A pilot solo-version was premiered on 10/10/2024 as part of Highs&Lows programme / 4Bid Gallery at OT301, Amsterdam. The work continues. Performances coming up later in 2025, in collaboration with light designer&technician Ellen Knops. I have been blessed to be part of Encuentros platform, a group of performing artists supporting each other to realise their projects. Their feedback has been and is paramount to this project.
The seed for this project was planted when I was about five years old, in a car, realising that I often wanted to stay on the road instead of reaching a destination… Another strong, concrete moment was during my first winter in the UK when I realised, walking on the street in January, that I miss the coldness of the Finnish winter. My body felt confused and disoriented with a different cycle of the year, something was “off”. It was also a particularly warm winter in the UK, but suddenly the temperatures dropped. Artistically/visually I have been inspired by the impressions of ‘Liikkeellä liikkeessä 2009’ by Tomi Paasonen (a photo below), being part of Annabie Daly’s audio-visual exhibition ‘Kissing Our Heart‘ in 2015, and the work of Rosalie Wammes. This is an ongoing project generated by living the daily life. It questions the idea of a ‘finished’ performance as well as the accuracy and trustworthiness of human memory processing. I have been collecting postcards from many places I have been to as easy-to-carry-souvenirs for myself, also knowing that I want to do/make something with them.
The pilot version was a solo with a video projection, in a fairly traditional performance set-up. First I called this piece ‘In my house the balloons’. However, ‘Angels, upside down‘ emerged when I started the creation process actively, as a section of the piece, which then started to expand. The new name came to me in the autumn of 2021, and the original balloons are/will be actually a part of something else… Topics such as ‘home’, ‘departure/arrival’, and ‘identity’ underlie the work. As I was busy with completing my MA in Dance therapy, I let things “cooking”. Meanwhile, some other projects have taken place. The realisation of the work is patient with me, and it allows for some more stretching of time-space. Actually, ‘Lugarillo’, a collaboration with Amanda Amaral as a part of FAICC in 2016, was hovering around the underlying topics of ‘My skin the city’. ‘Lugarillo’ refers to a place in Portuguese. On a larger scale, the performance will be an installation-like immersive multidisciplinary performance with dance, video projections with images and text, and sensory objects for the audience.
The work deals with the skin, memories and archives but it is not exactly about sharing individual memories. More, the skin and the body being the container of those. I believe that everyone has forgotten memories and memories that cannot be expressed with words. We are homes to our experiences. Skin cells renew rapidly, yet form the most visible part of us. Skin beholds visceral, tactile, sensory, non-verbal memories although that it re-creates itself constantly. I am fascinated by imagining my body simultaneously the same and different at each moment.
In the end, instead of the collected cards which I cherish in the interior design of my home, the video includes my personal footage, showing different countries, weather conditions and surfaces. The images are purposefully somewhat generic for multiple reasons; the focus is on sensorial and tactile imprints and the multitude of memories, inspired by adapting to new countries, habits, cultures, and environments; to evoke (sensory) memories in the public; to question one’s memories. The images blend into each other and get misplaced and repeated, at times projected on my skin. Rather than specific, “true”, or chronological memories, the movement and images are layered and mutated playfully. It portrays the skin’s constant renewal whilst it remains unique to every body. There will be quite a lot of walking in the piece.
The first in-out trip of the skin is from the womb to the outer world. The last one will be from the outer world to be united with the earth, sea and/or air.
Maybe the exact place has already become blurry in the memory. Train stations, airports, buses, companions blend in together. It is not even necessary to maintain intact and accurate memories, perhaps it is also impossible, but it does not make the memories less meaningful. New meanings can pop up in combination with new memories. As we change and develop, maybe it is ok to let our memories mutate too. Perspectives change. Where you once left from is not the same anymore. It is unnerving yet so tempting to try to behave as if something is as it was.
“a million homes in one heart
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repetition mutation as the skin cells drop off step by step
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when is my skin at home again where i’ve taken it?
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does it arrive every time it departs?
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dropping a piece of me right in this place that already flew away
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a million streets under a pair of feet”