NOTES FROM THE PROCESS
[sensorial practices
&
creative journey]
Since the beginning of 2024, when I started carrying out the project, my creative process and personal journey have been unfolding through various sensorial/attention practices. In addition to the main participatory practice with clay, as a conceptually designed approach, all of these further practices have emerged spontaneously – as my intuitive response to different encounters, questions and issues, brought up in a dialogue with people I met on my way. However, not only people, but other living beings as well. When we walk the path with open senses, everything communicates. Every-thing reveals its personhood and adds agency to a teeming, lively exchange. At each point of contact, droplets of magic emerge that first demand attention to be perceived, and in return give the sense of wondering, of awe … the sense of being-alive.
Although these practices appear in many different forms (formats), they are all inherently linked by and rooted in one simple thought: everything relates and we are all connected through matter and collective consciousness. With other words, they do not grow out of existing art-models and are not meant/done to reaffirm or redefine this narrow frame: they deal with real life. In this respect, they deviate from performing art, since their aim is not to simply recreate issues and manifestations that already exist, even less to “deliver a neatly packed presentation”. Thus, the essence of contemporary performing art and somatics can be traced in the use of intentionality and mindfulness, invested in and mediated through matter (natural materials), and in the focus on embodied metaphors (grounded in kinaesthetic/haptic and tactile sense). These basic principles/methods thus provide the ground for sense-making and the path for further transformation. From this aspect, the practices make both, a link back to cultural rituals as the origin of theater/performing art, and a step further from contemporary performing art, for they do not depend on audience (seeking an applause) or rest upon symbolic representations only. Rather, they aim at building relations, causing an embodied effect and incepting a differently resonating field: a counter-field to the globally imposed dehumanized matrix. Like this, everyone involved is both, a co-maker and a co-receiver (witness, observer, “audience”), while an effect silently radiates further into a collective field. Unlike the myriad of so called “spiritual and healing” practices in which individuals only bubble around themselves, I remain devoted to the intersubjective, relational fabric.
In my view, the unfolding poetics of Life is equally a method and an ultimate outcome of the healing transformation. And healing takes time, since the process evolves in continuous motion, subsiding into the invisible and leaving long periods of seemingly “empty” time of not-knowing before rising back to the surface. Giving-trust becomes an utterly needed, inevitable approach. … I guess, the best way to describe this journey is simply to say: I am recording patience.
GOOD SPIRIT ‘KO’ & THE RISE OF THE CLAY “FEATHERS” GIFT-EXCHANGE
[October-December 2023]
It was already in autumn 2023 that I asked Tomo Križnar, the life-long activist for human rights, to carry out the clay-practice with the Nuba people. As he was planning his trip to Sudan in December, I gave him a little piece of clay, hoping he might get a chance to sit presently with those suffering women and kids, trapped in camps and horrific conditions (or with the leaders of the resistance), and hold/press hands together, so to instil faith into matter (into a piece of Earth). Yes, I do believe that “seeds” of this sort can germinate on different levels. And I also believe that even in the worst conditions, when lacking drinking water, a short redirection of focus from pain and suffering to something else (something unvital, something out of the context) can actually help sustaining the will-to-live, the emotional strength-to-survive. However, it was clear that anything can happen on his way and that the chances are small. So, we agreed he would try, at least, and if not, all fine.
In my further attempts to record a short video, just for Tomo to see how he could carry on the practice, I asked a group of dancers for help in demonstrating. As they were anyway gathered within an annual frame of the Choreographic turn festival, they gladly responded, and, to my surprise, they took the task of moulding the intentionality-seeds into the clay seriously: what was at first to be just a brief demonstration turned into a whole session and their attention was simply beautiful. The outcome of that session was the curious sculpture, made with hearts-of-support, which they/we named The good spirit ‘Ko’. It was clearly a gift from us to the Nuba people, and Tomo also later recorded my message, to make this act-of-support clear.
We didn’t know whether ‘Ko’ will actually reach them, even less whether we’ll ever be able to touch their hands through/in their clay object – but in any case:
It was this process that gave rise to the idea of the gift-exchange, which I further started carrying out with the little clay imprints (the “feathers”).
CLAY “FEATHERS”:
THE PRACTICE OF GIFT-EXCHANGE
[January 2024 – on-going]
My initial idea was simply to make one little individual imprint with each participant in the collective practice with clay. The idea seemed simple at a first glance, yet, it soon revealed a surprising degree of complexity through various subtle layers. In fact, it had taken quite a lot of experimenting on my own before I even figured out how exactly to prepare the little clay balls, in order to get this shape out; how to put the cracks together without distorting the shape and the imprinted textures of skin (fingerprints); what is the most efficient order when I make more of them in a row (to first press all of them, then correct all the cracks, and finally make the little holes … finish them entirely one after another … or how – so that the clay is neither too soft for turning them around, nor too dry for piercing them?). How is it that such tiny objects can put you in front of so many questions and curious observations?
