Heidi will coordinate and run an artistic research project for Villa Karo Cultural Institute. In this project, the challenges of post-colonial interaction, Euro-patriarchal ways of knowledge formation and subconscious power assumptions and habits of racialisation are dismantled through embodied practises, movement exploration and somatic methods. The concrete aim of the project is to provide an opportunity for artists and cultural professionals to come together and support each other in anti-racist work – and on a larger scale to concretely promote sensitivity and equality in cultural exchange.

Participants

The project is coordinated by Heidi Seppälä, founder of DANCO – School of De-Colonizing the Art of Dance.

In addition, a brainstorming/steering group of artists working in the field of anti-racism and decolonial practices will gather approximately every 4-6 weeks.

The project also involves a group of master’s students from the University of the Arts’ Praxis programme in Curating and Performance Practices. The students will join as a “critical friends”, analysing and reviewing the process at regular intervals, while keeping a learning diary of their own process. They also act as a test-group for different elements of the training package.

The aim of the project

The final product of the projects’ first phase is a carefully prepared departure preparation package for Finnish artists going to Villa Karo’s artist residency in Benin. The package also includes a period of reflection and feedback after returning to Finland. The broader objective is providing both practival and theoretical tools for decolonisation in the arts and culture sector.

Research methods include creating and testing movement tasks, conducting interviews, reviewing source literature and other material, writing a research article and a research report, and organising and conducting a seminar and alumni event.

The project will explore cultural collaboration and interactions and their requirements for a more holistic connection to the surrounding reality through the body. DANCO’s message is that the body takes us into a world where there are many kinds of ‘us’. Returning to the body and recognising the body as a valuable field of study, are crucial tasks in building new ways of knowing and of perceiving the surrounding reality, in order to transcend the Euro-patriarchal ways we are used to. Empathic connection and embodily sensitivity transcend the non-human boundary, so that intuitions and new ways of knowing can begin to emerge. We want to ask each person who comes to the residency: what kind of knowledge production are you involved in, what kinds of ways of thinking and representing are you renewing in your own work? What kind of silences does your work contain, what kind of assumptions is it based on?

The Research Project is funded by TAIKE’s Cultural Diversity Fund and City of Helsinki.