ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:32:45 +0000 https://oncewewereislands.com en Soft Animal https://oncewewereislands.com/Soft-Animal Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:32:45 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/Soft-Animal Soft Animal Format:&nbsp;PerformanceDates: 15 May 2026 Venue: Light House festival,&nbsp;Mad House &amp; Reality Research Center, Helsinki (FI)Duration: 50 min Language: English Tickets: Available here <img width="5845" height="3851" width_o="5845" height_o="3851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/879d74eea571b299c8626b2b7d62d9d49edb54759fe7c2e1a3c7022cf4250654/SoftAnimal_OnceWeWereIslands_MathiasReding_Horzontal.jpg" data-mid="247190176" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/879d74eea571b299c8626b2b7d62d9d49edb54759fe7c2e1a3c7022cf4250654/SoftAnimal_OnceWeWereIslands_MathiasReding_Horzontal.jpg" /> Direction, text, performance:&nbsp;ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Light House festival curation: Olga Spyropoulou&nbsp; Other Light House participating artists: Haliz Yosef, Salla Valle, Viljami Nissi &amp; Aeon Lux “You all know why we’re here. If you’ve changed your mind, now is the time to leave.” We got a micro-grant. We were supposed to write a play with it. But you know the artworld. It’s only ever abouting — about change, about community, about care — and never seems to be about doing. So, we took the money and started a cult with it instead. A direct action cult. A radical cult. To become soft animals. Fuck moderation. We bought an old van. Filled it with petrol. Got some tools. What could go wrong? Soft Animal is a short story about the very first night of a brand new future. Out on a hill. Under the moon. Far enough from the city to avoid dog-walkers and the cops. Told with voices, badly dancing bodies, and a cassette tape of final songs. <img width="4933" height="3289" width_o="4933" height_o="3289" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a7aed3d33c789aadb441474261bed9696fd016a433048e3b5bcc828fe8364bf7/pexels-matreding-5662230.jpg" data-mid="247190226" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a7aed3d33c789aadb441474261bed9696fd016a433048e3b5bcc828fe8364bf7/pexels-matreding-5662230.jpg" /> Photography by Mathias Reding (creative commons). Light House festival is produced by Mad House Helsinki &amp; Reality Research Center. Soft Animal is also kindly supported by Esiintymä Festival, Outokumpu. Thanks to Veera Leppänen &amp; Ruby Louise Rose. First Spell for a Glass Portal https://oncewewereislands.com/First-Spell-for-a-Glass-Portal Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:24:00 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/First-Spell-for-a-Glass-Portal Future Magic — First Spell for a Glass Portal Between Two Worlds Format:&nbsp;TextDates: Dec 2025 - Jan 2026 Venue: Eurantie Window Publication, Helsinki (FI)Language: Damiá, English, Finnish Publication: Multipöly <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3763a95040e5fb0be72f15f70ac7327436424b54809956cb11163ff1422c2291/FirstSpell_web1.jpg" data-mid="245389048" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3763a95040e5fb0be72f15f70ac7327436424b54809956cb11163ff1422c2291/FirstSpell_web1.jpg" /> Text, English translation: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Design: Katri AstalaFinnish translation: Kasper SalonenPublisher: Multipöly The 35th text of the Eurantie Window Publication is written by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and designed by Katri Astala. The text is on view from 4 December to 28 January, 2026.&nbsp; ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS is Chris Gylee and Aslan and they have been living their lives together and making art together for almost 16 years now. In 2023, they moved from Berlin and made a new home in Outokumpu in North Karelia. They tell stories about Queer lives and Queer futures in rurality through a science-fiction lens, often using the Queer constructed language Damiá as an artistic tool.&nbsp; Katri Astala is a graphic designer specialising in organizing, concepts and typography. The text is set to flow from one side of the window to the other. The text is presented in the Damiá script, tolpata. The typefaces used are Damiá Agate and Mana.&nbsp; English and Finnish translations of the text can be found via the QR code in the window, and also here below. The Finnish translation was made by Kasper Salonen, and the English translation by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS. <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d027cf6f647df4a3a7a1aa877dc58b3dc67fd8221b6844f384838724bf4b22a7/FirstSpell_web2.jpg" data-mid="245389314" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d027cf6f647df4a3a7a1aa877dc58b3dc67fd8221b6844f384838724bf4b22a7/FirstSpell_web2.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4826c85046716ac0ce8c34ae509aeeb21a0e329c31cb4166069e0cf45029d482/FirstSpell_web3.jpg" data-mid="245389315" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4826c85046716ac0ce8c34ae509aeeb21a0e329c31cb4166069e0cf45029d482/FirstSpell_web3.jpg" /> FUTURE MAGIC First spell for a glass portal between two worlds (Words in circles) UTTER Like Audre says — silence is no protection Come close Breath on the glass Sound slowly Then getting louder Go A singer in the world Angry A brave one BELIEVE Like Danez says — we need better gods Stop Falling from your hand Face up to the sky Winter into your mouth No illusions Basic fucking utopia Brow on the mirror Wet skin like a shrine SUFFICE Like Leah says — the future is disabled Continue Sinew trembling You’re a wave now The seas swallow your land This shaking is enough Has to be Ice feet on stone We’re all we’ve got <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5430d3b645f545df6c4a6e61e2d81eebc391541bcf1038dbdfc837f96d1302a3/FirstSpell_web4.jpg" data-mid="245389316" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5430d3b645f545df6c4a6e61e2d81eebc391541bcf1038dbdfc837f96d1302a3/FirstSpell_web4.jpg" /> TULEVAISUUSTAIKAA Ensimmäinen loitsu kahden maailman väliselle lasiportaalille (Sanat ympyröissä) VIRKO Kuten Audre sanoo — hiljaisuus ei ole turva Tule lähelle Henkäys ikkunalla Ääntä hitaasti Sitten voimistuu Mene Laulaja maailmassa Vihainen Urho USKO Kuten Danez sanoo — tarvitsemme paremmat jumalat Pysähdy Kädestäsi putoavaKasvot taivaisiin Talvi suuhusi Ei harhoja Perus vitun utopia Otsa peilillä Märkä iho kuin pyhättö RIITÄ Kuten Leah sanoo — tulevaisuus on vammautunut Jatka Jänne väristen Olet aalto nyt Meret nielaisevat maasi Tämä tärinä riittää Sen täytyy Jääjalat kivellä Olemme