Luonnonvarat | Natural Resources

Luonnonvarat | Natural resources - ongoing artistic research project started in 2015 with the support of Kone Foundation, Mustarinda association and KWP Pianofabriek (Brussels). Through this project I investigate the relations between corporeal and environmental awareness as well as experiment in applying choreographic and kinaesthetic thinking in perceiving ecological questions. 

One observation motivating this work is that discourse on environmental questions often lack the dimension of corporeality as the foundation of our nature-relation as well as choreographic understanding in perceiving change in natural processes and phenomena. The experimental forms of dance art has a lot to give into this conversation in terms of knowledge and methodology, for my experience.

During my research, parallel to performative works, I have been collecting, gathering and developing exercises and writing performative and participatory scores, and slowly assembling a practice from them. I have also written two articles about the work and published one of them in Elonkehä - deep-ecological magazine (in Finnish) and the other one in AGON - Northern Science and Culture Magazine (in Finnish). In the summer of 2019, I organised and directed a four day workshop in the primeval forest in the northeast of Finland in collaboration with Mustarinda association, which is focused on artistic practice related to environmental concerns and questions of ecological reconstruction. In February 2020 I organised together with professor Eeva Muilu a workshop relating to the subject and methods of my research at Helsinki University of Arts, for the MA students of dance performance and choreography.

In 2020 I am gathering a group of practitioners on the fields of art and science that are interested on the similar questions and working on them from different perspectives and with diverse methods.

Credits

Concept and direction: Veli Lehtovaara
Producer: Riikka Thitz
Production: SpaceTimeLove
Supported by: Kone Foundation (FI), Arts Promotion Center Finland, Mustarinda association (FI), Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek (BE)