Finnish
Mess and love
Mess and Love is a performance in which performers with different ways of moving eat, make a mess, nurture each other – and sink into terror before an unknown future.
Mess and Love – a collaboration between choreographer Kati Raatikainen, scenographer and artist Milla Martikainen, and their working group – ponders how it feels to live as a human being in a time of climate and environmental crises. The mess humanity has made is irreversible; we cannot simply swap a damaged ecosystem for a new one.
Mess and Love sketches a human being who is sincere, dependent, desiring, and destructive, placing sensuality and destruction side by side. It proposes a different kind of humanity: one in which responsibility and pleasure together reshape our relationship to the systems that fail to recognise the interdependence of people and ecosystems. The work asks: what is life like in a changed world? Is it possible to act in a way that treats all people as equally important?
The work explores the cycle of nourishment through the transformation of edible materials. The choreography is guided by the mouth. The mouth binds our bodies to ecological connections. The mouth searches for something to eat, acting as a passage between nourishment, sound, the air we breathe – the internal and external. The mouth connects people and most other animals to the evolution of movement. The mouth makes a mess, sucks, bites, licks, and wonders. Everything passes through the mouth and our bodies.
Mess and Love continues the collaboration between Raatikainen and Martikainen on ecologically sustainable working practices, the accessibility of performing arts, and existing with the grief and sense of helplessness evoked by the polycrisis.
The work has been inspired by artist and researcher Sunaura Taylor’s book Disabled Ecologies which places ecology and disability theory in dialogue. Taylor emphasises that ecosystems disabled by humans are a material reality present in both human bodies and living environments. Taylor also argues that people living with injury and impairment are indispensable producers of knowledge when building new forms of community and care in a changed world.
The working process has focused on sustainable working methods that accommodate different needs. Some of the performers use wheelchairs.
Choreography: Kati Raatikainen
Lighting and spatial design: Milla Martikainen
Performers: Elina Hauta-aho, Kadar Khristan, Noora Västinen
Sound design: Markku Essel
Costume design: Piia Rinne
Mentor for performers’ work: Taru Aho
Anthropological contextualization and audience facilitation: Patricia Scalco
Consultant for intimacy choreography: Kaisa Kukkonen
Producer: Rosaliina Elgland
Production: Zodiak – Center for New Dance, Kati Raatikainen, Milla Martikainen
In collaboration with: Humina Association
Support: The Finnish Arts and Culture Agency, Otto A. Malm Foundation, The Regional Dance Center of Ostrobothnia
The premiere took place on the 21st of August 2026 at Zodiak Center for New Dance
Teaser by Sinem Kayacan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWnl3m2uL0
Critiques:
https://hannahelavuori.com/kiitos-hamuilusta-kiitos-virityksesta-sotkulle-ja-rakkaudelle/
https://www.hbl.fi/kultur/zodiak-later-krisen-kladda-ner-scenen/
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