After I made the first 30 experimental samples, I first noticed that not even 2 of them are the same: they were just like people … or anything in this planes for that matter. Even though mine were all made by the same two fingers, from the same clay, at the same time (i.e. under the same temperature and humidity conditions), each of them had some little characteristic of its own that differentiated it from others. How would they not be different then when made by different people?! And how would that not speak of everything in life being in constant motion? … The running river is ever the same.
Everything is alive, and for that reason (natural) material, too, is highly informed, responsive and mutually informative. It did not take long to further noticed how “correcting the cracks” does not only mean smoothening an object on the surface. Instead, it takes redistributing the material from where there is too much of it to where there is too little. As a subtle act of bringing the excessive and the deficient into balance, it leads into quite a powerful state of mind, a deeply intuitive intentionality that works towards a wider redistribution of sources.
Then, as I started doing this with other people, new challenges appeared. How to lead the participants for them to give the right amount of physical pressure, to grasp the difference between pressing and yielding-in, to find a proper attention, and above all, to understand what it means to “charge the material/object” with an embodies intention (i.e. not only by a quick mental-thought/idea). Although the “feathers” were initially only meant to be integrated into an installation of an “eagle wing” at the final exhibition, they were never meant to be “just some objects that one can buy in a shop”.
Certainly, the question of attention and intentionality became even more important as this practice has turned into a gift-exchange. As I started instructing them to charge one feather with “a state/energy they wish to put & see in the world), and the other one with “energy they wish to give/send to some other, anonymous individual person”, this act became tightly linked to participants responsibility. It was clear that their act matters, for what-goes-round-comes-round, and because somebody, a real person will actually get their object into their hands. But equally, I started sensing my responsibility as well – that is, in assessing, somewhat selecting people whom I invite, but also in making sure I ground and neutralise any possible subconscious energies while participants are charging their objects. After all, I know all too well that being nice is not the same as being truly kind. Besides, I’m the only one who sees the whole picture: why would I want to include people with hidden or outspoken xenophobic, racist, nationalist or other how destructive ideas/ideologies, when altogether I am devoted to weaving a different fabric of humanity … an “extended family”, if you wish-?
By now, this practice has actually became the main and the most connective practice in/of the project. With all the attention and sense of responsibility invested, it is such a pleasure each time to observe how people become curios, happy, bright and thankful when they receive a feather from an unknown person in the planet: a gift to protect them, a silent alliance.
MELTING THE THICK, UNSUSCEPTIBLE CUBES …
PRACTICING A CREATION STORY?
[April 2024]
If you mean it for real, then you should expect that not everything will turn out the way you wished.
If you mean it for real, then you should keep in mind that everything is equally part of the process.
I had no idea when Tomo was supposed to return from Sudan, but in spring 2024 it started to seem strange that there was still no voice from him. My feeling was not good. I called him, and the feeling confirmed. To sum-up briefly: the piece of clay went completely dry on the way and there was also no proper condition to do anything. This was likely to happen, thus, I had no sorrow or problem with that: I still felt thankful that he was willing to carry the bunch around in his bag, on the plane, etc. Yet, there came another part of the story, too: he told me that they also broke the Good spirit ‘Ko’ sculpture, our gift-of-support for the Nubas. And it wasn’t by accidence. It wasn’t something that would be beyond one’s decision, one’s act. Apparently he was in some village where he took the clay and the sculpture out of the bag, found out that the clay went dry, while there was another guy (whom he didn’t even know) and they somehow just decided that this “all went bad”, hit the sculpture at a tree trunk and broke it into pieces. … I was stunned. Although with difficulties, I listened and honestly tried to understand. At the same time, I was speechless. I gave it some time for my feelings to articulate, but no matter how much I turned it around, I sensed negligence and mistrust resonating behind the story. My feelings were not leaning toward resentment, rather, some deep sadness, even despair.