kaikki mitä meillä on <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ada1e8fc85ac21dca0d455cbf56a3c4d6a9c3ab69b7c2e9642750d46e1897122/FirstSpell_web5.jpg" data-mid="245389317" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ada1e8fc85ac21dca0d455cbf56a3c4d6a9c3ab69b7c2e9642750d46e1897122/FirstSpell_web5.jpg" /> <img width="700" height="90" width_o="700" height_o="90" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9fa91da9b58d5aaaaad3ed8e754795e1f43bb794c29a7cbdfcb76d45097b0eb9/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="245388896" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/700/i/9fa91da9b58d5aaaaad3ed8e754795e1f43bb794c29a7cbdfcb76d45097b0eb9/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> Photography by Multipöly Eurantie Window Publication is published by Multipöly and supported by the Kone Foundation. With Forests in Our Mouths https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:48:58 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths With Forests in Our Mouths Speaking Queer Utopias into Being 2024 Format: Constellation artwork Dates: Jan 2024 - Dec 2025 Venues: Multiple locations and online Chapter One: 05-21 Apr 2024, Titanik, Turku (FI) Chapter Two: 06-09&nbsp;Jun 2024, Hiljaisuus Festivaali, Kaukonen (FI) &amp; from 20 Jun 2024, Online Chapter Three: 30 Aug 2024, Kaivos Festivaali, Outokumpu (FI)Chapter Four: 02&nbsp;Oct 2024, Finnish Institute, Berlin (DE) &amp; as a print publicationChapter Five: 11&nbsp;Oct 2024, JUCKPULVER Festival, Theater neben dem Turm, Marburg; 16-17 Oct 2024, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE)Chapter Six: From Nov 2024 onwards, weekly Damiá language class, onlineChapter Seven: 11-27 Apr 2025, Lou gallery, Helsinki (FI)Language: English, Damiá, Finnish Project website: withforestsinourmouths.com Article: A Constellation Artwork <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/86cc37f939994c67c1703dcd31c42561ef5c31bbf8e4c00ce6b546aff4722ea3/WithForestsInOurMouths_web.jpg" data-mid="202431285" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/86cc37f939994c67c1703dcd31c42561ef5c31bbf8e4c00ce6b546aff4722ea3/WithForestsInOurMouths_web.jpg" /> Artistic direction, text, performance, design: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Working together as the Queer multidisciplinary performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, we will create and present the project With Forests in Our Mouths: Speaking Queer Utopias into Being. We will bring together live performance, filmworks, sound installation and publication to explore multiple visions of Queer utopias. We will use Queer biography, speculative fiction, and auto-ethnography as the raw material for this two-year project. With Forests in Our Mouths is a ‘constellation artwork’ and each chapter offers an entry into the artistic enquiry of the overall work. It can be accessed in various times and places and in various different combinations. Audiences are given space to overlay their own interpretations and to make their own connections. The stories we will tell are Queer myths brought back from a place that exists outside of time and place — a forested planet, ghosts from utopias of the past, journeys through time and space, sex and starships, strange grammar. We ask: What if Queer people had brand new words to speak with? What if we had a place that we could truly call home? The project is an urgent attempt to imagine kinder, more accessible, and more sustainable futures where Queer bodies can thrive; it is an artistic attempt to answer the question: Where do we go from here?; and it represents a radical reimagining of our working practices, freed from the limitations and demands of the boom-bust cycle of short-term funding models. For With Forests in Our Mouths we will be based in our rural home and studio in Outokumpu, North Karelia, with research trips, residencies, and public sharings taking place in locations locally, across Finland, and internationally. <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d4c3cedc570f0b5988aee1cd02383b2eb588bd4ba1bd6ece0611347bc104f9c8/WithForestsInOurMouths_3_web.jpg" data-mid="202869140" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d4c3cedc570f0b5988aee1cd02383b2eb588bd4ba1bd6ece0611347bc104f9c8/WithForestsInOurMouths_3_web.jpg" /> A Vision We reimagine ourselves as 21st century travelling players. Living novels. We will hold a repertoire of stories in our bodies, ready to be told. It is our magic that we can see the edges of other worlds, hear the words spoken there, feel it all keenly under our skins. The stories we will tell are Queer Myths, brought back from a place that exists outside of time; an elsewhere; a simultaneous layering of future, present, and past. We arrive quietly, by train or boat or on foot, with just the clothes we wear and the bags on our backs. We take our places on the simple wooden stage under the cinema screen; on the diving platform at the edge of the lake; in the clean white box of the gallery, facing out through the windows onto the river beyond; in the artist’s studio, the grand piano to our left, brushes and colour lined up on shelves under the window. We close our eyes, take a deep breath, open our mouths. A forested planet emerges. Ghosts. Journeys through the stars. Strange grammar. Sex and starships. Every time we tell our stories, they change form, take on new orders. They are never the same twice. Sometimes they are urgent; sometimes pulled up like strange fish from muddy waters; sometimes hanging in the air, bright and transparent. We do this job already — we have done it for years — but it’s easy to get lost in the glare of the lights and the glitter of costumes; the clutter of posters hanging at the door of the theatre; the press of the crowd. But when we take a moment to look inside ourselves, this is why we come here; why we put our bodies on view; why we travel to new places to find new stories; dig snow; hitch lifts; walk for endless hours in the forest. We also have a new magic. Our bodies can travel to multiple places and times as copies, traces, digital signatures. We are faith healers, not just of flesh, but as words on a page, shapes on a screen, vibrations from a machine. We become an archive, a song. We whisper into your ears wherever you are; in the city; on the bus; running through the trees; looking out over the endless sea. Our stories will be heard wherever they are needed. <img width="4262" height="2841" width_o="4262" height_o="2841" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a88785afaff61cce48c5edff9f14f8ec0ef6b8c620b87bc2a14fce832b9760fc/202402_TITANIK-BANNER_02_HORIZONTAL.jpg" data-mid="205653395" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a88785afaff61cce48c5edff9f14f8ec0ef6b8c620b87bc2a14fce832b9760fc/202402_TITANIK-BANNER_02_HORIZONTAL.jpg" /> Chapter