Contemplating the Air
Leena Rouhiainen (text)
Riikka Theresa Innanen (visuals)
An Epilogue to the Air Journey
A threatening leaning we are facing.
Not of growing tall but small, a re-rooting.
. . . the air. . . is the most outrageous absence known to this body.1
As if only monstrosity could provide us with a waking call.
Unwavering observation imparts a different wisdom.
. . . as we begin to notice. . . our immersion in the invisible air do we start to recall what it is to be fully a part of this world.2
An opportunity to re-embody an indispensable condition.
Indirectly perceived, the air is a passageway unto otherness.
The plants already breathe, while we still ask ourselves how to speak, how to speak to each other, without taking breath away from them.3
A complimentary appreciation of one and all is . . .
. . . trusting . . . the nuanced intelligence of our sensing bodies such that we begin to. . . respond to the subtle logos of the land, perhaps.4
The potential of a precarious leap from rationality to sensibility, an everlasting process of coming to terms with our limitations.
Eroding our self-contained dominance and exploitation and imploding into our vulnerability, deficiency and belongingness to a planetary communion.
The opportunity being that. . .
In listening, I rediscover bliss, the wonder of attentive perception, the happiness of sonorous flesh.5
The air, fluid density which leaves space for every growth.6
Can we rest in simple breathing, in and out one at a time, and open up to our response-ability?
Can we become slight and tactful terrestrial beings exposed to and better providing for the variegation of life?
The land that includes us has its own articulations, its own contours and rhythms that must be acknowledged if the land is to breathe and flourish.7
Is not air the whole of our habitation as mortals?8
Afterword
Contemplating the air
The Air Journey focuses on different materials and conditions that indirectly render air perceptible. IN THIS POETIC EPILOGUE TO THE PROJECT, we RELATE TO the element of air as an IMPLICIT general condition THAT SUSTAINs LIFE.
This visual essay completes an artistic collaboration. As a kind of epilogue, it muses on the contents of the Internet-based mixed media artwork The Air Journey (available at www.theairjourney.com) created by Riikka as the videographer, Leena as the choreographer-writer and Antti Nykyri as the sound designer.
Our collaboration was part of The Body and Other research initiative undertaken at the Theatre Academy of Uniarts Helsinki (2018-2021) that aimed at outlining corporeal strangeness, focusing particularly on the uncanny, as a phenomenon and as an experience. This orientation directed us to explore the effects of the unexpected, or strange, and thus led us towards the borders of perception.
Owing to its ephemeral quality, air was a salient case to observe in this respect. After all, air is nearly imperceptible. The motif of the work therefore became to explore the element of air and the experiential opportunities encountering it renders to us humans. We were specifically interested in the experiences of materiality and inter-corporeality this encounter can offer.
We scrutinized our immediate embodied relations with environment-specific moments of breathing and being in touch with air. The sensibility these relations generated was extended into the written, auditory and visual materials about breathing, air and the atmosphere. These translations of our experience formed the material for our Internet-based audio-visual artistic work. Relating to choreography as an evocative bodily perception-oriented score we also extended it into visual and auditory mediums. The finished work is meant to stimulate new experiences and further articulations of breath and air and thus to expand forms of inter-corporeality.
Endnotes:
- Abram 2017/1996, 225.
- Abram 2017/1996, 260.
- Irigaray 2000/1994, 3.
- Abram 2017/1996, 268.
- Irigaray 2000/1994, 4.
- Irigaray 2000/1994, 2.
- Abram 2017/1996, 267.
- Irigaray 1999, 19.
References
Abram, David. 2017/1996. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York Vintage Books.
Irigaray, Luce. 2000/1994. To Be Two. Trans. Monique M.Rhodes and Marco F. Cocito-Monoc. London and New Brunscwick: The Athlone Press.
Irigaray, Luce. 1999. The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Mary Beth Marder. Austin: University of Texas Press.
All videos and all photos except portrait photos:
copyright Riikka Theresa Innanen 2022
Dr. Leena Rouhiainen is a Finnish Dance Artist and Artist-Researcher She is professor of Artistic Research at the Theatre Academy (TeaK) of the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki).
