Choreographing stillness

Abstract

This text was researched and written from the particular perspective of my own practice and throughout this process, I have been drawn to specific arguments and examples from the work of other artists/writers/? which seem to resonate with the thinking and methods behind my own work. I have explored ideas, artworks and methods and the purpose of the ‘everyday’ both in terms of the private and the public. The first chapter of ‘everyday’ acts as an introduction to the idea, the conception and the reasons for working with the subject, the attraction of the ordinary, the unnoticed and overlooked, and how we draw it into view.The chosen medium of lens-based media is introduced in this chapter along with the particular aspect of related image making. I talk about how I focus on the small details of lived reality, the private and domestic life, concerning myself in different ways with the small moments or the small particles that make up daily existence as I see it. In the chapter Small Gestures the reader is introduced to how I move around in my everyday world and how small but definite actions can make a change in ‘everyday’ reality. I reference and go into a research on what small gestures are and how they are part of my work as an artist with the support of Mika Hannula’s book The politics of small gestures: chances and challenges for contemporary art. The continuous is introduced through a series of images that demonstrate the relation between these ‘small gestures’ and meanings inherent in themI talk about the opportunity that I had to go to Helsinki for 5 months and by so doingremoving myself of my everyday/ordinary environment into an unfamiliar place thatrequired me to rely on intuition as the guiding tool. I supports this experiment further by engaging in ‘movement improvisation’ as a working strategy. This way of working puts emphasis on a physical awareness of one’s close environment and surrounding objects. It sets up a situation in which this intimate space between things can activate a certain contact point.