End of the second autumn term

9.12.2020 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia Eeva Juutinen

Student Eeva Juutinen writes about the end of semester.

This morning I decided to cycle to the harbour to see the sunrise. It is crispy cold but bright morning. I haven’t been doing much sports as in the school we study a lot of theory. I force my body to wake up early and go out almost straight away. Breaking up the routine feels good although asks for efforts, I sometimes force myself to do something different in order to get out of the normal cycle and order of things. In the recent ACO (Artistic Collaboration) process I was developing a method of ’doing/being differently’ where the body acts in other way than its natural impulse says and so creates intensity. I will keep developing it further also in my master thesis project.

My breath vaporizes to the coldness of the air. My body must be very warm inside.

I arrive to the harbour and the sun shines straight at me from the horizon. I sit on the bench and watch the waves in the sea. Recently I have been thinking about stopping and on how it can happen in different levels of our being. I love watching something for a long time, like now the sea, and so stopping the movement of my eyes. Like in meditation, which I have been practising recently, I make my body stop moving, creating constraint in order to break its habits. Sometimes I wonder would it be boring if we could in certain moments think only when it is absolutely necessary. How would it change our bodies and how would it change the way we perceive movement? Maybe that possible boredom could also be refreshing and interesting or enjoyable. I imagine the sun piercing through my head like a laser and warming up my body like it warms rocks in the hot summer. In reality I’m getting cold fast because of the wind.

Before leaving I walk as near the shore as I can get, to see the water from near by. In the very shore the surface of the water has become foam. It looks like a large white fabric would have been put on top of the water. It fascinates me that the surface looks so competely different of what it is under. The foam creates an illusion of something else and it activates my imagination. Or maybe it is just the image and assumption of water that I have. Maybe water can’t be defined or identified in its aliveness. Does definition or wording of something create an image of it and so actually make it something else, even stop it from emerging or being? This reminds me of transindividuality, where ’individual forces itself to become aware of what in itself is more-than-individual, disindividualizes itself in order to put itself in question’ (Cvejic). I like to taste different words and see how they resonate, what kind of realities they create and suggest. How to combine words is a very bodily experience for me.

The line or border between the water and foam impresses me in its straightness and contrast.

I cycle through very quiet and empty city. I enjoy noticing details in the environment. Everything feels alive and radiating in the early morning sun. In my mind I constantly put the movement I see into words and sentences. Is that an automatic affective reaction: to think everything through language? Maybe language mixes into our feelings and senses in different intensities and links and manifests in our bodies and movements in different scales. Writing is like a place where senses, perceptions, affects, impressions, feelings, virtuality and actuality mix and communicate.

I arrive back to my house and in the outside glass door someone has ripped apart poster that has been taped to the door. That rift makes a big impression on me and I somehow admire it. In my artistic work I’m developing sensitivity to the ways that the body receives information from different environments, also in a poetic way. It is time to start planning my master thesis. In autumn our schedule has been very full and now there is time for more independent studying. The rush of the autumn settles and it is refreshing to find yourself alone again with your thoughts and questions and plenty of reading.

Reference:

Cvejic B. (2016) In States of Transindividuality. Published in STATE STATE STATE ed. Ingri Migdal Fiksdal and Jonas Corell Petersen. Oslo: Samizdat.