After a while, I realized that it makes no sense to keep guessing and naming the cause on my own, therefore, I invited Tomo for a sincere discussion. It turned out to be a wonderfully honest, revealing and mature conversation. I expressed very clearly that, to my intuition, this event was in fact rooted in his deep mistrust, disbelief, and consequently complete discreditation of any value (and possible effect) of my/our act/work/intention – that there was some underlying principle of doubting, ridiculing and imposed-prophesy, having guided his action already when I gave him the clay and the sculpture. And what bothered me even more, is that by “taking the right to turn something he believes is nothing into nothing”, he took away the chance, decision and agency of the Nubas to brake/reject the sculpture (the gift), in case they felt it was nothing in their eyes. Of course, facing somebody with honesty, always gives rise to bad feelings at first. The reason more, I was so very thankful when he eventually confirmed all this to be the case – which allowed us to have a very interesting conversation further on. It brought up all those questions of implicit selfishness in charity work; of the righteousness of human rights activists who would only find legitimate their (or ready-made) means of fighting, failing to acknowledge any other ways co-effective. For whom and for what do we really do it, underneath? Why would a camera, that equally doesn’t bring water and can only cause a mediated-effect through rising awareness, be more legitimate than a practice of mediated-effect through-matter-and-intentionality? And what is actually more immediate in the realm of Nature? All the kind of questions which run way beyond one particular event or person (e.g. Tomo) and are widely relevant to be considered within the typically hypocrite Western/globalized society.
Ultimately, it became so clear that it is not individual “heroes” that could possibly make changes for the good alone: we all need to work together, from many different angles, on many different levels, by different means, in different forms, if we are to believe that we actually work towards the collective good and in line with the multi-layered complexity of life.
In any case, our conversation left me only half way in peace. Something else was needed, too. I called the group that made the sculpture, and funnily, only women responded. I had this dry, thick cube of old clay at home: it was exactly this state of the material and its shape that bodily coincided perfectly with the kind of “insusceptible, discrediting, rigid mind”. The kind of mind that I’ve experienced so many times in the social environment where I live! …. We gathered in a circle around it. Exchanged words of sadness. Each of us hammered the thick cube into smaller pieces. And then, just like probably only women can do, we sat for more than 2 hours, attentively pressing the pieces with our bare fingers, until the entire material melted completely and there was no single tiny clay-pebble left: with intentionality to melt minds, not only clay. We melted with tears, and songs, and finally laughter, as well. And we felt grateful and peaceful in the end.
It was this practice of transformation that finally also made us realize (conclude) that it maybe had to be so. That maybe it was all for the good after all, since the braking of the sculpture may have been exactly the act of releasing the “seeds”-of-support, moulded in the sculpture, and spreading them widely across the land of the Nubas. …
This curious knowledge of trees of how to spread seeds in an abundant amount and wide radius …
I call for our “seeds” to germinate!
[June 2024]
Developing sensitivity and working with it as a particular kind of skill, is … well, above all work. For this reason, I was both, amazed and not surprised at all, when in June 2024 I stumbled across The Creation story of the W8banakiak. I never heard of it before, and found it in the Musée des Abénakis in Odanak, Canada, Turtle Island. A part of the story is so perfectly aligned with our transformation-practice that I can only say: see, we do know.
Call it archetypal, call it metaphorical. We intuitively know the same. And if we know the same, when we are so far apart (geographically and culturally), then it must speak of something real, something that exists and can therefore be observed. For how otherwise would we be able to come to same-same imagination and understanding, if not by being informed by/through the agency of living matter and environment?
WOMEN-TO-WOMEN-SUPPORT
WOODEN NEEDLES
WALKING NEEDLE
[May 2024; June 2024 – ]
Threads of this process are no different from the threads that run in parallel, over-and-behind, within any weaved fabric. … Who knows, maybe I will eventually realize that I’m weaving a “flying carpet” of humanity, and we’ll end up on Mars before Elon without any technology 🙂 …
In mid April 2024, I was given the studio and open hours to carry out the practice with clay in Cultural Incubator Maribor (in cooperation with Nagib) It was a good context to meet more groups in a row. The participants were mainly couples and families, and it was probably for this reason that quite some people asked me, whether I feel lonely in this project, or how come I don’t. Lonely? Why would I feel lonely – just because I’m single and I meet couples and families? What a strange point of view, equaling alone with lonely, and especially when you do something exactly to connect people. No doubts, it is this “bubble culture”, proliferated by and after the pandemics, that prevents people ever more to acknowledge, see and feel any other relations (connectedness) outside the closest circle of me-and-my-husband/wife(-and-our-children) – but isn’t this also one of the reasons I started this journey_ healing sociality and our social sense?!
