Skvallret is a hybrid between a performance and a guided tour. You yourself take on the roles of performer and tour guide and you also slip into the role of a dog. Can you tell us where the idea for this performance originated?
In 2019 I was asked by the Public Art Agency Sweden to create a site specific work for the city of Sundsvall – a (for Sweden) mid-sized city in the middle of the country, close to where I was born and grew up. The commission was to create something that could take place in the city centre. A space which was about to be remade when the bus station of the city was moved from one place to another. A space made out of gravel which mainly harboured night time drug business, kids out and about and people passing by on the way to the bus. A space which for a year would be left as it was, waiting for the big remake of the square.
The same year my dog Pablo was turning 3, and was a complete mess. His fur curled into felt balls, he barked at newborns and bit old men in their heels. As I walked with him in the city, I was on the constant look out for food scraps (no, don’t eat), toddlers (no, don’t bark), skateboarders (no, don’t chase), dogs (no, don’t hump), cats (no, don’t attack) and animal hides (don’t worry, they are not dangerous). At the same time, he made me notice leaves ruffling, made me stop for unusual smells and showed me how to take time to understand the true nature of a black plastic bag stuck on a road sign.
I had for a while been interested in ways of emphasizing the role of the senses in how we as humans understand the world. In various ways I was trying to steer away from the dominance of the gaze towards an interest in listening, with all of the body’s senses. I was influenced by some of the thoughts expressed by Donna Haraway (who herself has developed a close intellectual relationship with and about her dog). I was further interested in the practices of sense perception that are developed within dance, both theoretized and practiced by dancers such as Chrysa Parkinson and as experienced through my personal dancing history. Somehow, I was thinking that this practice based knowledge of sense perception, as present in the dancer, could have a conversation with the more theoretical approaches.
At the same time, I was curious about dog training and social behaviours. The domestication of animals comes with a bouquet of norms of what is considered wanted and unwanted behaviour for a dog among humans. Somehow, these reflect the norms for human social behaviour, but in dog training they are allowed to be shamelessly outspoken. And the conflict lines are big between different kinds of dog training, dog domestication, dog companionship, dogs in relation to their humans. I have used the lingo of the shaping of dog behaviours to think about the social choreography of humans, and other living beings, in public space.
As I started to spend time in Sundsvall, I read up on the official history of the city as well as started to talk to strangers about their stories of the city. I especially spent time with dogs and their owners, accompanying them on their walks around town. In combining these two perspectives, I tried to apply the attention of a dog. To ignore the big buildings in favour of the pee spots, ignore the big picture in favour of the details, ignore the grand narratives in favour of the gossip. With this oscillation between the very far and the very close I started to build a story about the city, and a storyteller that could simultaneously be a city guide, a dog trainer, a dancer, and a dog.
The version we are seeing in Helsinki is specifically recreated for the area of Pihlajamäki as part of Moving in November. How do you develop each new version of this piece? And how does the concept of gossip come into play?
This new version will be developed with the departure point of reflecting both the official and unofficial stories of Pihlajamäki. Especially about how it is to be a dog in Pihlajamäki. I will spend time in Pihlajamäki and hope to meet other dogs who live there. I also will meet people, and when you meet people, you have to really listen. Listen with all the senses. This is the starting point, but as with any gossip it brings you to places you did not already know about. I will try to spend time listening to whatever gossip people and creatures are willing to share. Often, one story leads to a person, who tells a different story, leading to another person, leading to a dog, to a place, to a memory. The concept of gossip comes into play as this collective trail of thoughts and stories, which in its turn is the major part of what constitutes a place. Gossip is subjective, oral and ephemeral, it borders the true and the fantastic, and it is often community building.
In dog training, there is a common practice of “tattling training” (“skvallerträning” in Swedish). This refers to making the dog “tattle” or “gossip” to their human about any potential dangers, attractions or actions that calls their attention. To tell their human first, often through finding eye contact, before they act – giving the human an opportunity to intervene. The concept of gossip thus also refers to this kind of human oriented dog training, with a wink to other dog companions.
How do you situate this work in relation to your choreographic practice, artistic development and in relation to your other performances?
The focus on sense perception as a possibility of looking at the world differently is a theme that has been running through several of my works over the last years. It has taken the shape of the organisation of a series of symposiums on collective learning processes and practice based thinking (as in the case of A Thinking Practice, a collaboration with the researcher in Urban studies Sofia Wiberg), as well as infiltrated my dance works.
Similarly, I have continued moving between the very far and very close perspectives, honing in on personal stories as well as the timeline of humanity at large (as in the solo Sweet from 2022). The practice of storytelling, and of using choreographic means to create a storytelling character, is an ongoing practice which moves in and out of my choreographic works.
However, Skvallret holds a very special position for me as it exists on the silly end of choreography. It does not shy away from the embarrassing, the too close and the intimately filthy. It is created anew for each place, and performed very close to its audience, in public space, and thus needs to be flexible and humble enough to work with its circumstances. In this way, it is a work which is both very demanding and a lot of fun to perform.