Chill Survive opened a new website in November 2020 offering art, poems, interviews, and essays. Kuusamo workshops were transformed for online participation in December 2020, and you can check them out below (scroll, scroll, and scroll further down...):
From Reindeer Poo-to-Paper by Chan'nel Vestergaard and Littlepink Maker
Gravitational Shift by Marie Kølbæk Iversen and Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Singing to the Virus by Pia Lindman
Pandora's Box by Rozan van Klaveren
All workshops are realised in colaboration and with the support of Kuusamo city and and Ulla Ingalsuo-Laaksonen. Thank you!
Workshop details and documentation below:
From Reindeer Poo-to-Paper
Chan'nel Vestergaard and Littlepink Maker
This workshop gives you the protocols of how to make paper out of reindeer poo. The digestion system of a reindeer is so effective that its poo contains nothing more than fibers - and some microbes. This is why this material is well suited for paper-making. Let us up the up-cycling economy and complete the human-reindeer-microbe cycle by making use of the ultimate reindeer refuse.
Here you can check out the protocol for handling reindeer poop (some of the microbes in the poop are bad for people) and how to make a paper deckle.
We will soon post here an illustrated guide of the step-by-step manufacture of reindeer poop paper.
Email piuska@mac.com to register for the workshop and place an order for vacuum-packaged genuine Kuusamo-reindeer poo for your own paper.
From Reindeer Poo-to-Paper Documentation
"Reindeer Poop-to-Paper" is realised in colaboration with Palosaari Reindeer Farm, Littlepink Maker, Kuusamo city, and Ulla Ingalsuo-Laaksonen. Thank you!
Gravitational Shift
Marie Kølbæk Iversen and Katinka Fogh Vindelev
WORKSHOP: SINGING TOGETHER TO IO OVER ZOOM
DATE: 29.11.2020
HOURS: 16:00 Denmark time
This workshop stems from a composition-in-progress by classical singer and composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev and visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen.
SYNOPSIS
At the core of the choral composition Gravitational Shift lies a collection of recorded birthing sounds—screams, gasps, whimpering, cries—that have been time-stretched and transcribed to reveal their hidden melodies. Together these melodies form the basis for a composition seeking to bring the voices of birthing women into the public realm and making sharable what might initially have been a lonely and isolating experience. By transforming individual non-verbal fright expression into an intersubjectively shared form of communication, the composition explores the social (and potentially constructive, generative, and worlding) dynamics of gestalting collectivity through singing.
Myth:
Through its title, Gravitational Shift takes the cue from Io—at once Jupiter’s innermost moon, and a mythological birthing figure from Greek-Roman mythology: Io was a young woman, who was raped by Jupiter in the guise of a cloud. To hide her from his jealous wife Juno, Jupiter transformed Io into a cow, but Juno saw through the deceit and sent a horsefly to bite Io every time she stopped to rest. Upon arriving in Egypt, Io was redeemed when giving birth to her son Epaphos. However, horns remained on her forehead, and she was fused with the Egyptian mother goddess Isis: epitome of female authority and the most magically potent deity in the Egyptian pantheon. There is therefore a particular cruelty in astronomer Simon Marius’ naming of Jupiter’s innermost moon after Io upon its discovery in 1610, since this symbolically undoes her liberation as Isis; revoking her deification, and cancelling her hard-earned authority. As volcanic Io she finds herself locked in orbit around the gaseous giant planet Jupiter, which through this constellation of agents and actions emerges as the very embodiment of trauma. In order for Io to escape his heavy pull, an alternative—stronger—center of gravity needs to be established.
Gravitational Shift will be performed at ARIEL in Kvindernes Bygning in central Copenhagen on November 29, 2020,
for a limited group of people. The performance will double as a zoom
webinar allowing people to contribute to Io’s liberation from their
homes, afar or abroad. To register for the webinar, please send an email
to arielfeminisms@gmail.com
Classical singer and electroacoustic composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev and visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen have previously collaborated on the opera Moonologue, performed at Louisiana and Henie Onstad on the occasion of the exhibition of Kølbæk Iversen’s video work Io/I in the exhibition The Moon. Moonologue is based on Kølbæk Iversen’s text by the same name, recounting Io’s traumatic wanderings as moon, cow, birthing woman, Galileo et.al.