So far so good. But then came this meeting with women who were staying in Asylum home in Ljubljana and had agreed to make the continuous line of “feathers” as the practice of women-to-women support. I met them at the premises of the Slovene Philanthropy, where they had regular No Boarder Craft workshops. They were all from Middle East, some spoke English, some not, so our communication was somewhat limited. We spoke with bodies, smiles. Although this bodily communication is often a much warmer and direct way of bonding, it also takes more time than simply verbal conversations. It was delighted (and at the same time disappointed over us in this culture) to see how all of those women (still) know how to crochet, weave, knit … the kind of skills that Western women have completely forgotten – failed to learn from our mothers and grandmothers – believing that such abandoning speaks in favor of our “liberation from traditional determination of female/women’s work”. In fact, we just lost valuable knowledge and made ourselves dependent on cheap products and shops.
When they finished, they continued with their own work. In return, I tried to contribute to what they were making and sewed a few patches in the collective blanket they were preparing for an upcoming event. But the atmosphere was sort of floating, disintegrated, and eventually I left. On the way home, I felt kind of strange, like: I came – they made it – that’s it. Like I haven’t established any relation at all. It was the first time that I actually felt lonely – however, not for the reasons my previous participants had in mind, but because I lacked the sense of continuation or at least grasping whether this meant anything to them. Simultaneously, the piece of the continuous crochet-line I was carrying in my bag felt so incredibly precious – as if I was walking around with 30 million dollars, only it was incomparable to any money on Earth. Such contradicting feelings made me wondering what my role in this project was really. What am I doing – walking around from people to people, then go home/further and … never see them again? … On what level is this working, if any at all? And suddenly my mind returned this clear thought: you are a wandering, a walking needle. Your task is to make connective stitches between kind people, while possibly avoiding the unkind ones, and slowly build a wide relational fabric. … A what? A walking needle? I started laughing, right there in the middle of the street, since this formulation sounded just like how “Hollywood-cowboys” would cheaply falsify a stereotypical “Indian name”, by putting a random adjective next to a random noun, to make it sound “Indian enough” … 🙂
So, be it: I’m this white, European, Yugoslav Walking needle and should therefore accept that sensible poetics, a degree of stupidity and the Balkan sense of self-humor are all implied!
Ultimately, what rolled out of this joke-on-me wasn’t so very random. At the end of May, when the time for me to go to Turtle Island (Canada) was approaching, a sense of “something-about-needles” kept coming back at me. I felt I just needed to do something extra. And just two days before the flight, in the middle of crazy packing and with absolutely no contacts and meetings arranged, I called a friend, bagging him to make me a small amount of 10–15 cm long sticks from really good wood – asap. He brought me 20 and I still remember how he looked at me when he gave them to me, saying: “you are crazy, but you’ll find them [the Native people] – you’ve got this!” … Hm. Whatever “this” is, it made me think how rarely people understand that love is not just an emotional state, but a driving force … Due to my lack of time, I picked out only 12 sticks and spent my last hours before leaving shaping the sticks into needles. I drilled the holes (In English a needle hole is called an eye, in Slovene it’s called an ear), roughly sanded them, and rounded/smoothened the peaks to prevent making a tool that could harm/hurt, while I also deliberately left them unfinished. Since I was traveling around alone, it was just so beautiful when I managed to find a nice spot in forests or next to a lake, and dedicated to this attentive, refining work. See, that’s why (how) you don’t feel lonely. … And that’s also why you find the Canadian (or generally capitalist) system/culture of all-private-land and denied-public-access-to-nature all the more appalling and horrific.
All in all, those needles were made as special gifts (next to the little clay “feathers”). I did not give them to just anyone who, for example, helped me only. They were meant particularly for those people who work towards connecting their communities (or different worlds). I guess, if I’m the initial Walking needle, then I consider them the sub-connectors. Hence, I gave each of them a tool to make further stitches and the interpersonal fabric ever denser within their scope of reach. I trust they will use it wisely.
Until now (May 2025), I gave away 9 needles and decided I will stick to the amount of 12 … Unless, eventually continue with the second round of a whole new package of 12 … It’s only a beginning.
MELTING THROUGH WALLS:
“WHITE NOISE” – PHASE 1
[May 2024]
Before leaving for Canada, none of my attempts to get in touch with the Indigenous people and better organize my trip led me anywhere, opened no path. An emotional and kinesthetic feeling of complete immobility. A feeling of being walled in. But in what way walled-in exactly? Somehow both inside and outside at the same time. The First nations’ organizations haven’t replied to my emails. All my individual contacts, through whom I sought further contacts, were white Europeans and white Canadians (some also Americans), who more or less told me that they “didn’t know any native people” (as if they didn’t even know they existed), that “I wouldn’t be able to reach them” because “native people no longer want to have anything to do with us [white people]”. They kept asking me why I wanted to work with them and/or what I wanted from them. Nothing, and why wouldn’t I want to work with them – they are people, wonderful people –, or why, for that matter, would I want to work with anyone at all? I was getting an increasingly unpleasant and strong impression that, perhaps, those white people do not even want me to reach them (subconsciously acting as gate-keepers), therefore I couldn’t quite tell whether the resistance (refusal) is actually coming from the native people or not. In any case, all these kinesthetically felt dynamics (my will, moving-in-direction to reach them, in relation to the stopping forces that, like outer walls, prevent entry into the space behind another set of inner walls) accumulated into an image of bizarre architecture of relationships.
