The exact time and place of the performance will be announced later.
The audio play by Teo Ala-Ruona explores the intimate politics of drinking water.
Tap water not only breaks the boundary between home and public space, but also the internal and external borders of the body. The audio play Etiological Hydro Disruption Report (EHDR) by Teo Ala-Ruona, originally from Kuopio, explores the intimate politics of drinking water.
Ideas of purity and naturalness often go hand in hand, while impurity and unnaturalness are easily associated with technologies and pollutants produced by petrochemical processes. Even though the concepts of natural and unnatural are impossible from an ecological perspective, they are still used as tools for the political classification of bodies.
EHDR connects the body, shaped by oily technologies, to the water cycle, where waste filters from lakes into groundwater and passes through purification processes before reaching our taps. The piece takes the listener on a watery journey, following a being floating in a plastic-seeping womb, out into a world where a multitude of socially normative definitions await it.
The work continues Ala-Ruona’s long-term artistic research into the connections between trans bodies and ecological discourses. He critically examines scientific claims that suggest petrochemical residues in water systems influence the origins of transgender identity.
Waterways
EHDR is part of the multidisciplinary Waterways project, which features works exploring the mythical, ideological, and emotional dimensions of the waterways in eastern Finland. The curator of the Waterways project is Riikka Thitz, who works in the fields of contemporary performance and visual arts, and the project is produced by i dolci ry. More information about Waterways can be found here.
The performance is part of Kuopio250 anniversary year programme and it has received production support of the anniversary year.