OneLike Déjà-Vu But The Other Way Around Format: Exhibition, sound installation Dates: 05 - 21 Apr 2024, Vernissage 04 Apr 2024 Venue: Titanik, Turku (FI)Language: English, Damiá Artworks; sound installation: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanArtwork contributions: Esther Boles, Óscar González, Elena Polzer, Julia Cervantes &amp; Zach Blumner&nbsp; Poster banner:&nbsp;Elena PolzerPoster photography:&nbsp;Óscar González Sound support: Arvid van der Rijt Featured voices: Olivia &amp; Margaret Basterfield, Jennifer Bell, Abby Boak, Elliott Cennetoglu, Amber Fasquelle, Kit Gee, Óscar González, Fedor Herrmann, Mmakgosi Kgabi, Inky Lee, Elena Polzer, Animal J. Smith, amongst others Like Déjà-Vu But The Other Way Around is the first chapter in the durational constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths — Speaking Queer Utopias into Being by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (2024-25). It explores Queer futures through a constructed Queer language called Damiá.The front room of the gallery houses a ‘folk archive’ (2020-24) including artefacts produced by the emergent Damiá speech community, such as textiles, photography, fonts, bookworks, films and songs. In the back room a multi-channel sound installation evokes a utopian Queer bar where only Damiá is spoken. Over interwoven voices, a large handsewn banner declares: bacve, asi ca asi daz, camsa! An ink drawing reimagines The Stonewall Inn in a parallel reality. The artefacts and installation blur fact and fiction and reflect the ongoing proposal of Damiá as both an idea and real-world multi-year community art practice. Together they ask what it would mean for Queer people to have our own language. The works fantasise on the notion of the Queer Bar as a kind of utopia — an everywhere and a nowhere. In this iteration, it is also a linguistic space; a quantum universe where we can speak to each other with brand new words. Aslan began creating Damiá as a Queer teenager and has worked with it ever since. It is a fully functioning language, with a dictionary and grammar, and Aslan speaks it fluently. In 2020, after more than 10 years living and working together, Chris began learning it in earnest. In the years since, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS have taught online classes to a growing community of Queer learners, and created and shared texts, performances, and artworks in Damiá. Damiá has only ever been spoken by Queer people.If you would like to find out more about Damiá, or even learn it, then contact us at info@oncewewereislands.com. <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a8c2cdba595df9e86f43f6eee6ceac8a49a560197a99b030ee02aa846a244777/DSC00805.JPG" data-mid="212006231" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a8c2cdba595df9e86f43f6eee6ceac8a49a560197a99b030ee02aa846a244777/DSC00805.JPG" />Chapter TwoTHICK TIME (OS GERMA /&nbsp;TIHEÄ AIKA) Format: Short film Dates: 09 - 11 Jun 2024 (festival premiere) / from 20 Jun 2024 (online) Venue: Hiljaisuus Festivaali, Kaukonen (FI) Duration: 17 minLanguage: English, Damiá, Finnish Text, film, performance: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanFinnish translation: Roy Boswell Additional photographic imagery: Óscar González THICK TIME (OS GERMA / TIHEÄ AIKA) is the second chapter of the ‘constellation artwork’ With Forests in Our Mouths. This chapter centres on a short film inspired by visits to the home of visual artist Reidar Särestöniemi (1925-1981) on the banks of the Ounasjoki near to Kaukonen village and research into the Queer histories of Reidar and fellow artist and lover Kalervo Palsa (1947-1987). Poetic text and imagery together dream a speculative moment from their lives in a parallel utopian reality.“Come on Cial, let’s make a new life / I’m out / Digging the patch / Thinking up a new name for you / It’s a serious business / I’m hunting for a colour in the wet earth …” The film lingers on ideas of re-naming ourselves and starting again. If Reidar were called Amber, and Palsa had called himself Chalk, would a different future have become possible? What’s in a name? THICK TIME weaves together English, Finnish and the Queer language Damiá, through four memories, as time layers up with earth, ink, roots, and dancing bodies. THICK TIME will premiere for live audiences at Hiljaisuus Festivaali and then be available to view for online audiences from summer solstice onwards, here on this website and on Vimeo. During the festival days in Kaukonen, the short research film Self Portrait as Heliotrope (2022) will also be screened. <img width="2000" height="1333" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/25ad5467a7cb783921f46279345dd772a991bea08773c397fd61d530b379e3bb/RememberingColours_web.jpg" data-mid="215385419" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/25ad5467a7cb783921f46279345dd772a991bea08773c397fd61d530b379e3bb/RememberingColours_web.jpg" /> Chapter ThreeRemembering Colours Format: Performance Dates: 30 Aug 2024, 19:30 Venue: Kaivos Festivaali, Outokumpu (FI) Duration: 40&nbsp;minLanguage: English, Finnish,&nbsp;Damiá Direction, text, performance: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanFinnish translation: Roy Boswell Additional voices: Debi Kuisma, Tuuli Haapanen Rose, dust, bronze, pewter, ash … In this new live performance, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS take four black and white portraits from the 1980s found in a book in the local library and re-imagine them into a sci-fi myth. It is a time of ending and beginning. A time when old lives are left behind in search of a new world. The four figures from the photographs — the Journeyer, the Companion, the Navigator, the Hunter — tell of a New Karelia, a world in which colours are used as new names, and in which memories become dances. The body reworked as a tool to hold on to what is vital.&nbsp; ‘We can’t make something new,’ they say, ‘if we bring the past with us.’ In an empty industrial building at the top of a Strange Hill, Remembering Colours, is performed by Aslan and Chris with a tape recorder of ghost-voices, the shipping news and a carousel slide projector. The performance takes place as the late August sun descends and summer brightness fades into shades of autumn. … frost, sleet, magma, milk, charcoal, tar … Remembering Colours is the third chapter of With Forests in Our Mouths, a durational constellation artwork made up of multiple interconnected chapters shared across 2024 and 2025 and including performances, films, exhibitions and publications. <img width="3480" height="2458" width_o="3480" height_o="2458" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3070d2bae0ab9f78517a937061ae873ef759fcedacb4ddb282c909564c79792e/Heliala_OnceWeWereIslands.jpg" data-mid="217132903" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3070d2bae0ab9f78517a937061ae873ef759fcedacb4ddb282c909564c79792e/Heliala_OnceWeWereIslands.jpg" /> Chapter FourHelialá — A Gathering of Poems &nbsp; Format: Publication (limited edition print &amp; online PDF), short film Dates: 02 Oct 2024 Launch venue: Finnland-Institut, Berlin (DE)Language: English, Damiá, Italian, Filipino, Binisaya Editing; design, film: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanPoems: Stefani J Alvarez, Jacob Louis Beany, Moss Berke, Dion Zavea (Esther Boles), Micol Curatolo, Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Kit Gee, Sky Jing Lee, Anna T., TEINIART, and Jack YoungReadings: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS,&nbsp;Xdzunúm Danae Trejo-Boles, Mmakgosi Kgabi Helialá — A Gathering of Poems is a collection of thirteen new poems, presented in their original languages of composition with translations into the Queer, constructed language Damiá. The poems respond to the thematic impulse of Queer Utopias, and the printed publication represents the fourth chapter from the durational ‘constellation artwork’ With Forests in Our Mouths (2024-25) by Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS.On 2nd October, the publication will be launched at the Finnland-Institut in Berlin with poetry readings in English and in Damiá. A brand-new short film featuring all thirteen poems recorded in Damiá alongside cyanotype imagery will be shown in the Institute foyer. Printed copies of Helialá will be available to take home, free of charge to attendees. If you would like to request a free copy of Helialá please write to us at info(at)oncewewereislands.com or send us a DM, with your name and postal address. We can then let you know what the postage contribution would be. The first print edition of Helialá is 200 copies, and we will distribute on a first-come-first-served basis after the initial launch event in Berlin. If you would struggle to pay the postage contribution, please just let us know — a number of copies can be sent with postage costs waived. A PDF version of the publication will also be available to download online, after 2nd October. <img width="2000" height="1051" width_o="2000" height_o="1051" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ae3693d1629e720daeb88804ed626626e1ba3dc22ff4bca9ee35264f490eacbb/Palace-of-Ash-and-Rain-Web.jpg" data-mid="217134927" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ae3693d1629e720daeb88804ed626626e1ba3dc22ff4bca9ee35264f490eacbb/Palace-of-Ash-and-Rain-Web.jpg" /> Chapter FivePalace of Ash and Rain Format: Performance Dates: 11&nbsp;Oct; 16-17 Oct 2024 Venues: JUCKPULVER festival, Theater neben dem Turm, Marburg; Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE)Duration: 60 min Language: English, Damiá Tickets JUCKPULVER: Available here Tickets Ballhaus Ost: Available here Direction, text, performance: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Light: Elliott CennetogluSound: Jean P’ark Image: Óscar González Don’t you knowThey’re talking about a revolution? There! You can see it through the trees. A tower, a wall, a path through the leaves. A place out of time. Everyone is welcome at the Palace — but you have to leave everything behind: memories, your old life, even your name. For your new name, you can choose a colour: Rose, Turquoise, Fuchsia, Sage. There are rooms for sleeping, workshops, an infirmary and gardens. There’s karaoke sung in a brand new language. A lonely dance we dance once a year. In this new live performance, Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS attempt to imagine a Queer Utopia: post capitalist, post trauma, post addiction, post sadness, post joy — an After to the mess that came Before. Don’t you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run … Palace of Ash and Rain is the fifth chapter of With Forests in Our Mouths, a durational constellation artwork made up of multiple interconnected chapters shared across 2024 and 2025 and including performances, films, exhibitions and publications.Accessibility: Palace of Ash and Rain aims to create a more accessible performance space for both audience and performers. Audience lighting levels will remain at a level where it is possible to move around and to leave the space if necessary. Alternative seating options will be available. The doors to the performance space will open at 19:30 and audiences are welcome to come and join us there to relax and get comfortable, listen to music, or ask questions until the performance begins at 20:00. <img width="1500" height="1000" width_o="1500" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/77a532fceb5fbefebaa42a0ddc31c9aaa7e6b7b74fb3a41a05010dbc2e80a9e6/DamiaD_Edit_6web_b.jpg" data-mid="229099328" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/77a532fceb5fbefebaa42a0ddc31c9aaa7e6b7b74fb3a41a05010dbc2e80a9e6/DamiaD_Edit_6web_b.jpg" /> Chapter SixTobba Mó // Speech Community Format: Language classes, linguistic tools, publications, fonts, translations, conversations Dates: Nov 2024 — Dec 2025Language class: Mondays, weekly, 18:30 GMT / 19:30 CET / 20:30 EET Venue: Online, various locations Language: English, Damiá Direction, artwork, texts, translations: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Language classes: Aslan Language class participants include: Ar Gogo, Siasta Topi, Zavea Dion, Iagot Cial, Habes Hareg, Vappalie, Coco Amen, Sarapa Saipa, Hala Batsba, Retec Hoc, amongst others Aslan, November 2024:

 Damiá is a Queer constructed language that I began creating when I was perhaps thirteen years old. It has been a part of my life ever since. Sometimes secret, sometimes in the background, but always there. It has been like a radio set that I have carried around with me for most of my life that I can turn down a little but can never, ever turn off. There have been times in my life when it frustrated me. Why did I need this strange compulsion — this odd demand on my attention that I didn’t even really understand how to talk about? I even purposefully deleted all my files on the language, more than once, insistent that it could go nowhere, that I should focus on more important things. But then, days or weeks or even months later, I would find myself piecing things back together again, painstakingly reconstructing and continuing from where I left off. 

