch

i wish to create a piece where the audience's touch on a remote device makes a mark that is projected on the dancer's body, and that mark grows and takes shape according to the quality of the touch.
the dancer moves according to the choreography created by these touches.
the touch could also create sound - or it could be an environment where the sound is created through the dancer's movements in space.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

tervetuloa.

welcome.

soluja is finnish for cells.
this is the place where i try to make sense
of how the 73 trillion cells in my body
make contact with this information technology
keyboard under fingers
light hitting eyes
stem cells
nervous
system
yes
i am.