Snöspace
Enter the Landscape
and the landscape enters the body.
Feet in felt boots, we walk softly in the snow.
With the sensitivity of animal paws, reading the forms underfoot.
Here a crust that may hold the body with a gentle transfer of weight
…here a stable icy ridge… and then a sudden softness giving way to knee
depth snow. This was the experience of walking to Malla on Sunday.
Malla the mountain drawing us over the frozen lake, to her shores of
gnarled Birch.
With waist deep snow so soft you can surrender all the weight
of this world. The pores of our skin meet little of the wind,
wrapped and layered in wool, then high tech plastics, then wool again.
Our outer-shell is animal.
It was an aesthetic choice for the filming, not to be plastic coated,
but underneath it filters the wind so we can stay out in the Arctic
weather some time. The texture of the wool knit gathers snow as we roll.
Snow becomes our outer layer of skin, creasing into small clumps at the
backs of our knees, hanging on our jumpers in reptilian patterns.
Underneath all these layers something else is at play.
Other spaces are opening.
Each day after porridge, we clear the lounge room for movement.
Titta guides us with some kinaesthetic reminders and plays music
to support the images. We move with awareness of the spaces in our bodies,
between the ribs, the spine, the jaw and hips.
As we play with these awarenesses they grow.
It feels as if, through these spaces, the Arctic landscape is slipping in.
A snow covered expanse between the ribs, subtile light reflecting
from the bones, extending the contours of the self.
These kinaesthetic reminders are part of the Skinner Releasing Technique,
the somatic movement practice that brought us together.
Deniz Soyarslan from Turkey, Titta Court from Northern Finland and
myself from Sweden/Australia, all the way to Kilpisjärvi in the Finnish
Arctic. We move inside in preparation for our outdoors.
Dressing in our many layers is quite an ordeal,
it’s a sauna in the clothes before we make it out in the cold.
Our woolen pants with so many layers under looks like we all have
nappy bums, all in grey wool we are the three teddy bears.
And then we put on our masks. Full of holes, white linen stuffed
like bone, shaped like bone. Hips, ribs and lung.
Seeing through the heart’s eye, through the skeletal spaces.
But today our masks stayed right here in the window.
We didn’t go out until the evening blue hour,
for a snow shoe shuffle and lay on the lake.
The storm that began yesterday continued through the night and day.
We heard the main road is cut off and the tractor of the Biological
Station, where we are in residence,
burst a tire yesterday and they are waiting for a new part.
Our driveway is a standing wave form and the car
we came in has been reshaped, snow-scaped.
Our windows are painted in dappled patterns and folds of snow.
The shapes and spaces evolving throughout the day.
Today we moved inside allot, left the cameras untouched.
The weather is the true director of this project.
And finally, here's the tower we built during our residency in February,
photographed by the station cooks during melting process in March.
For more blog entries, images and Deniz's text in Turkish please visit
www.snospace.juliaadzuki.com