 Things changed when a strange idea invaded my mind. I don’t know where it came from and when it first arrived it was rather unwelcome. It went something like this:

 But, of course! Damiá is a Queer language!

 A language for the Queer community. OK. That meant I needed to ‘gift’ it to the Queer community. Who was I to gift anything to the Queer community? What if they didn’t want it? What if they all looked at me and laughed?

 But some ideas will not be refused and this was one of them. I talked to Chris about it and it seemed to make sense to him. Then in 2020, he informed me, quite out of the blue, that he would like to learn Damiá properly and that we should use Damiá in our work. He became Second Speaker and the cat was out of the bag.
A lot has happened since then. Damiá has become a filter through which we understand Queerness and how the world could be different. It is a way of aligning utopian thought with the artwork we make in a practical way. It is a place we can go to and a real thing in the world which is also simultaneously a fantasy. We’ve made films and performances using Damiá, published books and zines in it too. A new alphabet with six different fonts. Chris and I use Damiá every day — when running in the snow, sitting in the sauna, cooking and shopping, whenever we don’t want to be overheard or understood.&nbsp; Another itching thought that wouldn’t go away:

 What if there were a whole community of Damiá speakers who used the language in their everyday lives? What then?
Tobba Mó / Speech Community is Chapter Six of&nbsp;With Forests in Our Mouths, our two-year constellation artwork and exploration of Queer utopias. Unlike the other chapters, it does not consist of a discrete output, such as a live performance, an exhibition, a film, or a publication. Instead it is a place where we explore together what Damiá means in terms of a tool to uncover and articulate what a linguistic Queer utopia might look like. It is a vessel that holds the weekly Damiá classes that take place on Zoom, linguistic and pedagogical tools and publications, such as grammars and dictionaries, fonts and almanacs. It is a place for translation of songs and poems and the expression of new ideas. It is built on the trajectory of a group as well as one-on-one conversations and is perhaps even a way for Damiá to become a means of expression for other artists. 

 Tobba Mó / Speech Community&nbsp;is a home for all the effort and imagination that Damiá attracts to itself and also a chance to document what happens. I don’t know where it will go, and as artworks go, it is quite a strange one. All I know is that it reaches from somewhere inside me — somewhere inside us now, because even though the community is young and fragile, it is real — toward a future that is unknown. 

