On Monday 22th of February at 8pm the artists duo Nele Suisalu and Maarja Tõnisson show their artistic research AffectSpace developed during this month at ResidenceSEA.
Nele Suisalu dancer and vocal artist and Maarja Tõnisson dancer and performance artist are from Estonia. They call themselves hackers of the human body-voice-mind. They came to ResidenceSEA to experiment, research and experience the space with their body, voice and movement, to develop the analog stage of their new performative work AffectSpace.
Quoting the artists: “AffectSpace will be a performative work relying on two-voiced and two-bodied hybrid entity aiming to create a multi-sensorial space for the spectator/experiencer. We consider movement/sound to be a trigger for the affective reaction process within each and every audience member. Voice as a body part. Dance as vibrations in the body. The meaning-making lies in trying to connect with audience and to absorb it into the present moment and experience.“
Photos of the presentation by Antje Larsen and Pantelis Sakkadakis
A thought from the Portuguese architect Maria João Durão on our minds:
“Being – and by extension living – in a place is, therefore, possible only in material embodiment and so it is the body that connects things and places, since we are in a place through our own body. Between body and place there is much more than position, there is the data of our experience and expectations. To have a place is also to exist as sensible body.”
What has happened in our hacking process? I think, we have been translating the inputs from the surrounding environment into basic body-mind-space-voice protocols for sensing/creating a space. Somehow the shared space-time has made possible for our minds-bodies to process – using a chaos-trusting time release – some natural elements into performative materials.
First we felt the need for making fire (the sight), then came a storm with great Northern wind (the hearing), and then I brought water inside the house: I filled the drinking water bottles we had emptied during our stay with sea water where we have been bathing often and placed them inside the building (the touch – the water that we drank touched all of our cells from inside, the sea touched our skin from the outside).
Maarja Tõnisson and Nele Suisalu Photography by Vasilis Flouris
Here is a short audio excerpt of our working session on wind/hearing:
Reflections from the audience:
,..some reflections that i consider necessary after this experience.
– i will not discuss or argue why i received this artistic present with such strong emotions, in the same way that we do not discuss or argue about the people that we love.
– please dont speak: it came from the bottom of my heart.
– artistic theories, intellectual points of view, aesthetic and philosophical systems, all worthless and pointless empty words – no, i do not want to give arguments: feel it, sense it, it is there.
– finally: the wholeness of a seemingly loose anti-construction that redefines time and space and warmth inside you, and such a beautiful song, all these could be one more definition of art, aob*. But thankfully, it is not. It is a nice moment, a pleasant meeting, a good breath.
thank you, dear Ladies.Posted by Izydor Giatagan on Monday, 22 February 2016