Excerpts from Sonja Jokiniemi's book PA A and an introduction to Without an alphabet project are included in the latest issue of the Australian Critical Path's bi-annual online publication Critical dialogues. The publication "Claiming spaces - Choreographers with disabilities redefining dance" can be read on Issuu.
Interview: Sonja Jokiniemi in Ma culture: "Hmm is about something that cannot be caught in a box"
Guillaume Rouleau spoke with Sonja Jokiniemi on July 28th as part of her performances in the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series 2016 at ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival.
"Her solo Hmm shown at the Schauspielhaus on July 26th and 28th had a decor of wooden sticks, thick cellophane, a cardboard box and a triangle lying scattered all over the floor. Sonja Jokiniemi is standing in a beige leather suit when the public arrives. Flickering sounds are filling the space. Few elements produce a multitude of effects.
With these objects, Sonja Jokiniemi composes a cosmos on the scale of the theater. She associates them through tactile and vocal manipulations, talking to them, talking for them, in a linguistic performance, in which the language is a capacity to generate meanings and actions. A language that is sometimes hermetic, as the communication she establishes with the public. The spectator has to make the effort, if not to understand, then at least to be attentive to what slips from the ordered and defined language. Sonja Jokiniemi explores the borders of sonority, of meaning, of communication by numerous interjections, onomatopoeias, exclamations; sounds and gestures which have numerous significations but don’t call for any answer or reaction. The audience interprets these significations and the structures of language with pain, with joy, impatience and satisfaction. An experience brilliantly led by Sonja Jokiniemi which she accepted to discuss."
Sonja Jokiniemi's workshop in Kuopio in September
Sonja Jokiniemi gives a workshop at Eastern Finland Regional Dance Centre for professional performers and makers as well as all interested creative individuals. The workshop takes place on 8 and 9 September 2016 daily from 13:00 to 17:00.
In the workshop we will investigate embodied work with objects and materials, aiming towards intimacy and conversational drafts with the inanimate. We will also explore drawing as choreographic practice and develop our own performative, intimate languages through voice, movement and haptic practices. References for the workshop are Jokiniemi´s latest performances: Hmm (2015), TU (2015) and RRRRR (2016) as well as a beginning research for a new project Blab. My attempt is to build a multilingual and multidisclipinary working methodology based on the principle of dialogue and shared subjectivity.
Price: 40 / 30 euros (ITAK members, students, unemployed). Deadline for registrations 1 September.
Sign in for the workshop here.
Performance: Hmm presented in the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series at ImPulsTanz
Sonja Jokiniemi's Hmm has been selected for the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series of this year's ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival. Hmm is performed on 26 and 28 July in Schauspielhaus.
The [8:tension] series presents powerful statements by 13 dance professionals from all over the world. The artists featured in the [8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series are nominated for the Casinos Austria Prix Jardin d’Europe and the FM4 Fan Award 2016.
Performance: RRRRR in Berlin on 9 June as part of NoMad House
Sonja Jokiniemi's RRRRR will get its German premiere as part of NoMad House in Theaterdiscounter on 9 June. The Mad House Helsinki crew will take over Theaterdiscounter in Berlin from 8 to 11 June 2016 and set up NoMad House: a place where people, artists and audience are taken care of. It presents PERFORMANCES, invites everyone to join WORKSHOPS and the THINK THANK open discussions for pondering current topics with invited guests and a moderator. Every day there will also be the Art via Stomach SOUP CAFÉ with an interior created by Niina Lehtonen Braun and hosted by Heidi, Juha & Markus (soup, sandwiches, sweet buns, hot & cold drinks) as well as a LATE BAR.
Sonja Jokiniemi, Elina Pirinen and Mikko Niemistö join the team the Mad House Helsinki curator team
Mad House Helsinki gets three new curators, when artists Elina Pirinen, Mikko Niemistö and Sonja Jokiniemi join the team. They are planning the program for Mad House’s 4th Season, taking place in 2017 together with curators Leena Kela, Martina Marti, Annika Tudeer and Juha Valkeapää.
Performance: TU at the 1st Finnish triennial of the community arts
TU will be showcased in TEHDAS Teatteri in Turku on 31 May as part of RECEPTION, the 1st Triennial of the Community Arts organised by the Saari Residence maintained by the Kone Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland together with several local partners.
TU is a collaborative performance work by Sonja Jokiniemi and Veera Kivelä. The base of the work is on Veera's language that appears in complex intimate sound systems and movement patterns. Jokiniemi and Kivelä map the performance space through touching, sounding and moving through, communicating with objects, the space itself and with one another. TU is part of a community-based research project Without an alphabet, where Jokiniemi worked with four autistic young adults investigating subjective language systems. Kivelä is one of her collaborators from this project.
The first triennial of the community arts in Finland offers a broad view on socially engaged art practice and on the works of art created in interaction and collaboration with various communities. The theme of the triennial RECEPTION refers on the one hand to the act of receiving as well as to hospitality. On the other hand, it raises questions about the resistance and the power structures. Who do we welcome, to whom do we turn our backs? In which troops do we stand and whose voices are being heard? In this time, what creates the feeling of togetherness? What kind of reactions and artistic outcomes creates the trinity of the artists, the communities and society ?
Between the spring and the early summer of 2016 RECEPTION will spread out to the west coast of Finland. The participating cities are Helsinki, Kemiönsaari, Turku, Mynämäki, Rauma, Pori and Vaasa. In each city, both local and visiting artists open and showcase their collabrative art processes and practices to the wider audience. The full triennial programme contains e.g artists-in-residence, discussions, presentations and works created during the event together with local communities.