ESETE SUTINEN AND LAURA EKLUND NHAGA

Excerpts from the residency (as PDF)

Filmed material / composition of text and image

ESETE SUTINEN is an Ethiopian-Finnish dance artist based in Helsinki. She holds a Master’s degree in Dance from the University of the Arts Helsinki. Sutinen has worked as a freelance dance artist nearly 20 years in the Finnish art field. She has a vast working experience ranging from contemporary dance and theatre productions to performance art and installations, as well as in music videos, chamber opera projects and commercials. She has long-term ongoing collaborations with the following Finnish choreographers: Sonya Lindfors, Petri Kekoni, Virva Talonen, Ervi Sirén  and Alpo Aaltokoski. Sutinen started her choreographic work in the stage work of Maps of Fear and Empathy in 2017. The work consists of contributions from 5 different artist and the performances took place at the Kajaani Art Museum and Routa Company’s Generator stage. In her solo work, the thematic starting points were exposing, draining, covering, inhabiting the spatial body, and the porous presence of blackness. As a choreographer she is fascinated by the articulation of corporeality, the different aspects of freedom, and the power of empathy and playfulness.

LAURA EKLUND NHAGA is a Finnish actor, spoken word artist and activist. A lot of her work deals with themes of intersectional feminism and anti-racism. She sees art as a form of activism and sees personal stories as a useful tool in understanding wider social phenomena. 

 

Excerpt from Paz Rojo’s and Norberto Llopis Segarra’s informal residency sharing (online and in the studio), November 20, 2020

Paz Rojo (1974, Madrid) is a choreographer, dancer and researcher. Her activity takes place at the crossroads between artistic practice, choreography and philosophy, a meeting point through which to investigate dance as a dissident and transformative practice. For more than a decade she has been questioning the possibility of cultural production beyond the framework of capitalist production of value. She is Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts in Performative and Media Practices with specialization in choreography by the Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden with the artistic research thesis project entitled The decline of choreography and its movement: a body’s (path)way. A project carried out in choreographic, performative, textual, audiovisual, curatorial, discursive and experimental devices. In 2019 she publishes the book To Dance in the Age of No-Future with Circadian (non-profit publishing house, Berlin) as part of this research. More information at: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/727172/727185

Noberto Llopis Segarra, artist working in the border between choreography, performance and philosophy. He graduated in dance and choreography at the “Institut del Teatre” (Barcelona). In 2005-2007, he took the M.A course in performing arts DasArts, at the AHK (Amsterdamse hogeschool voor de kunsten). Parallel to his artistic career he went through a theoretical education. In 2016 he finishes his Philosophy degree at UNED (Madrid), and in 2018 he graduates in an M.Phil at Complutense University (Madrid), with a final research on “the derridian concept of mimesis”. Currently he is going through a Ph.D research on “The models of the Hymen and the Anti-oedipus in Derrida and Deleuze, and their influence in the economy of aesthetics” at the UB, University of Barcelona. His artistic practise goes from the work with the body, to the use of objects and materials in order to reflect and construct spaces and temporalities. In his approach to philosophy, he aims to develop a not theorizer thinking practise about space and the signs under which space gets established. His practise has taken different forms such as: stage performances, actions, installations, conferences and texts developed in between Spain, Brussels and Holland.