Sonja Jokiniemi – ÖH

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, Sonja Jokiniemi was selected by STUK to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network to work on her latest production "Howl" and on a research project within the social and artistic sector under a working Title: "Kukutukha", aiming towards artistic creation in 2021. Further, her productions "Blab" and "ÖH" are presented within the network by STUK and MDT.

This support includes a co-production by MDT Stockholm and a presentation possibility at MDT in 2020.

Howl premiered on August 8, 2019 in Helsinki with further presentations on August 9, 10, 11 & 13.

View her experience report about "Howl" in the upper right column.

Further, Sonja had a residency at STUK Leuven:
During this 2-week residency at STUK Sonja Jokiniemi worked with artistic collaborator & performer Maija Karhunen on her new creation "Howl". As they were in a relatively early stage of creation, the focus was on the artistic research and development in the studio, it was not the phase in which the artists foresaw work-in-progress or artistic feedback sessions.
The residency was planned to coincide with the Choreographic Convention Extract #2, a focus programme & symposium (organised in collaboration with the Leuven University KUL) bundling works of artists & scholars reflecting on the theme Transforming relations: Dance & Difference (see below). Within the frame of Extract #2, Sonja Jokiniemi also presented her previous work BLAB.
The 4-day focus programme created a context in which the own work could be reflected upon in relation to other works and discourses around the theme, as well as moments for informal exchanges with others artists, dance scholars, students, and professionals.
(See also critical reflection cfr. (mental) availability / time in Sonja’s experience report about the combination of the 2 activities for her. To be taken into consideration in the future).

About "ÖH":

“ÖH” is a multisensorial installation created from ordinary objects, large wooden structures, handmade rugs and textiles. The work binds together a sensorial logic as a choreographic proposition. Here subjects and objects are multiples, intertwining between different meanings and associations. A site, where colours narrate and textures dialogue. Sensuality, hybrids and the uncanny create an artistic world of discovery and divergence.

“ÖH”, arranges and deconstructs ordinary landscape into the poetics of everyday. An idea of piling up instead of dividing creates a world where many colours of human and objecthood are possible and explored. The work attempts towards liberation from binaries and construction of polyphony, where abrasion points, reverie, dissecting and care all play a well grounded part in an idea of creation that cannot be separated from destruction.

Jokiniemi searches between human and non-human beings for a space where the naive, intimate, surreal and unknown touch each other, a space for beauty that stands alone alongside mainstream aesthetics, while gearing towards a powerful metaphor for resistance and escape from categorization and limiting forms.

Jokiniemi´s work focuses on other possibilities than spoken language as integral knowledge formation practices. Hence drawings, symbols, signs, gestures and tactile materials play crucial parts in her choreographic corpus. Text is as much objects, movements, words and sounds. In ÖH, a catalogue of drawn images think the subconscious of the work by sculpting the performers’ embodiment and weaving into textile. The performance invites the audience into a web of weaving meaning and contact, tripping into the associative.

sonjajokiniemi.com/oh-project

About "Howl":

Howl is a transforming performance project and an exhibition space. Bodies of painting, sculpture and live performance mesh, gearing towards extended beings and hybrid bodies through interdependencies of human and non-human.

Howl is a calling upon connection beyond speech, towards another kind of speaking. In this work, textile lacing, drawing, inanimate and animate search towards a multitextural and sensual environment in which to speak in and with. They are searching for a fertility of language where textures, weight, liquid, and sound create a damp soil in which communicative tension resonates.

Choreography, visual works and performance: Sonja Jokiniemi
Lighting and spatial design: Heikki Paasonen
Sound design and performance: Natalia Domínguez Rangel
Dramaturgical dialogue: Elina Minn
Performer in rehearsal: Maija Karhunen
Glass blowing: Kari Alakoski / Mafka & Alakoski Oy
Headdress: in collaboration with Valentin Silvennoinen
Producer: Riikka Thitz
International distribution: Something Great (Berlin)
Performance photos: Simo Karisalo 

Supported by: Arts Centre BUDA, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Kone Foundation, Samuel Huberin Taidesäätiö, The Finnish Cultural Foundation 

Co-production: Be My Guest -network for emerging practices, Kiasma Theatre (FI), MDT Stockholm (SE),  NEXT International Festival, STUK – A House for Dance, Image and Sound (Leuven, BE) in the framework of the Life Long Burning – Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe project (2018-2022) supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

Gallery Pics "Howl" by Simo Karisalo

About "Blab":
Blab is a hybrid performance, a blend of painting, sculpture and choreography. It seeks to escape the world of categories towards the unknowns; towards unions and blurs of humans and objects, extensions and expansions of different bodies, penetrations of forms and acts of desire. The work unfolds itself in the transforming multisensorial sculpture, the essence of which charts a subconscious territory. The mind of the performance is built on a foundation of linguistic indefinability, senses and reflexes. The work explores lumpy, tangled thought processes that have neither beginning nor an end.

Concept, choreography and visualization: Sonja Jokiniemi
Performers: Ivo Serra, Mira Kautto, Sara Gurevitsch
Lighting design: Heikki Paasonen
Textiles made in collaboration with Janina Silvennoinen Producer: Riikka Thitz