East–West connection

In 2020 I created a project called EARTHQUAKE: sharing a common ground. The idea was to create a vibrational floor where the audience would be on it feeling the vibrational while they witness the solo dance performance called BIRONGITAI, performed by Tuija Lappalainen. In this project, me together with the Scenographer Tuomas Hämärä, have designed and built a wooden shaking floor. The relation I made with the tremor experience was multiple: Within decolonization, my understanding is that vibrations have the power to unset a hard stabilized way of being and thinking, unsettling the status quo presence of each person while they are experiencing it. Second it relates to how I feel living my entire life as an immigrant artist with a constant uncertainty and instability between cultures, languages, boarders’ restrictions and financial precariousness. And yet still finding the source of moving from and through this tremors ground and keeping myself open to the horizon and another. And third an animist perception of the environment disturbed how we, humans, are keeping exploiting it.

An output from the EARTHQUAKE project was the solo BIRONGITAI, a piece I created with the performer and dance artist Tuija Lappalainen, wondering about what gestures belongs in her body and movement vocabulary and how the unfamiliar gesture is transmitted between bodies built in different culture/borders' context. BIRONGITAI premiered on 25th of March 2021 in ITAK stage in Kuopio. This piece has performed also in ICE HOT Helsinki platform (2022), in Näytämö theatre in Joensuu (2022), in Draama-sali in Vaasa in collaboration with Pohjanmaan tanssin aluekeskus (2024) and in Asema 44 in Pori (2024)

From 2023 to 2024 I produced and ran a project called “Mapping Finland”. During my tour on Asema 44, located in Pori, I met Petri and Julia Haavisto who produce the space. As part of my project, the intention was to expand and meet the local artists and audience, so in the process of making Finland my home, I see the importance of connecting nationally east, west, north and south so the whole Finland becomes closer to me. During setting up the floor and the performance, Petri and Julia agreed the urgency to decentralize the way art dynamics follows the way how the transport in Finland flows, from Helsinki to the periphery. The touring system in Finland between noncapital regions is very precarious to not say inexistent.

I shared with Petri and Julia how me and Hämärä have created a whole floor/stage with a very low budget. Since they are needing a stage like mine on Asema 44, we have decided to collaborate in making a project together called, EARTHQUAKE: sharing a common ground – east-west connection edition.