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Simo Vassinen and Roope Mokka: Bodytalk
Rave future studies, 18 – 19 June
Photo Maria F. Scaroni
Photo Maria F. Scaroni
Enter the future with the wisdom of nightlife
Join us for a one-day and one-night exploration of futures thinking through the physicality of nightlife. Our common future seems dystopian for many and good reasons. We seem to be unable to think about other options than “business as usual” or an imminent collapse of civilization. In the past few years, however, so many old truths have evaporated, and many are looking for something entirely different than a return to normal. However, our isolated existence has not set our collective imagination free to see and feel what could be. We propose to turn to the night to help us inform the day.
The Bodytalk Summernight Camp is a twenty-two-hour long experimental workshop-residency that brings together nightlife and future. We believe that the dissociative, associative and organizational qualities of rave culture and other ecstatic practices can be visited to feed our imagination with how we can and should live in ten, twenty or more years from now. During the camp, we will dance, meditate, talk, and contemplate the future in diverse body-based sessions together with a DJ – weather permitting also outdoors amongst the beautiful pine trees and vast grounds. The night will find a rave-like peak in the uncharted spaces of the sanatorium. To help us on this voyage, we are joined by DJ Jenny Om, a trailblazer of underground Helsinki nightlife.
The Bodytalk Summernight Camp attempts to imagine and talk about different futures by using embodied techniques that are distilled from nightlife, and rave culture in particular. As an experience, you could consider it a mix of a rave, a wellness retreat, a long-term strategy exercise, and a chance to explore an exciting historical venue that was built as a secluded holistic healing machine ninety years ago. The Camp is hosted by two artist-futurists from the German-Finnish Bodytalk collective.
We wish to build a safer and braver space, where participants are respected and nobody is pushed to do anything that they don’t feel comfortable doing. We will run as an anti-performance: no-one needs to perform anything. The Bodytalk Summernight Camp is suitable for anyone who can move their body to music – it requires no previous experience in either nightlife or future.
The Camp takes place in the unique Paimio Sanatorium that has opened its doors to the public for yet another era in its life. The Camp kicks off at 14.00 on Saturday, June 18 and finds an end at noon on Sunday, June 19. There will be shared and individual time during the camp: everyone is welcome to find their own rhythm.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Bodytalk: About the project
The Bodytalk project was started during the first Corona Lockdowns by Simo Vassinen and Roope Mokka in Berlin and Helsinki to develop ecstatic, often rave-inspired bodily practices to facilitate thinking processes for shared futures. Or, in other words: to match dancing and thinking, the day and the night. We feel that the age-old traditions of stomping to a beat have potential to open up our imagination.
Active on dancefloors since the 1990s, the collective has a specific interest in raves and underground nightlife as testing grounds for how communal physicality could interact with out-of-the-box societal thinking: through ecstatic body states, repetitive beats and movements, simple dances become collective meditations that manifest dreams of togetherness already here and now. We keep asking: how can we activate the body in order to expand imagination?
Bodytalk collaborators so far have included e.g. dance/nightlife/community artists Heather Purcell and Maria F. Scaroni, architect Laura Veronese, and diverse institutions and organizations such as the network of Finnish Cultural Institutes, Kiasma Museum, think tank Demos Helsinki, Ponderosa Dance Center in Germany, and the global Untitled Alliance futures network.
Simo Vassinen and Roope Mokka: About the hosts
Simo Vassinen is a futurist-turned-dancer. For the past decade, he has dedicated his time to everything body-based: dance and choreography, bodywork, somatic practices, meditative movement, dancer mental health, nightlife communities, and an interest in healing –– and endless hours on many kinds of dance floors. Simo has shown his own choreographies in various Berlin theaters such as Sophiensaele, and collaborated across the city’s contemporary dance and queer nightlife scene since 2014. He mixes his choreographic work with e.g. journalism, societal research, psychoanalytical frameworks, drag, and community development.
Roope Mokka is the founder of think tank Demos Helsinki, an artist, futurist, and urbanist with focus on social transformation. Combining futures thinking and artistic methods, Mokka’s work has been commissioned by e.g. Helsinki Festival and curated to the main art arena at the world’s largest participatory culture festival, Burning Man. Mokka is one of the leading authorities in social transitions, which he has studied for over twenty years across contexts and disciplines. Mokka’s art is typically performative and conceptual.
Jenny Om: About the DJ
Workshop details
Bodytalk is a one-night workshop that will take place from Saturday, 18 – Sunday, 19 June.
Participation will be from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. The detailed workshop schedule will be announced soon on this page.
Languages
Finnish and English
Participation requirements
Bodytalk is open for everyone upward from 18 years of age.
Participation and pricing options
There are two participation packages: Those willing to share accommodation and organize their food themselves can choose the participation + crash package. Those who wish to have single-room accommodation provided together with a free dinner on Saturday evening and a Sunday morning breakfast at Restaurant Toivo can choose the single room + full board option. A food plug-in is optionally available for crashers.
Please note: If you are in a stable income situation or currently experiencing financial challenges, please find the information below on how to register as a patron or indicate a wish for peer-supported participation!
The per person package prices are:
Participation + crash: 125 €
Includes a bed in a shared apartment with shared shower, shared or individual bathroom (depending on the apartment) and basic equipment to prepare food.
Crashers' food plug-in: 50 €
Includes dinner and breakfast at Toivo, our brand-new restaurant in the Sanatorium’s lovely historical banquet hall. (Included in the full board option.)
Participation + single room + full board: 275 €
Includes accommodation in a single-room apartment with individual bathroom, shower and kitchen, as well as dinner on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday.
Patron and peer-supported registration
We, Paimio Sanatorium and the Bodytalk organizers, have worked together to bring down the costs of participation, offering many parts of the two packages at or below production cost. Still we understand that, for some, even 125 € can pose a threshold.
Therefore: If you like to join and are in a financial situation that can allow you to help others, we welcome you to let us know in your registration that you would be willing to pay a little extra by ticking the “patron” box. Please, in this case, also state how much that would be in your capacity. Likewise, if you are currently in a situation where some support would help you to participate, please also indicate so when registering. We will get in touch to collect and distribute all patron contributions. This process will be fully anonymous, and no information relating to it will be shared beyond those administering it on the side of Paimio Sanatorium. Patron contributions will be forwarded in their full amount.
Registration
To take part in the workshop, please send us your contact information, the indication of your preferred workshop time(s), whether or not you like us to book accommodation and food for you in addition to your workshop participation, as well as any questions you have and anything else that would be good for us to know, via the registration button below.
Registration is open until one week before the workshop, so please apply by Saturday, 11 June.
Confirmation and payment
Once confirmed by us, your registration is your binding commitment to participate in the workshop you have selected. However, a minimum number of registrations will be required for the workshop to be realized. Once we receive the minimum amount of registrations, we will contact you with the invoice for your participation fee. You will not be asked to pay anything before we send you the participation fee invoice.
Questions?
For questions regarding the workshop or the registration process, please get in touch with the curator of the summer workshop programme, Martin Born: martin.born@paimiosanatorium.com