 If you would like to participate in&nbsp;Tobba Mó / Speech Community or find out more about Damiá and our artwork, please contact us at info(at)oncewewereislands.com <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/22b00f17d43e7954cbd682bfe5f610b6085e588623dc4db4fe355c5fd0b94b19/EchoBallads_Landscape_OWWIWeb.jpg" data-mid="229102019" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/22b00f17d43e7954cbd682bfe5f610b6085e588623dc4db4fe355c5fd0b94b19/EchoBallads_Landscape_OWWIWeb.jpg" /> Chapter SevenEcho Ballads// Pasián Esba Format: Performance (120 min), exhibition Dates: 10 Apr 2025 (performance, 18-20); 11-27 Apr 2025 Venue: Lou gallery, Helsinki (FI) Language: Damiá, English, Finnish Performance, text, video, costumes: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Curator: Remi VesalaSound support, live recording: Arvid van der Rijt “Actually, we do have karaoke but you mustn’t breathe a word about it to anyone. Ever.” If there is to be singing in Utopia, we have to make room for false notes, too! We can’t imagine getting to the new world and all of us being perfectly in tune. Utopia can’t be an excuse for musical fascism. It’s a place for wild singing under the moon. And the moon doesn’t care what you sound like. We lost all the old lyrics but we made up better ones — in the new language, using brand new words, singing about things we actually care about. We wear special costumes we made from old cloth, stitching magic into the threads since the Dark Days ended. Karaoke is our revolution and finally it’s Commons. Echo Ballads // Pasián Esba is a live performance and exhibition by Queer collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, and represents the Seventh Chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths (2024/25). <img width="4160" height="2340" width_o="4160" height_o="2340" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/754479bda7b51e87197e9967a77850f262e39e9ee40c782134e32a117c5f810f/IMG-20250131-WA0004.jpeg" data-mid="232935996" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/754479bda7b51e87197e9967a77850f262e39e9ee40c782134e32a117c5f810f/IMG-20250131-WA0004.jpeg" /> <img width="3636" height="469" width_o="3636" height_o="469" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="202431986" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> The above images include photography by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and Óscar González.&nbsp;With Forests in Our Mouths&nbsp;is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production, supported in 2024 and 2025 by the Kone Foundation, and part of the Metsän puolella community of arts and research projects. Also kindly supported by Titanik, Silence Residency, TUO TUO Residency, Kaivos Festivaali, Mustarinda, Theater neben dem Turm, Ballhaus Ost, Finnland Institut, Lou gallery, XS – Festival for New Dance and Performance.&nbsp;Additional thanks to: Arnita Jaunsubrena, Kristin Gerwien and the team at Theater neben dem Turm; Karita Tikka, Joonas Martikainen and the team at Hiljaisuus Festivalli; Katariina Vähäkallio and the team at Kaivos Festivaali; Juha Hirvonen and the team from Riveria; the Old Mine, Outokumpu; Mirjami Schuppert and the team at the Finnland Institut; Olivia Basterfield; Jennifer Bell; Abby Boak; Esther Boles; Niklas Ekholm; Amber Fasquelle; Ethan Folk; Kit Gee; Óscar González; Mmakgosi Kgabi; Inky Lee; Elena Polzer &amp; Fedor Herrmann; Taylor Mac, Machine Dazzle, and Pomegranate Arts; Anu Pasanen; Tuuli Haapanen &amp; Vaski Ylhäinen; Debi Kuisma &amp; Ida Loukkaanhuhta; the poets of Helialá; Xdzunúm Trejo; Anna Matveinen; Juliana Irene Smith &amp; Arvid van der Rijt; Remi Vesala; Esko Vihava. With Forests in Our Mouths (2025) https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths-2025 Thu, 15 May 2025 08:01:55 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths-2025 With Forests in Our Mouths Speaking Queer Utopias into Being (2025) Format: Constellation artwork Dates: Jan 2024 - Dec 2025 Venues: Multiple locations and online Chapter Seven: 11-27 Apr 2025, Lou gallery, Helsinki (FI); 25 Apr 2025, Esiintymä Festival, Outokumpu (FI)Chapter Eight: Book release, Jul 2025 Chapter Nine: 24-25 Sep 2025, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE) Chapter Ten: 02-14 Nov 2025, Loisti gallery, Helsinki (FI); Forest walk, Outokumpu (FI); Digital release, True Aether Chapter Eleven: 28-30 Nov 2025, Titanik gallery, XS-Festival, Turku (FI) Chapter Twelve: Publication, Dec 2025Language: English, Damiá, Finnish Project website: withforestsinourmouths.com Article: A Constellation Artwork <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/730de4020790a497e0ca1d26744c7054b895d9f374af20abd99c9033525110af/WithForestsInOurMouths_2.jpg" data-mid="233231583" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/730de4020790a497e0ca1d26744c7054b895d9f374af20abd99c9033525110af/WithForestsInOurMouths_2.jpg" /> Artistic direction, text, performance, design: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Working together as the Queer multidisciplinary performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, we will create and present the project With Forests in Our Mouths: Speaking Queer Utopias into Being. We will bring together live performance, filmworks, sound installation and publication to explore multiple visions of Queer utopias. We will use Queer biography, speculative fiction, and auto-ethnography as the raw material for this two-year project. With Forests in Our Mouths is a ‘constellation artwork’ and each chapter offers an entry into the artistic enquiry of the overall work. It can be accessed in various times and places and in various different combinations. Audiences are given space to overlay their own interpretations and to make their own connections. The stories we will tell are Queer myths brought back from a place that exists outside of time and place — a forested planet, ghosts from utopias of the past, journeys through time and space, sex and starships, strange grammar. We ask: What if Queer people had brand new words to speak with? What if we had a place that we could truly call home? The project is an urgent attempt to imagine kinder, more accessible, and more sustainable futures where Queer bodies can thrive; it is an artistic attempt to answer the question: Where do we go from here?; and it represents a radical reimagining of our working practices, freed from the limitations and demands of the boom-bust cycle of short-term funding models. For With Forests in Our Mouths we will be based in our rural home and studio in Outokumpu, North Karelia, with research trips, residencies, and public sharings taking place in locations locally, across Finland, and international <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/acab44ea3b5aca9ca5212b82ff4039801d12fa5d093ef0e085b5295ab0965ead/EchoBallads_Landscape_OWWIWeb.jpg" data-mid="233231582" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/acab44ea3b5aca9ca5212b82ff4039801d12fa5d093ef0e085b5295ab0965ead/EchoBallads_Landscape_OWWIWeb.jpg" /> Chapter SevenEcho Ballads // Pasián Esba Format: Performance (120 min), exhibition Dates: 10 Apr 