Gravitational Shift Documentation
Singing to the Virus
Pia Lindman
SUBSENSORIAL SESSION/WORKSHOP: SINGING TO THE VIRUS TOGETHER OVER ZOOM
DATE: 12.12.2020
HOURS: 13:00 Finland time, 11:00 Iceland time
Sing along with the artist.
See final documentation of Singing to the Virus
 |
| Code of various strands of covid-19, found on the web |
What is a virus?
Scientist still argue about whether a virus is a living being or a bio-mechanical unit without life.
We are not sure if it actually originated before or after bacteria, or indeed if not bacteria are a development from viruses. Or vice versa, maybe viruses used to be bacteria, but found a faster and simpler way to reproduce (this would be, in my humble human experience, a pretty irksome voluntary evolution to bot-becoming).
Because the virus reproduces by inserting its DNA or RNA into the DNA strands of an organism it also is a messenger. It proposes new or alternative codes. Recombinations.
It does not always cause the destruction of a cell, but may actually become integrated in the DNA of the cell, and in this way probe evolutionary change.
DNA is packed into Chromosomes, and unraveling, you can see the diploid DNA strand wired around packs of proteins. The DNA, the code of life, looks like a string of pearls.
Pearls like in prayer beads.
Finnish spells, loitsu, or manaus, are versatile, in the sense that depending on your needs and the situation, you may combine different verses and melodies in many different ways - just like DNA - or virus. If you need to heal, you first ask for the maaemo (Earth mom), Päivätär (day-goddess), or the Virgin Mary to come to your aid (over time, this healing-power avatar changed with the state-religion du jour - and Christianity is visible in the last).
You ask the "healing-power avatar du jour" to help you find the origin/birth (synty) of the ailment. Then you compose a spell that drives the cause back to its origins, back to "where it is supposed to be". (I have a problem with this xenophobic approach).
In order to negotiate our relationship to a virus, according to the ancient Finnish cosmology, we could ask about the birth of this virus. But its birth - origin - is open ended. It originates in other organisms.
So the virus requires some other consideration. Its origin is possibly beyond origin itself. If it preceded bacteria, it is possibly the origin of the code of many - if not partly all - life. At least one of the origins. How do you return an origin (an idea) to origin (its idea)? It is like lighting a match on the surface of the sun.
The virus cannot metabolise and reproduce on its own, but needs a hosting cell for these processes. Indeed it does not become activated until it is in contact with a host cell. And these cells can be any kind of cell: that of a plant, a bacteria, animal, etc.
The virus cannot originate but in our cells. Its origin is everywhere and nowhere. You cannot “send it back to where it came from”, except by sending it back to us.
We can only stay with it, sing it, gently, softly, urging, pleadingly, menacingly, …listening
Sing its code as it is ours.
 | |||
| Matroona Kyyrönen, Impilahti/Kitilä, casts a spell (1914) | |
image credit: A.O. Väisänen/Museovirasto
Listen to the full presentation and singing
(singing starts at 15min 52s)
Pandora's Box
Rozan van Klaveren
DATE: 12th of December
HOUR: 14:00 (Finland) 12:00 (Iceland)
During this workshop we will open nature’s box of Pandora and witness which contemporary disasters, plagues and troubles are coming out. Are they frightening us? Do we now fear nature as well, and fight it? Or do we just accept these ‘gifts from below’ as a deserved response to our own actions? In which form (image, thought, smell, …) is hope coming to us?
Pandora, in Greek mythology, was the first female human. Just like Eve, she was a gift from the Gods to humanity. And just like Eve, she was gifted with curiosity and brought misfortune when she acted upon that. But are our contemporary disasters truly caused by femininity?
Nature, as a concept, is often seen as female too. Mother nature, Gaia, Terra, … in Latin, ‘nature’ literally meant ‘birth’. Nature became something to concur, to master, to overcome. Over time, nature was treated as badly as many women were. The disasters caused by this attitude, unfortunately, not only harm humanity. Does our hope include the more-than-human too?
This workshop departs from an artistic approach to probing practices. A Pandora’s box will be used as a probing prop. Together we’ll search for the hope that stayed behind in the bottom of this box and we’ll try to find out what our hope consists of.
Besides a healthy dose of imagination, you only need to prepare some white paper and some pencils or colored markers.
"Singing to the Virus" and "Pandora's Box" are realised in colaboration with and the support of Kuusamo city and Ulla Ingalsuo-Laaksonen. Thank you!
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