Her expertise areas include somatic practices, dance studies, artistic research and phenomenology. Recently her work has focused on experimental and bodily writing as well as textual choreography as forms of artistic research.
She has published many articles and co-edited journals and books in these areas, including Dance Articulated, Special Issue: CHOREOGRAPHY NOW (2020) with Tone Pernille Østern, Dance Spaces: Practices of Movement (2012) with Susanne Ravn, Tanssiva tutkimus: tanssintutkimuksen menetelmiä ja lähestymistapoja (2014) with Hanna Järvinen.
She is vice dean of research at TeaK since 2013 and has been the chair of the Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts CARPA international conferences at Uniarts Helsinki (2019, 2021). She was chair of the board of Nordic Forum for Dance Research (NOFOD) between 2008 and 2010 and executive board member of Society for Artistic Research (SAR) between 2015 and 2020.
MA Riikka Theresa Innanen is a Finnish Artist, Activist and Kundalini Yoga Teacher. She currently holds a position as part-time lecturer at MA Program in Dance Pedagogy, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.
Her MA thesis for Aalto University in 2020 Touch and Revolution | On Social Choreography. Book 1: Action has been called “a riot” and a “visionary approach” to writing choreographically with relevance to our times.
She has curated several events such as Side Step Festival (2001–2009) and taught and performed internationally since graduating from SNDO in Amsterdam in 1997. Her works include a wide range of disciplines from dance and choreography to film and installations.
Her film works include Out 2, a collectively created film installation based on Jacques Rivette’s film Out 1 shown at the Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 2017. A documentary film about her work Vad är konsten bra för (directed by Barbro Björkfelt, 2016) is available on the Finnish YLE Areena. Her Kundalini yoga and meditation practice (what she calls Inner Activism) aims to promote feminist leadership skills, societal consciousness and spiritual, cultural and intersectional sensitivity, on a wide range of platforms.
Leena Rouhiainen
Dr. Leena Rouhiainen is a Finnish Dance Artist and Artist-Researcher She is professor of Artistic Research at the Theatre Academy (TeaK) of the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki).
Her expertise areas include somatic practices, dance studies, artistic research and phenomenology. Recently her work has focused on experimental and bodily writing as well as textual choreography as forms of artistic research.
She has published many articles and co-edited journals and books in these areas, including Dance Articulated, Special Issue: CHOREOGRAPHY NOW (2020) with Tone Pernille Østern, Dance Spaces: Practices of Movement (2012) with Susanne Ravn, Tanssiva tutkimus: tanssintutkimuksen menetelmiä ja lähestymistapoja (2014) with Hanna Järvinen.
She is vice dean of research at TeaK since 2013 and has been the chair of the Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts CARPA international conferences at Uniarts Helsinki (2019, 2021). She was chair of the board of Nordic Forum for Dance Research (NOFOD) between 2008 and 2010 and executive board member of Society for Artistic Research (SAR) between 2015 and 2020.
Riikka Theresa Innanen
MA Riikka Theresa Innanen is a Finnish Artist, Activist and Kundalini Yoga Teacher. She currently holds a position as part-time lecturer at MA Program in Dance Pedagogy, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.
Her MA thesis for Aalto University in 2020 Touch and Revolution | On Social Choreography. Book 1: Action has been called “a riot” and a “visionary approach” to writing choreographically with relevance to our times.
She has curated several events such as Side Step Festival (2001–2009) and taught and performed internationally since graduating from SNDO in Amsterdam in 1997. Her works include a wide range of disciplines from dance and choreography to film and installations.
Her film works include Out 2, a collectively created film installation based on Jacques Rivette’s film Out 1 shown at the Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 2017. A documentary film about her work Vad är konsten bra för (directed by Barbro Björkfelt, 2016) is available on the Finnish YLE Areena. Her Kundalini yoga and meditation practice (what she calls Inner Activism) aims to promote feminist leadership skills, societal consciousness and spiritual, cultural and intersectional sensitivity, on a wide range of platforms.