all captured images by the amazing Kamila Śladowska
first, i will attempt a description of the setting of the installation:
the space is divided into three parts. the two hours piece is divided into two performances roughly forty-five minutes to one hour each. I move between the three parts chronologically in the first performance and randomly in the second performance.
the performance is in three parts: one part has a chair, and on the wall next to the chair a projection of a video triptych shows me holding myself in a chair in my house, maija and i holding each other by a river, and me holding myself in my backyard on a sunny day. the chair in the gallery is magnificently pink and luxuriously velvet, a chair a person can hold themselves comfortably and dramatically in. on the magnificent velvet pink chair is a sign that reads 'please hug me.'
let's say you come in through door to Myymälä2, right when the performance begins. you find me sitting on this lovely pink velvet chair arms wrapped around myself as i sit there by the projections of various holdings, my eyes are closed, my body still except for focussed (panicked) deep breathing. later. after i've held myself enough, i stand, put the sign around my neck, and open my arms wide. this is the most terrifying part. i feel the most at this time, when all i am is hoping.
in this part where i held myself on a delicious velvet chair and stood up to be held... i cried a lot. and that's okay because there were arms to hold me. it felt absurdly like the safest place to cry.
the second part has a projection of waves on the wall, from yyteri beach near pori where i live. a town small enough you say thank you to your bus drivers most of whom are recognizable to a frequent bus user such as me. there is no audio just looped videos of waves, normal speed, then slower, then in reverse, then in reverse and sped up. in part two i sit on the floor surrounded by coloured card, creative prompts i wrote just before the show, pens, paint, and markers. are eight large colourful cards and paintbrushes, and markers, and a cheap tray of watercolour paints. later Anne brings me water which i had thought about and forgotten (lovely Anne!) this part is about visual expression. i write poems, ideas, feelings, drew, painted, whatever...
next time i do this i want people on this circuit with me. you sit there and hold yourself and ask for a hug, while i paint what waves feel like, while they play the guitar or the ukulele or sing or whatever.
textured fabric of excellent colour is draped over the bench i sit on in the last part of the 'show.' it spills onto the floor and in the corner near the wall where the ukulele and the guitar are.. i liked the unknowable and spontaneous creativity that came from the dusty croaky four stringed guitar i'd never played before. i wanted to be able to jam without falling into old familiar patterns. to focus on expression. i play my songs on the ukulele when i want to know what they would feel like here. where all this emotion is rising.
so what does it mean to be held? to hold yourself, to ask to be held? i didn't know until i did it. and cried a lot when people held me. strangers all. and each hug was different. and beautiful and glorious. the tears were not ones of sadness, but relief that finally i could do it, i could ask... please hold me?