Master of Fine Arts Soria Hernandez Diana ja työryhmä

Across the Atlantic Ocean and beyond: Affecting the perception of distance, space and time of a performance artist

As a performance artist that lives and works across continents, to decide to travel slow when attending a festival, a residency or as part of the project’s process, is a big commitment as well as a privilege (money and time wise). Within the paradox of sustainability, the most challenging journey is to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 2020 on a cargo boat. I see it as a unique opportunity to bodily experience the “real” distance (10,962 mm) between my home country (Mexico) and my living country (Finland). A journey that echoes one that once was an exploration for new territories, that is loaded with historical memories and that today is an established route for merchandise. As an artist who’s work is body based and site specific, will slow traveling affect the artist and the work’s outcome? Can it be sustainable to cross by ship the Atlantic Ocean, for those who have built a life across continents? How can crossing the Atlantic Ocean by maritime route, or traveling by land through different countries (EU), affect my perception of distance, space and time between? As an extension to the project supported by Kone Foundation in 2018, What is a Body when it is lost? I think of slow traveling, as a particular space of being in-between for preparation, making of the sensation of distance and the extra time something more than waiting. Through performances or actions for camera, small live installations, drawings, scribblings, writings, I will experience traveling.