Create and Protect: Moving Human Art
Performance Art
Photo by Antti Luostarinen
In the interactive performance cycle of Create and Protect the audience members are invited to turn dancers into sculptures by using packaging and other recycled and re-used materials provided in the room. The creation is then protected with bubble wrap and tape to create a cocoon to preserve the shape of the unique sculpture.
Once wrapped up the dancer inside the sculpture begins her dance to bring the creation to life gradually emerging out of her cocoon.
Photo by Antti Luostarinen
The finished sculpture is what inspires the dancer to move. A movement vocabulary is created by the restrictions of the sculpture, materials used, and sounds from inside and outside the sculpture. The sound of the movement is amplified, filling the space, drawing people into the experience. The sculptures become creatures that evolve in the most unexpected ways, and all of this unravels in a setting that takes a near ritualistic form.
Each creation gives birth to a certain movement response and solo dance that develops as the dancer finds her way out of the construction.
Photo by Antti Luostarinen
Dancer: Karolina Ginman
The dance of each sculpture comes to an end once all the materials have been stripped off the dancer and only the bubble wrap shell remains. The finished bubble wrap cocoons from each sculpture will be hung in an area allocated for exhibiting the products of the performance cycles. Hanging at various heights with the sound from the performance room echoing the hollow cocoons create a ghostly fascinating hanging forest of forgotten snake-skin.
The cycle begins again with new audience members participating to shape the event.
This has been performed at Laban (2008) and St. Martins in London (2008), the Sarjakuvafestival in Helsinki (2012) as well as at MadHouse (2014).
Recycling
The materials used in Create and Protect are all re-purposed. It is essential to the nature of this work that the sculpting materials are gathered in an ecological way through recycling and re-using or in some cases borrowing objects from the everyday life. Under the perfect circumstances there would be no trash created from these installations. Even materials such as tape could be used and reused in the performances.
All bubble wrap used in the project has been used, unraveled and reused and will continue to be reused in the future performances of Create and Protect.
Photo by Antti Luostarinen.
Connections with Fashion
This project offers the audience a chance to create a sculpture on a living person. The creations that the audience makes more often than not look like giant dresses or strange outfits that would not look out of place on a runway.
Create and Protect opens up a possibility to collaborate with fashion designers to plan outfits using materials that would normally be thrown away before protecting it and letting the entire creation fall apart.
If you are interested in collaborating, do not hesitate to let Geneva know.
Photo by Antti Luostarinen
Dancer: Marja Koponen
Connections with Fine Art
Through various performances, we have additionally had members of the audience documenting the performance through drawings.
The drawing to the right is from the performance at the Comic’s Festival in 2012.
Additionally at the performance at Madhouse, a group of people from Geneva’s Croquis Class, came to draw, document and use the performance as a way to create art.
Drawing by Pekka Salonen