2025 (performance, 18-20); 11-27 Apr 2025 Venue: Lou gallery, Helsinki (FI) Language: Damiá, English, Finnish Performance, text, video, costumes: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Curator: Remi VesalaSound support, live recording: Arvid van der Rijt “Actually, we do have karaoke but you mustn’t breathe a word about it to anyone. Ever.” If there is to be singing in Utopia, we have to make room for false notes, too! We can’t imagine getting to the new world and all of us being perfectly in tune. Utopia can’t be an excuse for musical fascism. It’s a place for wild singing under the moon. And the moon doesn’t care what you sound like. We lost all the old lyrics but we made up better ones — in the new language, using brand new words, singing about things we actually care about. We wear special costumes we made from old cloth, stitching magic into the threads since the Dark Days ended. Karaoke is our revolution and finally it’s Commons. Echo Ballads // Pasián Esba is a live performance and exhibition by Queer collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, and represents the Seventh Chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths (2024/25). <img width="2000" height="1333" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f0c3b8242b27ab9f8a9de944558208abae92cacc2eb15718e7b83aa5214d0a5e/TheDeep_web2.jpg" data-mid="236022341" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f0c3b8242b27ab9f8a9de944558208abae92cacc2eb15718e7b83aa5214d0a5e/TheDeep_web2.jpg" /> Chapter EightThe Deep Format: Limited edition publication Release date: Jul 2025 Live reading venue: TUO TUO, Joutsa (FI) Language: Damiá, English, Finnish Request a reader’s copy: Online contact form Pier: Online PDF Concept, text, design: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Launch support: TUO TUOResidency support 2024: Saari Residency “Departure.The journey has begun.There is no turning back — it’s far too late for that.They told us it will take forty days and forty nights.To cross The Deep.I came with nothing.”The Deep is a novella in eight-hundred lines recounting a voyage of forty days and forty nights from the point of view of two narrators in sections of ten lines per narrator per twenty-four hour period. It was written collaboratively over forty consecutive days in the winter of 2024 as the nights lengthened towards the solstice in the wetland landscape of southwest Finland. What used to be islands now rise as wooded hillocks from flat fields and the shadows of geese move against the sky.The Deep is the eighth chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths and was printed in the summer of 2025 in a limited edition of three copies. Two copies will be sent out into the world to be read while the third will remain in our studio in North Karelia as a reference and anchor. When a reader finishes the book, it is their task to give or mail it to a new reader. It is our hope that the two copies will circulate slowly over the coming months and years in a quiet eulogy to the inter-library loan system. The book is free to read. The only cost is to mail it to the next reader. If for any reason you will struggle to pay the postage, please contact us and we will do our best to help. In the first pages of the print publication is a readers’ log. Please add your name (or pseudonym), location and the date you begin to read. If the log pages fill up, please add a loose paper insert. If you choose, you may also take a picture of the log and send it to us at info[at]oncewewereislands.com.To request a copy of the book please fill out the contact form here, and we will add you to the list of readers. Copies will be circulated in order of signing-up.The text has also been translated by Aslan into the Queer constructed language Damiá under the title Pier and appears in its own online edition as a downloadable PDF. <img width="2000" height="1051" width_o="2000" height_o="1051" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/72feb106b3d4bde7949e901eec6860d197fef9ec1f996d3eca38a7b677daafd7/Seedling_web.jpg" data-mid="237944262" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/72feb106b3d4bde7949e901eec6860d197fef9ec1f996d3eca38a7b677daafd7/Seedling_web.jpg" /> Chapter NineSeedling Format: Performance Dates: 24-25 Sep 2025 Venue: Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE) Language: Damiá, English Tickets: Available here Text, direction, performance, design: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Sound support: Jean P’ark Photography, technical support: Óscar González Light design: Pilar Falco Costume:&nbsp;Emma-Mariella Kurkela and ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS We open the cult sci-fi novel from our back pockets and start reading. The story begins — snakes and scars. Letters from a runaway. Study notes and cover versions. A folk song in a new language. A happy ending, and we close the book. We try again — a recording studio in Nashville. A second hand bookstore. A bus station, a way station, a seedbank. The Scala and the Jeong. Another ending. One more time — a starship powered by desire. A shell revealing our souls. A forest, singing to another forest. High tide.Again …?What do we do when the happy ending doesn’t make us happy?What do we do with a utopia haunted by ghosts?How do we know when the story ends? Seedling, a new stagework from ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, navigates a multiverse in search of beauty and meaning in the unending circular mess of our Queer lives. It’s the ninth chapter of the two-year constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths and a companion to Palace of Ash &amp; Rain which showed at Ballhaus Ost in autumn ’24. <img width="1800" height="1200" width_o="1800" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0c98ce8ddf6a022b2cc4f587d54a5537def42b3b5f5fde92968fdab0421867f8/FieldGuide_1.jpg" data-mid="239403132" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0c98ce8ddf6a022b2cc4f587d54a5537def42b3b5f5fde92968fdab0421867f8/FieldGuide_1.jpg" /> Chapter TenField Guide Format: Sound installation (17 min 30, looped) Dates: 02-14 Nov 2025 Venue: SORRY group exhibition, Loisti gallery, Helsinki (FI); Forest walk, Outokumpu (FI); Digital download Language: Damiá Digital download: True Aether&nbsp;(Coming soon) Concept, text, vocals: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDSSound design, composition, vocals: Joni Judén Additional vocals: Coco AmenCurator SORRY exhibition: Micol CuratoloExhibiting artists SORRY exhibition: nadiye, Ora H.,Yujie Zhou field guide (noun) — an illustrated manual for identifying natural objects, flora, or fauna in nature.A spell. An incantation. An effect in the world. A field guide is a tool for identifying natural objects. The physical flora that are named within this particular field guide became disconnected from the manual and set loose. Things named. Things as they are. Objects arranged in a certain order. The magic potential of lists. The reciting of names begins to make something happen. Words next to one another. One after another. Words you do not recognise yet. Memories from your future. &nbsp;Unseen