Susanna Hast - Kone Foundation

I am a writer, songwriter and an Associate Professor in Artistic Research in the Theatre Academy at Uniarts Helsinki. I teach and mentor, especially in writing.

I live in Helsinki, and my hobbies include the Afro-Brazilian art form capoeira angola. In my work, I am intrigued by embodiment, emotions and understanding violence. I am currently working as a grant researcher on a project funded by the Kone Foundation titled “The Language of Military Power in Finnish Democracy” (Sotilaallisen vallan kieli suomalaisessa demokratiassa).

At the Saari Residence, I am finishing a novel that will be published in the autumn, which deals with the dark nature of a daughter, the violence associated with inheritance and the refusal to have a relationship.

For me, a novel is always a space for thinking. In my writing, I try to discover a perspective towards the world and to reveal for myself the beginning of truth. The work I am writing during my residency is the result of excessive thinking, of exhausting language, and also a proposal for our posthuman potential, for the end of speech.

As a piece of literature, my work proposes a poetics of harm – an ethics of care that takes into account what we do not care about or what we must stop caring about. Some texts do harm, by forcing us into the vicinity of harm, and that is when we are pushed to the limits of ethics and over the border to where virtue becomes complicated.

As an invited artist at the Saari Residence, I want to think together with the other residence artists about two themes: the possibilities of withdrawal and the neutral, as Roland Barthes describes it.

I received my PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Lapland in 2012, and since then, I have worked on several academic projects studying war experience, synchronous movement and use of voice in military training, capoeira in a refugee camp and the militarisation of society. In 2022, I published my debut novel Body of Evidence with the S&S publishing house. The novel won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for a debut novel, and the book’s translation rights have been sold to Germany. Alongside and within my academic research, I have published two music albums and created sound art. I also perform in the field of music and poetry.