Keho on Dacha explores site-specific performance, community based art making, connection within hybrid live/ digital spaces to make an impact in the society through art, technology and innovative cultural activities.
Today we are starting a series of publications introducing our team – artists in the North of Finland and Russia.
Susanna Voiushina is a dance artist from Arkhangelsk, Northern Russia. Together with dance artist Dmitry Melnikov, also from Arkhangelsk, she has been exploring the cultural code of dacha – Russian word for a Summer cottage house with a dramatic and sophisticated cultural and historical heritage – within the international dance project “Moving Barents – Out of Urgency”. Their research evolved into a number of beautiful concepts, many of those have inspired and informed “Keho on Dacha”.
Visual artist, DJ and interactive systems designer John Collingswood from the UK and dance artist and choreographer Tanja Råman from Finland are both based in Oulu, Northern Finland. For decades they have been developing and implementing new ways to perform, connecting art and tech within the dance/ tech company TaikaBox. Warjakka, their project about rediscovering the history of the village of Varjakka in the suburbs of Oulu, includes virtual galleries, community gardens, art residencies, archeological research, interviewing the members of community and making different kinds of community-based artwork.
Elena Gutkina is a journalist and film-maker from Moscow, Russia, who has been bringing in impressionistic innovation to the genre of arthouse documentary.
She is spending the research period in Arkhangelsk collecting footage of the bodies moving and making sounds – and life changing impacts on the communities – while doing so.
Oulu-based journalist and activist Elena Florina Vlasenko aka Lölä is passionate about exploring the freedom of expression and challenging its limits. Within “Keho on Dacha” she is documenting the team’s activities and sharing them in the social media. Having spent most of her professional life with texts, she is fascinated to find the right words to describe things that are usually left and felt between the lines. She tries to translate body language to words without damaging the spirit of abstraction or limiting the many meaningful messages it contains.
Each of the team members will be featured in further publications, so welcome to stay tuned. For now – here are all of us, very excited to be sharing this research experience with you.
Keho on Dacha 