Northern Lights Performance

The project brought together the Northern Lights, the Arctic landscape and nature, and the human body into a single integral work of art and also featured oral history interviews and recordings with members of the indigenous Sami people. Utilizing a wide range of media including video performances, photo documentation and glass artworks, the project explored the complex interaction between humans, animals and the Northern Lights, emphasizing their symbolism at the intersection of unique life moments and natural phenomena.

The Northern Lights Performance connects the physical phenomena of the magnetism as authoritative and fundamental moment. Magnetic fields stand for absolute order and symmetrical structure. The Northern Lights Performance uses the largest possible magnetic field - the magnetic field of our planet. The performance attempts to artistically break the absolute order and symmetry of the magnetic field. In the Northern Lights Performance, charged particles of the solar wind hit the Earth's magnetic field. The apparently natural dance of light created by this becomes the antagonist of the artist, who works on a connection and dissolution in a performative act of running in frost and ice - with the steam that her strained body radiates.

The goal: new formation of a situation in which language, material and thinking boundaries are shifted. The performativity of the material comes to light at the moment of movement and creates a new reality.

Northern Lights Perfomance, Video, 3,2 min., 2018

My Sisu as Never Give Up

Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose and grit. Struggling against the deepest snow and the ice wind and feeling the pain of breathing the cold air. But Never Give Up, Never Give In* is my understanding of the Finnish Sisu. My Sisu stands for the sense of freedom, coldness of air and nature, infinity, to go beyond human limits:Sisu as the force to overcome the obstacles. Running symbolizes pure liberty.

*Winston Churchill, 1941

Interview with Hans Niittyvuopio

Interview with Hans Niittyvuopio, Video, 14,27 min. 2018

Human-Animal-Cosmo, object

This is the explanation given by Hans Niittyvuopio an old sami man living near in the area of Inari: The Finnish word for aurora borealis is “revontulet”, which literally means “fox fires”. A Sami legend tells that the lights are caused by a magical fox running across the Arctic fells. The fox sweeps its tail across the snow sending a trail of sparks up into the sky. Kids were told not to mock or whistle at the northern lights and never go out of the house without a cap, otherwise the polar lights would burn their hair. The Sami word for aurora borealis is “guovssahas”, meaning “the light you can hear”.  Many Sami people are sure to be able to hear the lights and they describe the sound as static or faint crackling.

X-rays object was created in collaboration Lapland Ranua Zoo (FI), Košice Zoo (SK) and radiology Hollabrunn (AT). Many thanks to Mgr. Kočner & Mr. Kindl from ZOO Košice, Mr. Tommi Hinno from Ranua.fi and Dr. Lernbass-Wutzl from Hollabrunn for their support with the x-rays.

Grandmother with a pipe