Hard work (Kova työ), 2017

Hard Work started in 2016 as a part of Viitasaari De-mystification, project that consisted of many smaller working groups and was lead by composer Niilo Tarnainen from Ears Open. The idea was to study Viitasaari and its inhabitat and to bring art closer to those who doesn't necessarily follow the art discourse. My response to this initiative as a choreographer was to interview local people about their embodied working history and their ideas about dance. This happened during the Time of music -festival in 2016. For the festival 2017 I then made a solo of this material.

The piece was performed in a Lumberjack museum in a room where the workers used to sleep. I screened two of the interviews to a screen while simultaneously moving through different gestures and movement qualities of different jobs based on the interviews and also on my own background as a farm girl and dancer. It is possible to recognise a similar quality of readiness and frankness both in the body of an dancer or a waiter or a lumberjack. In the end I become most interested in this quality but also in the repetitive quality of factory work that many of the interviewees had experienced. 

I chose the theme work to be in the center of this work because for most of the people their work is something they know really well. At the same time the theme touches the question of what is the work of an artist? On one hand work in general is going through a big change when many old school jobs are dissapearing and new ones are appearing. Therefore the question of what is "real" or "hard" work is present not only for the artists and academics but for the most of the society.

As in center in the hole Viitasaari De-Mystification project the most burning questions for many artists is how the pieces communicate. So we use the term context to describe to what kind of situation, time and space the piece has been made for and to examine how does the same piece talk differently in different contexts. This work, Hard work, is my way of searching what could be the common ground for communication, where both the postmodern or post postmodern art and the local community could understand each other without changing too much themselves.

I don't think this conversation about the function, place and meaning of art will never end thought. But every now and then, when new generations are born, it has to be gone through one way or another.

Choreography & performance: Soili Huhtakallio
Interviewees: Aino and Anja Sagulin
Production: Time Of Music -Festival & Ears Open
Premier: Viitasaari, 2017
Duration: 25 min
Photo: Wille Waali