Contextualization 3
THOUGHTS ABOUT LOOKING FOR MATERIALS, SPACE AND PARTICIPATORS FOR PROJECTS
Mimmi Koponen
What sauna means to me
Sauna has been an important part of my life since I was a kid. In my childhood home we have a very small sauna in the basement that we used to go to together every evening with all my family, that is my mom, my dad, my little brother and me. Each of us had our own spot on the sauna bench we always sat on, next to each other, sides of our bodies almost touching.
In my opinion, in Finland sauna is a place where people come together as equals. Taking off one’s clothes and jewellery, and washing off one’s make-up, one removes signs of their social status. Going to sauna, even to a sauna session where wearing a swimming suit is required, is the closest stage it will get to reveal one’s body together with other bodies and accepting all kinds of different bodies as equals.
My Master project: Sauna Ritual
'Sauna Ritual' is a guided sauna experience in a tent sauna that is self-made using natural materials that are collected from nature, recycled or hand made. The ritual starts with a group, specific for each ritual, transporting the tent sauna by bike or sledge and putting it up in a different location every time. To start with, sauna rules are read that emphasize mutual respect and trust, peace, discussion, relaxation, respect for nature and focusing on the moment. A different theme will be prepared for each ritual that can vary from sauna fragrances to different themes to discuss, such as climate anxiety or loneliness. The sauna works as a kind of a gate to another world, offering a set of people to go together to a specific place and create a space and atmosphere for a single event. I believe this method helps to see things from a different perspective, to slow down, to focus on the essential things, and to discuss challenging topics.
Materials
An important part of my practice is to think about the ethic regarding the materials I use. My rules for the materials are that they need to be already existing and free or almost free of charge, and that they will return naturally to the cycle they came from, and they belong to. All this means that I’m borrowing materials from nature. With the materials that I find and that fulfil the requirements I make a temporary installation that presents a special atmosphere. To see the artwork, it is necessary to visit it. Anyone can visit it, since it is outdoors in a public space and entering it is free. The artwork is not advertised widely and only a certain amount of people will find it and be able to interact with it. After the event of presenting the work and inviting people to visit it, it will either start its disintegration process by itself or I will help in it, taking it apart and putting the materials back from where they came from.
Construction
I collected materials from the streets, the river, garbage and recycling centre and asked for donations. I took them to a studio space one by one and started to form the first version of a space for the Sauna Ritual.
The materials I collect are not valuable in a sense that they would cost much or that they would be hard to get access to. Despite of them being easily replaceable, taking a good care of them and valuing them is important in my practice. Each piece of material is unique because of its physical elements and because of the story how it was found and transported to become a part of an artwork. With the collection of unique objects and materials I’m looking for a way for them to make sense together, to form an installation and create a space that communicates the ethic behind the material choices.
Selecting a place for the artwork to be temporarily installed to, is a process that requires careful consideration of scale, proportion, access and time. In the reading group Åsa said beautifully that in public space all the sensory experiences are equal, from the artwork itself to the sounds of the surroundings to the animals and people using the public space.
This connects to what Lucius Burckhardt, a Swiss sociologist, expresses in his book written from 1979 to 1981 The Minimal Intervention: “The idea of minimal intervention is closely tied up with rejection of the one-size-fits-all type of experience. Experience is not about how we once successfully pushed through an intervention, in spite of resistance. Rather, the fruits of experience should be to demonstrate clearly, in each particular situation, how to obtain the information that will enable us to appropriately tackle said particular situation, precisely.” (p. 130).
Ana Mendieta has influenced my use of materials and selection of spaces in my practice. She used specific sites outside institutions. Her works represents anti-aesthetics and minimalism. She used natural materials and her works were temporary, designed to disappear and becoming one with the earth. Her Silueta series (1973-1978) that consisted of more than 200 works, was an on-going ritual.
Ritual
A ritual is defines as follows on the website of Tate: ”A ritual is an activity that usually sticks to a set pattern and typically involves a set of actions, words, and objects. Rituals are often repeated at intervals (whether daily, weekly, annually – or on certain special occasions). The word ritual often has associations of serious formal or religious ceremonies – like graduations, christenings or processions – but a ritual can also relate to cultural activities or traditions that happen in everyday life such as Christmas shopping or carnivals…or even fish and chips on a Friday. A ritual can also be highly personal: Do you always play football or swim on a Saturday morning or have tea at your grannies every Sunday? These could be considered your personal rituals.”
I aim to facilitate rituals that are slow gatherings, and I invite participants by “soft invitations” (Castillo). By this I mean that the possibility to participate is presented invitingly but not pushing anyone to participate. When participants show up to the gathering, they are not pushed to do anything they don’t want to do, and they are invited to use their own methods of working. In other words, everyone is allowed to be as they are. For example, the participants are allowed to talk the way they talk, be it in a soft voice. They are also encouraged to participate and arrive and leave as they wish and what suits their personal timetables, without it affecting the participation. The rituals are rhythmed by parts of actions and parts of pauses. To make the setting between the participants and the facilitator (me), it is clearly told in the beginning of the meeting what is going to happen, and when and how, throughout the whole participatory process.
In my practice, rituals allow connections between seemingly separated spheres: the personal sphere (my experience of sauna as a first social space where care is expressed and bonds are formed) and the political sphere (how my choice of “borrowed” materials, “slow paced” actions, and minimal intervention inform my installations). In the specific case of the sauna project, I found this quote from Audre Lorde particularly insightful, since it refers to the false established dichotomy between the spiritual (more related to a personal sphere) and the political (connecting my personal standpoint to a public sphere): “The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge -the sensual - those physical, emotional and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passion of love, in its deepest meaning.” (p. 46). Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power is written by Audre Lorde in 1978. Lorde writes about erotic that she defines as nurture and love of oneself, others and nature. It is feminine creative energy that strengthens all experience, empowers us making us demand it on all aspects of life. She mentions sharing of joy and underlining the capacity of joy as ways erotic manifests itself in her life.
In the choice of materials, I focus on offering a maximal sensory experience to participant or a visitor. The materials are natural and that’s why comfortable for all senses. Besides the visual, the sauna offers smells, sounds and heat. It welcomes the sensing capacities of every body.
I got fascinated by Lorde’s notion on erotics as sharing of joy because it resonates with what I think about participatory artworks: “The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” (p. 46)
Mika Hannula writes about participation in his book The Politics of Small Gestures in an inspirational way: “I believe the central issue with any kind of community – whether it exists or is about to become one – is how it can manage to be both constructive as a means of producing the desired outcomes, and at the same time open to criticism from within its sphere and from outside. On the other hand, besides this structural aspect, there is the second main question parked on the individual level at which each of us ponders how to achieve for ourselves a functioning and pleasurable context for critical encounters and interaction. In other words, it is about generating sustainable conditions for knowledge production. … The idea presupposes that for us to act meaningfully and credibly we can never do so alone. We need context, and we need critical reflection. We need a social interaction that keeps up the momentum, that provides us with enough mental and physical walls to keep us on track and trusting our inquiries.” (p. 84).
LIST OF REFERENCES:
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (London: Penguin, 1984), 43–51
Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 1961), 3–15
Mika Hannula, The Politics of Small Gestures – Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art (Art-is, 2006), 74-102
Lucius Burckhardt, The Minimal Intervention, (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2022), 123-130
Nayari Castillo, lecture on 26.11.2024, Master of Art and Public Space, KHiO
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/student-resource/exam-help/ritual (26.11.2024)
Notes from the first lecture and reading group meeting
Notes from the second lecture
Notes from the third lecture, reading group meeting and guest lecture