WED 25 MARCH, 7pm
APT Gallery
6 Creekside, Harold Wharf
Deptford, SE8 4SA
Pay What You Can
£5 / £10 / £15 / £20
(suggested price £15)
Jokiniemi returns to Howl — a performance work from 2019, then premiering at Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki and now re-living its material propositions with a new sound work by Gil Schneider, with whom she has collaborated on later works (ÖH 2020 and ARMO 2023).
In the works previous to Howl, Jokiniemi, developing a strong personal discourse around alternative languages and new materialism, was finding in those stage objects real play partners, encouraging the audience to consider their presence with the same intensity as human performers. Full of peculiar textures in sculpting the associative, in general Jokiniemi´s work deals with manual labor, the handcraft, divergent psychosomatics of the body and material-human relationships.
In Howl, Sonja Jokiniemi goes back to a self performed solo. As always, a strong point is made in the interaction with objects on stage, inspired by her Eastern Finland roots: lichen, wood, clay, knife. Two big black and white drawings and some laced textiles hang from the ceiling. The audience is sitting around the performer. In Howl, the constructive dialogue is for the first time failing: inability, frustration and fear seem to take the lead, allowing the performance artist to let progressively the civilized part of this human to object relationship, destroying the ideas of normality, civilization, canalized sexuality and constructed intelligence, leading the audience to a new pallet of sensitive, psychoanalytic and carnal questions about the ecosystem.
Deeply moving, sensual, violent and sad, Howl is surely her most intimate work to date.
Credits
Choreography, art works and performance: Sonja Jokiniemi
Sound (new version): Gil Schneider
Lighting and spatial design (original performance): Heikki Paasonen
Sound design and performance (original performance): Natalia Domínguez Rangel
Dramaturgical dialogue: Elina Minn
Performer in rehearsal (original performance): Maija Karhunen
Glass blowing: Kari Alakoski / Mafka & Alakoski Oy
Headdress: in collaboration with Valentin Silvennoinen
Producer (original performance): Riikka Thitz
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.
Thank you: Daniéle Mussard and Filambule Arts Textiles, Lausanne (CH)
Premiere on 8.8.2019 at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (FI)
Access
APT Gallery is a step-free venue with wheelchair access and toilets.
Look at their Visual Guide to find out more about the space. If you have any access requirements, please email michaelkitchinproducer@gmail.com.
ARTISTS
Sonja Jokiniemi (born in Kuopio, Finland) is an artist in the fields of performing and visual arts. Her works are situated in the cross-overs of performances, drawings and textiles in exhibition and stage formats. A lot of her work is rooted in the quest of storytelling, language systems and haptic relationality- calling towards alternative ways of speaking,knowledge formation and re-systemizing the values and socialness of language and perception. Jokiniemi works with material installations on stage exploring the relationship between things and beings; their ordinary and uncanny relationships. More recently an increased investment in the research of manual labour, craft traditions and cross generational knowledge sharing, results in the intertwined production of textile and dance art.
Jokiniemi graduated from the Performing Arts programme at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam 2013 and with a BA degree in Contemporary Dance at Laban Centre in London. Additionally she has completed a study in Expressive Arts therapy from Inartes Institute in Helsinki 2020.
Sonja’s work has been supported by many performing arts venues such as STUK-A House for Dance, music and Image (BE), Zodiak Centre for Dance, Moving in November festival and Kiasma Contemporary Art museum (FI), MDT- Stockholm (SWE), BUDA Kunstzentrum (BE). She has recently exhibited at the Finnish Institute in Paris, HAM-Helsinki Art museum, Oulu Art museum, Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and Dr.Guislaan Museum in Ghent.