Essi Kausalainen: Newcomers, still from video (HD), 2016.
At first glance, Essi Kausalainen’s performances are deceptively simple: a woman leans back in an office chair as another figure crouches under a blanket; a child drags another child with a potted plant across a plain stage; a small sprig of grass is lit on fire where it has been positioned around a banana. These gestures are almost mundane. With careful attention, however, complex dynamics start to unfold: why do these figures repeat the same gestures? Their unflinching concentration admits a determined but inaccessible logic, as though we do not sense the constraints they operate within. It seems fitting therefore, that Kausalainen’s is especially inspired by plants and fungi, working through the medium of performance to encounter, explore, and potentially embody more-than-human worlds. Kausalainen is a Helsinki-based artist who studied performance art and theory at Turku Arts Academy and the Theatre Academy of Finland. Her work has been exhibited and performed in venues including KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga; Malmö Moderna Museet; Frankfurt Kunstverein; Museum for Contemporary Art Roskilde; Nikolaj Kunsthalle, Copenhagen and Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin.
Caroline Picard: What is it about performance that inspires you as a medium?
Essi Kausalainen: My way of thinking is rather physical. I read a lot—I need all kinds of texts from philosophy to science to poetry to make my work—but I’m very slow with that as I’m reading with my whole body. The text needs to reach the breathing, the pulsating, the flowing—I really have to embody the knowledge to accept it, and to be nurtured by it. Performance practice is very helpful in this. It is a way to gather understanding, to digest, to connect with things I cannot reach with words or intellectual abstractions. Through gestures and actions I can make sense of the world and my own place in it. As a medium, performance can guide our attention towards our sensitivity, and the uttermost susceptibility with which we can read other bodies. I’m also inspired by the ephemerality of performance, the fact that the work appears and disappears without producing any “thing.” I’m inspired by bodies doing things: the fantastic silliness of our existence that this media embraces!
CP: What does it mean to view the world as a single organism? How do conceive our experience of individuality within that frame?
EK: For me it is a question of “us,” and the fact that there is no outside of it. It is a question of responsibility and respect. This is one of the key things the plants have taught me. When studying and observing them I’ve realized that when looking at a plant body I’m always looking at the whole ecosystem, the surroundings, the weather, the climate—all of that is inseparable from the plant body. The same goes with us. The “I” making the work is actually the world around me: it is the plants I live with, the plants I eat and drink that build my body and its bacterial terrain, the people around me, the books I read, the society and its values…I am just a compost trying to create fertile ground out of this all. A bug among millions of others, nothing special. But since the being of this bug belongs to the whole ecosystem it is in no way insignificant or irresponsible: it resonates in unexpected, uncontrolled ways in all the life around it. And this brings it all back to the question of being together—how do we think, approach, be, with this great diversity of others? How do we treat the other and ourselves?
Essi Kausalainen: Newcomers, still from video (HD), 2016.
Essi Kausalainen: Newcomers, still from video (HD), 2016.
CP: What connection or parallels do you see between performance and plant growth? Do plants perform? How has that connection manifested in some of your works?
EK: Oh there are so many strategies plants have in their growth! There are the slow and cautious, the risk takers, and everything in between. But they all throw themselves towards the openness, towards the light—and they don’t really need a witness for this growth, instead they need companions. In that sense performance is quite something different. Yes, it is about throwing your body towards the open space, towards the light, but it has all these different levels of meaning making and sharing… I guess it is the difference between being and doing. Performance always seems to fall into the latter category even when it attempts to fall into the first one. Despite these differences the plant body, and the movement of growth in it, has been a great teacher and inspiration in my work. I guess the plant being is a kind of an ideal that is impossible to achieve as a human body—but momentarily, through a gesture, a performance I can set myself and my co-performers into a situation that resembles it. And gives us thus a great pleasure of being the bodies we are.
CP: I’m also interested in this idea of translation—you talk about translating experience or philosophical knowledge into performance. What does that process entail?
EK: Yes—I feel my artistic practice is a lot about that: my personal process of embodying the knowledge, the theories, the science, the being itself. I am making my work to be able to understand something, some phenomena or experience or relation. To explore the ideas of resisting and surrendering and coming together, the opening and nurturing… I just need the capacity of my whole body and its sensitivity to understand the philosophical—and scientific—thinking. A good example is Michael Marder’s concept of “plant thinking,” which I explored first in a dialogue with a plant biologist and then through a series of performances. It made a great difference to actually act out the plant logic—the attempt to situate my own living, breathing body within this logic. At the moment I’m exploring Luce Irigaray’s thinking on and around love and the concept of (sexuate) difference with the help of mycorrhiza. So far it has taken the shape of a (love) song, a video and performance. And more seems to be on its way!
CP: I’m suddenly reminded of hearing you talk about how scientists learned about your performance and instantly recognized what was going on.
EK: I have been really surprised by the generosity and the openness of the scientists I’ve talked to and worked with. They have taught me a lot about curiosity and creativity. I’ve understood that to be a good scientist you have to be open and not too fixed on your presumptions. Instead you need to keep asking questions, to keep moving in search of new viewpoints—keeping your senses alert. I guess this is also what enables them to look at my work with such fresh and observant eyes, and to recognize patterns and logics. Their gaze, and their company, has encouraged me to develop my own practice further and to trust the viewer’s intellect and sensitivity. These dialogues have also made me aware of the conservative and exclusive features of the art world—and in my own thinking!
CP: You also work quite regularly with children?
EK: Children are so great to work with because they are still connected to their senses. They have great flexibility, openness and understanding of our bodily being. A child is with the world through touching, trying things out—it is a very creative and candid relation. The analytical reasoning does not overrule the sense of wonder, the pleasure of sensing, the imagination. Therefore they are brilliant performers and great fun to work with. And when there are children in the group it is also easier for the grown ups to soften, and to be a bit silly. I find a great importance in that.
Essi Kausalainen: Newcomers, still from video (HD), 2016.
CP: You ask this question, but I also want to re-ask it of you—what does it mean to have a body? How has your answer to that question changed for you over time? What insights or moments changed it?
EK: It has been a long journey with this question! I guess in my early works the focus was on identity: Who is this particular body and why is it what it is? Through the years I have slowly been able to open it up. Moving from my body to a larger ecosystem, a relation between the human and the plant body, and very recently also with the fungi. The collaboration with the plant bodies has been crucial in the process of understanding my own body, the ego, and all of that. It has changed my way of being and thinking and making the work. Therefore I’m very curious to see what the fungi will do!
At the moment being a body means for me being a sensing, sensual, sensitive being. It means an amazing capacity of abstract thinking, of theorizing, of creating and solving problems. Being a body means constant movement, constant change. It means the greatest pleasure and joy—a place to connect, to care, to touch the other.
- Corresponding Between Found and Made: An Interview with Jessica Stockholder - October 5, 2016
- Plant Humans of the Future: An Interview with Saya Woolfalk - August 30, 2016
- Reading with My Whole Body: An Interview with Essi Kausalainen - August 29, 2016
