Peer-review event of Joanna Kalm’s artistic project

The peer-review of Joanna Kalm’s artistic project “Kohtkeha. Kehaks olemise ruum” will take place on September 20 12.30–14.00 in Tallinn Art Hall gallery. “Kohtkeha” is the 1st artistic research project of Joanna Kalm’s practice-based doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The thesis is supervised by Dr. Liina Unt (Tartu University)
The peer-reviewers of the project are Leena Rouhianen (University of the Arts Helsinki) and Madli Teller.

Kohtkeha is open from 17th–21st of September at 15:00–20:00 at Tallinn Kunstihoone Galerii, enter and exit as desired.

Koht – place; keha – body; olemise – being; ruum – room, space.

Following, I would propose the English translation as (although falling short of the sense found in Estonian): Bodyplace. A room for being a body.

It is a room where four people gather to be a body. Unconditionally, without knowing what the practice of being a body entails in its ever evolving entirety. They enter to land within themselves (where were they before?), to perceive their inner spaces. They find themselves in a pressure-free environment where the body, with a tendency to become excessively condensed and accelerated, can find the organicity of its flow. To body is to be in experience. Here, they are guided by the dynamic process, desires and needs of their living matter, and their individual embodiments act as evolving and changing scores of the now. To body is to create and hold space. Experiencing creates a field that fills the seemingly empty room with a felt enmindedness, which can be entered into and joined with.

You are invited within.

The modality of participation is flexible – you may witness, be and feel with, self-experience, be on your own, together. The space is held by dance artists Joanna Kalm, Laura Kvelstein, Nele Suisalu and Tatjana Romanova. They have been meeting since the fall of 2022, sporadically and periodically intensively. Kohtkeha is a practice and/or an extended performance and/or a generator of body-based thinking, almost invisibly formed over time.

Kohtkeha is the 1st artistic research project of Joanna Kalm’s doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Joanna’s research deals with education of attention and perception in the context of somatic movement practice and creative works. The main focus of her doctoral studies is to observe the possible ways of being and expressing the body when sensitive self-listening and self-regulation are allowed. At the same time, Joanna is interested in the effect of somatic practice and works on how bodies start to materialise themselves in given frameworks: how they relax, hold themselves, and transform. She asks: What kind of self-materialisation, meaningfulness and value base does somatic approach facilitate?
The more prominent thematic thread in her work is negotiation of agency: Who and what is and can be considered enminded and capable of self-action? She is interested in de-centering the discursive understandings and experiences further from nervous system agency and application of “willpower”, towards the whole organism as a bundle of mindful matter – one of many “minds”. She researches how the expansion of bodily awareness affects which parts of us “think, move and speak along”. The latter, in her view, makes for an education of attention, which involves movement, relationality and engagement within oneself and the world – thus is based on practice.

I would like to thank the dialogue partners and supporters thanks to whom the project is realized:
the creative team, Liina Unt – my supervisor, Kai Valtna – consultant for the creative project, doctoral school of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Tallinn Art Hall. Thank you!