It seemed to me as if the native people are surrounded by (colonial) walls made of rather dilapidated bricks, enclosed in a space whose ceiling has however collapsed over time. On the outside of their walls, glass walls and ceilings are attached all around, behind which white colonialists are trapped in a completely airtight space. The latter have a great view (prosperity) through the glass, but no way out (of ideology), while the indigenous people cannot see anywhere horizontally, but they do have a way out upwards. They can slowly grow out of this repression – just as plants move by growing. … I guess, this is exactly what we can witness happening with gradual decolonization and their regained voice … (A whole year later I actually ran into a very similar constellation on a meadow nearby my home – it was hidden behind a high bush before.)
But still, my question remained: where was my entrance into this, standing outside of both? What unknown, unconsidered properties and elements may this architecture convey? I started wondering how an architect could envision any other sorts of an entrance, apart from doors, windows … and ok, a chimney once a year.
Intuitively I then decided to do yet another somatic, intentionality practice: melting-through. My colleagues and I kept patiently dropping that previously melted clay into the river, bit by bit sending it further with the flow, while I focused on bringing my body into a state/quality of permeability – a sort of entrance like an underground seepage beneath and through the walls. It certainly was an entrance for me. … It was already then that part of me already started traveling with the rivers.
TREE INSTRUMENT – PHASE 1
[October 2023; June 2024]
After the huge forest clearing on the Šiška hill (above Ljubljana’s main park, Tivoli) in 2023, I hardly ever go there anymore. The clearing was ordered by the City of Ljubljana (and specifically the mayor), and caused huge public rage, demonstrations and debates over the illegibility and the amount of trees that had been taken down in public space. … It’s hard to walk there now, for you can really sense the devastation – but there is no other forest nearby. It was in October 2023 when during one of such sad walks, I noticed I tree with twin-trunks, one of which was split from within at a lower part, most likely from the lightning.
I approached and discovered a profound sculpture, created within and by that tree! Nature is indeed an unbeatable artist. It was simply wonderful. I needed to touch it, eyes cannot sense what skin does. Slowly and with much attention to all those incredible details, I realized that it also sounds – it was an instrument. A wonderful, unique instrument! I kept playing and exploring and after a while I sensed how the rest of forest is responding (shyly awakening) as well. It didn’t take long for me to understand (viscerally know) that this is not only a beautiful sculpture, not only an instrument: it was a kind of a curious “portal” to other spiritual dimensions of the forest. Hm … 🙂
The tree was growing right next to the path, thus, I started observing whether any of the many of the people who passed by would be drawn to it as well. Nobody noticed anything – not even “a strange woman playing with a tree”. They passed by blind, talking loudly about how much something costs and where did they go for vacations.
I thanked the tree and left. But knowing all too well the mentality of this social environment and particularly the land-grabbers did not leave me in peace. The tree was growing normally further up, but I was utterly aware how this split makes it vulnerable: a convenient “argument” for yet another achievement-of-the-saw. I started investigating, whether I could possibly find the owner of that part of the forest. I was hoping to make an agreement not to cut this tree, and if that wouldn’t be possible, to at least cut this whole part out in one piece, so to keep at least this amazing art-piece in the memory and honor of the tree.
My search wasn’t successful. But unfortunately the source of my suspicion was. In June 2024, just a few days before I left to Turtle Island, when I wished to play so to connect the forest here with forests there (and myself to them), I found …
… not only a cut tree, but brutally massacred body parts, just lying there scattered on the ground like bones after a murder and a post scavengers’ dinner. Not a single piece of detailed tree-craft was left sound – everything was ripped apart …
INTRODUCING MYSELF TO THE LAND:
THE PRACTICE OF OFFERINGS
[June 2024; on-going]
..
