Vernissage Sat 6.5. 17.00
Installation open:
Sun 16.30 - 18.00
Mon-Wed 14.00 - 18.00
Durational performance
Sat 6.5 18.00-20.00
Sun 7.5 18.00-20.00
Wed 10.5 18.00-20.00
Still pouring from the soft spot is a performance-installation giving space to sensitivity as multi-sensorial and visceral. Through dance and performance art as well as lens-based animation it aims to materialise emotional labour as not measurable, but experiential work. As supporting, holding, nurturing, staying silent, being in process, bursting, dwelling, cleaning. The project is based on curious, open and experimental collaboration between media- and dance art. Our aim is to make space for an open and soft reflection on emotional labour and sensitive, emotional bodies.
The installation consists of animated videos of Nivalainen as well as materials produced and collected by the working couple. Nivalainen has been working with a scanner and animation softwares to create animated videos that examine sensory-based knowledge, feelings and sensations through motion and different material surfaces. Their work is influenced by an interest towards sensitivity related stigmas as well as an urge to perceive the body not as an object of gaze, but as a subject with agency. Nivalainen and Laine have also processed the themes of emotional labour and embodiment with the means of writing and drawing. There
will also be paper and pens available in the space and visitors are welcome to leave their own note, sketch or mark to the installation.
A durational performance will take place in the installation on three evenings. The performance is a collage of never ending chores and emotional, meditative movement practices. Sonjis Laine spills the body and liquids, leaving traces and streams in the space. She hosts a tea party, gets dramatic and starts over. The audience is invited to enter and leave as they please, or stay for the full length of the performance.
Still pouring from the soft spot is a multi-diciplinary collaboration between dance artist Sonjis Laine and photographic artist Veera Nivalainen. The continuous project takes different forms in different spaces and occasions. Our work on emotional labour and sensitivity has grown into an important practice of friendship, collegiality and taking care <3
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Sonjis Laine (she/her) is a dance artist and an anthropologist, living and working in Helsinki. In her artistic work, she deals with embodied knowledges, imagination and emotion as openings for dancing. Sonjis graduated as a dancer (BA in Dance Performance) from Stockholm University of the Arts, and holds an MA in social sciences (University of Helsinki) since 2022. From this interdisciplinary standpoint, she approaches dancing as thinking and writes ethnographically about dance and dancing.
Veera Nivalainen (she/they, b. 1992) is Helsinki based photographic artist. Nivalainen has studied photography in Lahti Institute of Design as well as in Edinburgh College of Art, working towards empathetic and experimental lens-based practice. Their work often relates to bodily (and emotional) knowledge, agency and both human and non-human relationships. Working with different photographic mediums such as scannography, photography and abstract animation they approach image-making as a sensitive tool for contemporary artistic practice and research. Nivalainen’s works have been part of exhibitions and festivals in Finland, Slovakia, Belgium, Norway and Netherlands.
Sound design of the performance: Olli Lautiola
With support from the City of Helsinki, Arts Promotion Center Finland, UrbanApa, Kekäläinen & Co., Live Art Society, Vantaan Tanssiopisto.
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