la tierra es un cuerpo
About the publication
In May 2021 I was approached by Toisinajattelijat-collective to write for their OtherWise / Muun Viisautta publication project, a collection of textual material-essays written by 11 artist-thinkers. Each chapter is written by a different artist, from within their specific artistic practice, questions and wider concerns. Texts and textualities deal with topics such as new-materialism, the future of (performance) art in an era of eco-crisis and otherness.
Artists: Sonja Jokiniemi, Essi Kausalainen, Heli Keskikallio, Ella-Noora Koikkalainen, Taru Koski, Jenni Laiti, Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larrachea, Wilhelmina Ojanen, Maarit Rankanen, Orfee Schuijt, Soile Voima
Curating team: Toisinajattelijat-collective (Heli Keskikallio, Taru Koski, Soile Voima)
The layout of the book: Even Minn
For the OtherWise / Muun Viisautta publication, I wrote a poem called la tierra es un cuerpo.
Lately, I am interested in worldviews and cosmologies that see the body as inherently part of, or made of, the vast body of the land. The title of the poem la tierra es un cuerpo (the land is a body) hints to this way of thinking and living.
The process of writing began from a need to reflect on the corporeal experience of care in more-than-human worlds. In writing the chapter, it felt essential to create a work of art where the bodily experience is particularly present in the text. Initially I started writing in the form of an academic essay, but slowly the work began to shift towards a poetic approach, returning to the following speculative questions throughout the process:
How can I corporeally, multidimensionally and poetically delve into imaginations of future existence in multi-species kinship?
How can I attempt to put into words the embodied experience of embeddedness to land, to earth, to more-than-human worlds?
What does it mean to be with care in more-than-human relationships and how does that feel like in the body?
The mountain, again
Otherwise / Muun viisautta Gallery Festival was a joint exhibition of eleven performance artists and a celebration of their newly published book, Otherwise - Muun Viisautta, that took place Wed-Sun 7.-11.9.2022 @ Yö galleria, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki.
For the exhibition, I contributed a installation/performance called "The mountain, again", that opened up the world of the poem "la tierra es un cuerpo". The installation was visible from Wednesday to Sunday, but the performance happened only on Friday 9.9. at 6pm.
"again, the mountain,
this living, breathing entity ~ this full, heavy, interconnected mass.
You are invited to be with the clay, to mould a mountain, to add to the gathering.”
Photographs by Pirjo Ojanen from Santiago, Chile.