SOFTENING A ROUGH THREAD
[June 2024]
Never before I needed to pack so many different tools, boxes and various materials as for my trip to Turtle Island. Only half of my suitcase presented a closet, the other half became my “portable studio”. Selection was difficult, also due to the fact, that I had no idea where would I go and whom would I meet. The little I knew was wishing to carry on women-to-women support with the crochet “feathers, for which I needed the jute yarn, and that I’m likely to meet Albert Dumont, since he was the only person who had replied to my email. As I read that he was also a storyteller, I came up with another possible suggestion/practice, in case he had some story-telling event. Kinaesthetically, the sense of unfolding-a-story and unwrapping-a-ball-of-yarn coincided beautifully. I could see how, for example, the circle of listeners could close their eyes and pull the yarn, handing it over to each other, while Albert speaks the story. I imagined I could as well keep placing the handed yarn in space, blindfolded. I wondered what kind of installation we would make, but in any case, I wanted to stay open for the idea to develop collectively and just quickly packed another ball of jute (the only yarn I had at home).
When we indeed met, it turned out that the pandemics left scars on his social network as well, for apparently the poetry circle fell apart. Although I was staying longer in Ottawa, it would be difficult for him to organize the kind of event I had imagined. Nevertheless, during our several meetings, he told me so many real-life stories, related to racism and its impact on him and his people. Rough would be a mild description. However, it was what linked my feelings about all this and my tactile memory of how I often needed to help women crocheting by stretching and turning the yarn to make it less rough before handing it to them. A very clear intentionality has emerged in my consciousness. I suggested to meet in the park and do a short practice of softening the thread for him people. He kindly agreed, although it surely wasn’t easy for him, while not even the branch we were sitting on was particularly comfortable. We did the practice in two parts:
– In the first round, he was speaking about his experience with racism in school and how that affected him, while unwrapping the rough jute yarn and handing it over to me. I listened with closed eyes, kept softening the thread with my fingers, focusing on softening his (and his family’s) life(s), and rolling the softened yarn in a ball. When he finished, I cut off the softened yarn from the rest of the still rough one: violence and harshness must stop! I gave him the ball, touched and charged through and through with compassion, as my present. In my previous visit, I had noticed an empty nest at his house, thus, I suggested him to put the ball in the nest and take it to his forest.
– In the second round, we both worked with closed yes, no words, softening the remaining yarn – with the focus on softening lives of all people who suffer around the globe. I made a small knot where we were left … for the practice to be continued.
I dare say we mutually felt deep thankfulness, as we just kept sitting there in silence, wrapped in heart-warming connectedness.
TREE INSTRUMENT – PHASE 2
[August 2024]
Another of my trips was approaching, this time to Finland. I was sitting at Tivoli park again, on one hand, thinking whether I might need to find/hear another form of practice (communication / present / healing) in relation to this land, while simultaneously collecting strength to walk up to that massacred tree instrument and make an offering to it. It could hardly be considered a present – more like an apology in the name of my species. But even that felt ridiculously too little when I arrived there. The wooden debris were still lying around exactly the way I last saw them. The only thing I was able to do was to put my hand on the cutting and bare hearing-nothing.
Violence makes any living being afraid, withdrawn, and finally muted.
I was about to leave when, abruptly just like the lightning that had split the tree, an enormous force of decisiveness ran through my body. I turned around, collected those last remains in practically one single gesture, took them into my arms, and started walking. I had no idea what I was doing, even less into what journey this would develop. But I remember that it started with another, very banal thought: the ticks. It was summertime and there are many infected ticks around our forests. Silly as it could be in that context and for that concern, I did not want to hold the pieces close to my body, thinking I might at least see a crawling tick, if instead, I carry the wood on my stretched arms. I was carrying four, soaked wet pieces, which soon proved to be very heavy for such a position. And the heavier they were getting for my muscles, the more my mind was determined. I started employing all possible tools from dance, dynamic meditation, martial arts to focus, breath, release any unnecessary tension, stay in axis, and walk. Just walk! My step wasn’t getting faster, as one would normally do with the rise of effort – quite the opposite, I was slowing down, intensifying the inner peace. The tree was growing on the other side of the hill from where I live, so there was quite some path to make. It was in the middle of the day and eventually many people passed by me. The outside gaze, the witnessing, started adding yet another quality to my meditative act: a sense of a “performing act”. That is, not performing, in terms of “showing”, but as a form of undisturbed (performative) presence. As if I am doing a kind of an intervention where observers have no power to influence my state of mind, while my action could have the potential to awaken their awareness. Finally, the hardest part came as I walked out the forest, out of the park, and there was no other path, but to go along three most crowded streets through the city. Once you are out of the forest-context, you can’t not-be-aware of the strange looks people give you, seeing you with some dirty, broken wood on stretched arms. But it was exactly this out-of-normal, that ultimately made me hear my own heart saying:
“This broken, wounded child has been lying there alone and frightened for months and nobody even gave it a slightest look – I don’t give a shit what you think, whether it’s mine or not, and if I have the right to just take it. This child needs nourishment and I am taking it home to heal!”
