THE WORD FOR FREEDOM
PREMIERE
Mänttä Art Festival 13.6.2015
DESCRIPTION
The Word For Freedom is an installation-performance developed in the context of The Ark of Seeds project. The video documents part of the narrative ritual in which central acts are finding and sharing food with the audience and a plant seeds offer.
The story: A totem resembling a plant is built at the center of a village. The community lives by it and with it celebrates rituals of prosperity. During a famine, two strangers aerial people land on the totem and invite the villagers to open it. When they do it, a vibration runs through its metal body revealing the solution to the famine: food and new seeds.
The community gathers and shares the new seeds and makes a pact of solidarity with the strangers and with the plants.
The central object of the ritual is the totem which is at the same time hardware for aerial acrobats, a seeds container and a string music instrument six meters high. All the sounds of the ritual originate from the sculpture. This instrument called Seeddom is an invention by Egle Oddo developed together with Timo Tuhkanen.
WORKING GROUP
Composer: Timo Tuhkanen
Characters
Ava: masked actress Iika Hartikainen
Osa: masked actress Riina Tikkanen
Princess Celeste: soloist Outi Pulkkinen
Princess Velata: soloist Marika Krook
Sagittarius: musician Juho Laitinen
Sirius: musician Timo Tuhkanen
Stranger Hesediel: aerial acrobat Pinja Shönberg
Stranger Muriel: aerial acrobat Riikka Pentinsaari
Masks by Laura Mäkelä
Costumes by Suvi Hänninen
Musical direction Juho Laitinen and Outi Pulkkinen
Working at the sculpture with the author:
Metallurgy expert Martti Halonen
Wood expert Jelle van der Beek
Musical instruments Timo Tuhkanen
Written and produced by Egle Oddo
Assistant producer Frida Stenbäck
Camera Jari Järvi and Marek Pluciennik
Video editing Jari Järvi
Still photography Antti Ahonen
The work is part of a larger project called The Ark of Seeds.
The Word For Freedom is dedicated to the memory of scholar Ville Oksanen, who was part of the workgroup in 2014.
The Word For Freedom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
More information:
http://www.arkofseeds.blogspot.fi/