I made the entire walk without any stopping, not even when I tried to make those two photos, not even in the last part where the city noise and heat made it extremely difficult to focus, to the point that I almost fainted. But hey, how would I imagine I could possibly heal something so wounded, if I cannot even make this walk in one piece?! As I later checked, I made 7 km altogether. Nothing, in comparison to the Long walk, but maybe at least to modestly honor it (together with the tree).
At home, I first introduced the wooden pieces to my plants at the balcony and let them there during the night for my family to embrace them … and left them rest safely during my month-long trip through Finland.
FIBERS OF LIFE & THE ACT OF SPINNING
[September 2024]
xxx….
SOUND-OVEN:
EMBRACING TRAUMATIZED KIDS, EMBRACING FAILING MOTHERS.
[September 2024]
Moving further to Varjakka, the small fishing village near Oulu, where my project partners were placed, was a weird shift from Malakta. Tania and John were both very kind and the small fishing hut (a place for Kalamaja residency they run in the frame of Taikabox) was more than cute (although without a toilet and running water.) The hut was only meant for working, not accommodation, but I had my van to sleep in. All good. Only, there was this strong sensation of all-encompassing stagnation already when I arrived to the village. The next morning this unpleasant feeling of being abruptly cut off the connectedness with Moa and Jukka became even stronger. Everything felt stuck, I was somehow insulated, with no real attention and agility in the body. Like any dancer (unlike normal people) would conclude: when you’re tired, you need to move (not rest). I went to the beach with a vague and indecisive idea to make “feathers” while dancing – as an experiment to see whether this way I could call/invite participants to dance with me through clay. But even the wind could not decide in which direction to blow and how to flow further. I kept stumbling over rocks like I have never been in this body before, until at the 13th “feather” a heavy blow of wind pushed me directly into a tree. For a short while my struggle with (and in between) braches still felt like a curious dance with the wicked tree-dwarfs, but as I did not want to lean too much – not to brake the branches – I fell backwards, and broke my own head, instead. I hit heavily at a sharp rock and as I touched the wound, my whole arm was covered in blood. Fantastic. I started washing the wound in the sea, but I was aware that such things could be potentially risky for internal bleeding – and I was completely alone there. If I fainted, no one would even notice or find me behind the rocks. The cold salty water did not have much effect, the wound just kept bleeding and bleeding. Thick droplets of blood were sliding down my hair, falling into the sea. Even the severity of situation is obviously not enough to stop an artist from thinking What a poetic scene, maybe I should record this. I remained rational this time. After 15 min I notice a woman walking along the shore and decided to check my wound with her in case. I shortly told her I was dancing and fell, and to my request if she could just look at the depth of my wound, she replied eagerly: “Oh really, you are an artist, I’m an artist, too?” … I mean … One can’t escape from oneself 😊 However, I walked back and just left those “feathers” lying there alone on the rock.
And they remained there for three more days, since I went to Hailuoto in the meantime (see below, Calling my sisters). I thought they were probably all melted from humidity, or even taken away by the sea, but when I checked on them, I saw those “sad, neglected children, just waiting for their failing mother to take them home”. I was still very much under the influence of this “adoption” story from Malakta: a child being practically stolen from her Colombian mother and “adopted” with no signature on the paper by a Christian couple in Europe. The repeating story from all over the world. But I wasn’t thinking so much of the criminality here this time, it was the real mother over the sea that now occupied my empathic imagination. What was going on with her that she was unable to keep/protect her child? And what in Earth was going on with me to be unable even to protect myself? Real life is real life: no one is perfect. But that doesn’t mean we can’t (or should) do anything to heal the wrong. Resentment is a bad habit.
I had brought a stone, split a half, from Hailuoto. Although I am not a particular fan of classical music, I suddenly remembered, as I was holding it, how I used to listen to Bach when I intuitively felt I needed to cleanse my living space, and how somebody later told me that Bach was actually consciously creating his music to “cleanse demons away”. Aha, all clear: we need a sound-oven. I exposed each traumatized “feather” to Bach’s cleansing sound for 15-20 min, while, this time, I sat with my “feather-children”, attentively and with all my carrying presence, just observing them, being there with/for them, like any warm-hearted mother would. To reconnect. And to simultaneously acknowledge the struggle of mothers, while tuning out the all-too-often blaming of their small or big failures. The necessity to be human first with yourself is the inevitable ground for being able to be human with others too. Guilt makes one stuck, incapable to take responsibility for apologizing, for healing, for acting differently from the failure on. Nothing is determined, everything is in constant motion.
CALLING MY SISTERS
[September 2024]
Anything inspired inspires further. The short morning film – and above all, the willing collaboration with Moa and Jukka – made my mind flow in a direction that I would have never expected. Out of nowhere, a format of a film has arisen, together with practically the entire synopsis. For an artist there is always some pull, some creative-restlessness. And when you sleep in a van, weather embraces you directly. The morning was calm and I had no meetings arranged. A day before my project partner who runs the Kalamaja residency, John Collingswood, had suggested seeing the Hailuoto Organum at the small Hailuoto island nearby. Going around with a van is fantastic, since you don’t need to thoughtfully select technical equipment and material already at 6 am – omnia mea mecum porto, ready to see what happens.
I was hoping the Organum wouldn’t be something very touristic, and my wish fulfilled. You need to pay attention not to miss the sign for turning and once you get to a “parking space” (i.e. a small patch at the edge of the forest), what you get to see is … a huge empty meadow, blades of grass bending in all directions under the dancing wind, the open sky, a tiny path, … and a small none-impressive concrete bunker.
A building as an instrument. A building played mainly by the wind. The only medium I never really worked with in my widely interdisciplinary work is sound. And the only other visitor that came there during my hours long exploration was some photographer (visible from his unusual equipment). Did we both miss the point? I had a photo-camera, Moa’s yarn, the open question of how to keep “spinning in” more sisters, this new sense of a film, and lots of time alone there. The Organum had a draft. What wasn’t there was Jukka. And what my photo-camera doesn’t have is “common sense”. It’s like a moody old man, full of whims, sometimes recording for 25 min, sometimes for 5 sec, recording or not recording at all, with no logic. Besides, the space was narrow, which made it impossible to see the frame or what you have recorded without moving the camera on the tripod, and I needed to somehow guess how to turn it back in the “same” position. And then guess again, whether and how I am the frame. How can one possibly be behind and in front of the camera? I kept experimenting with one short footage for 4 hours. Half naked on that wild draft (aware of my chronic rheumatic pain), thinking also what if some of these hard core Salesian Christian locals (who even consider dancing a sin) or any other conservative visitor comes in, I finally did use my voice and made the Organum reveal its point. I imagine this little sound-bunker has heard many odd experiments in its life, but I doubt it has ever heard a woman shouting and crying “Jukka, I need you here, I really bloody need you here!”.
***
I spent the rest of the day following the whispers of the forest, making and placing small “feather-nest” around (see below, Nest for safety, nest to heal). I guess, if something is inspiring, an artist can obviously sail far away from his/her usual formats, media and expression (from film to landscape-art) in one single day. … Many people later told me they find them so beautiful. What I like most about those nests, is that the “feathers” were not baked. By now the clay has long melted and integrated with the rest of soil, leaving no trash behind and letting only the intentionality resonate.
With my return to Varjakka, I got another intuitive feeling that, unlike in Turtle Island where I needed to address the land, that part of the planet calls for addressing the sky, instead (or as well). And an hour after, the huge rainbow has confirmed.
NESTS FOR SAFETY, NEST TO HEAL
[September 2024]
The nest in Hailuoto (above) were made anew, as I was walking around the forest. But I still had those 13 neglected-and-healed ones from the sound-oven (underneath). In the meantime, John told me about the historical events in the tiny island just across the fishing village/harbor, a huge fire in which many people had died. The very reason for the still lingering trauma even nowadays. Besides, one can’t overlook the suffocating mode of the Salesian Christianity (as the main religion in that wider area), forbidding dance, touch or any playfulness. I understood – and therefore placed all 5 nests in the forest around Varjakka village. It was my modest supportive contribution to Varjakka’s villagers and the healing of their community.
Locations were picked intuitively:
F(eather)1: on a small island in the forest – in connection to Varjakkansaari;
F2: on a fallen, decaying tree – in connection to link between the past which gives space to future and also nurtures it;
F3: under the ground, with the roots – in connection to a feeling of groundedness;
F4; on a rock, rising up and giving an overview, visibility – to give things vision and perspective;
F5: anthill. This nest contains 7 feathers. It is dedicate to community and particularly to relations as something “third” with its own properties and life. No community is only a pile
of people, but what connects them, how they cooperate and share their socio-physical space
The entire project Pavilion of embraces is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
The part of the project, Embraces to go, is co-supported by the Culture Moves Europe Mobility fund – European Union, Goethe Institute
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