words, mysterious and opaque. Sounds, frequencies, and waves.The place where you are standing right now is a garden. A wild place. A link between the soil by way of the mouths we open. Flowers sent across oceans and back, collecting voices in their wake. Heaps and heaps of snow. Fauna in the dark. Names waiting to germinate. A circle makes a spell. Without beginning and without end. Ravens spiral over your head, just a bit higher than your ears. Things becoming apparent. Spoken into being. Nothing to see. A field guide to time and to yourself. A quarter of an hour, and then a half, and then the hour full, and then we are round again once more. Those seconds and minutes stop being something countable. Objects grow under your feet. Seeds in the new world. Countable you.Bring winter. One song. This song. Not a pop song. Not something you can sing along to. This one. Released in the old century. A record label in a northern country. Bright in the summer and dark in the cold. That’s it. The last song. The one you have to take with you. The song is a field guide. It contains everything you need to begin again. Field Guide is the tenth chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths — Speaking Queer Utopias into Being by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (2024-25). Field Guide is a list of one-hundred-and-sixty-eight flowers and plants that grow in Finland, translated into the Queer language Damiá and recited by four voices. The plant names were selected by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and translated into Damiá by Aslan. The original voice recordings, along with field recordings of two gardens in North Karelia and Central Finland captured at the tail-end of winter, are transformed by Joni Judén into a looping sound composition. The sound work is presented in the group show SORRY at Loisti gallery in November 2025, and simultaneously in the forests surrounding ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS’ hometown, Outokumpu, and released digitally on the record label True Aether. <img width="1875" height="1250" width_o="1875" height_o="1250" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/70132ab2bb6a91b62365f6e388114b319fa348f7b16ea0963c3118c483cab4e5/Safehouse_Landscape1_web.jpg" data-mid="239403349" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/70132ab2bb6a91b62365f6e388114b319fa348f7b16ea0963c3118c483cab4e5/Safehouse_Landscape1_web.jpg" /> Chapter ElevenSafehouse Format: Performance (20 min); Workshop / artist discussion (90 min approx) Dates: Performance 28-30 Nov 2025 Venue: Titanik gallery, as part of XS Festival, Turku (FI)Language: English, Finnish,&nbsp;Damiá Reservations: Available hereNo reservations necessary for the Sunday workshop/discussion Direction, text, performance: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDSFinnish translation: Ida Loukkaanhuhta Additional voice: Tuuli Haapanen Music: Damiá Modal Music Machine / Ruby Louise RoseProduction: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and ArteIn collaboration with: Ehkä-productionArtist discussion with: Onur Tayranoğlu “When I was in the safehouse, in the far north, with the other runaways, the days were long. We woke early, did our chores, slept little, but we were never tired. When the sky grew dim — it was never very dark — we sat, the five of us, together, and learned the new words.”Safehouse is a new one-on-one audio and video performance by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, imagining in short, sharp detail how we might arrive in a Queer utopia. A yellow book, found buried in a ruin. An absent curator. A shift in time to an unfamiliar parallel future. What would a Queer utopia really look like? What sacrifices would we be willing to make to get there? Would we say ‘yes’ to this new life, or choose to stay behind? Through the Queer language Damiá, we also ask if language itself can be a refuge. Performance slots are for one audience member at a time, and the performance lasts around 20 minutes. Seats need to be reserved beforehand, using a separate form. Seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. If, for any reason, you would prefer to attend the performance with a friend, rather than alone, let us know on the form. You don’t have to tell us why! It is our aim that you will be as comfortable as possible during the performance. The performances are free of charge. Performances at Titanik Gallery (Itäinen Rantakatu 8, Turku) as part of the XS Festival. In total, there are 18 slots available.Fri 28.11. between 10:30–18Sat 29.11. between 10:30–17Registration formNOTE: You can only attend the performance by filling out the registration form!On Sunday, 30 November at 3 p.m., ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and Titanik Gallery will host a free public workshop and discussion with artist Onur Tayranoğlu, thinking together about the intersection between Queer Autonomous Zones and linguistic separatism. No reservations are needed for the discussion event. The discussion will be held in English and it’s free of charge. Welcome! <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/590ac25548d3cae16a523b3419045983cf805d7c4bb94ff02614b78650b6e3a1/BlackRopeAlmanac_web1.jpg" data-mid="245393801" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/590ac25548d3cae16a523b3419045983cf805d7c4bb94ff02614b78650b6e3a1/BlackRopeAlmanac_web1.jpg" />Chapter TwelveBlack Rope Almanac Format: Digital publication Release Date: 18 Jan 2026Language: English, Damiá Download: Available here Concept, text, edit, design: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDSContributions: Ar Gogo / Óscar González, Siasta Topi / Maria Laurids, Zavea Dion / Esther Boles, Iagot Cial / Ruby Louise Rose, Habes Hareg / Olivia Basterfield, Coco Amen / Coco, Sarapa Saipa / Jack Freeman, Retec Hoc / Abby Boak Black Rope Almanac is a digital art publication by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS produced together with the Damiá speech community. It is the twelfth and final chapter of the two-year constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths — Speaking Queer Utopias into Being. Damiá is a Queer constructed language and long-term real-world artwork that has been at the centre of our practice since 2020. It is a unique attempt to find out what it would mean to create a new speech community for Queer people. This durational artistic and political experiment aims to make change in the world and is an act of community building and care, bringing together Damiá speakers across three continents. It is a community in flux. It is both a reality and a potential. It is an expression of a wish to become a diaspora in reverse. Black Rope Almanac is released in the form of three downloadable zip-files on Sunday 18 January 2026, the first new moon of the year and the first day of Black Rope Year in the Damiá calendar. The format of the publication is inspired by the traditional Finnish Almanakka and reimagined for a Queer future on the far side of borders and nations. The heart of the work is a self-print calendar charting the twelve moon phases of Black Rope Year and the lacuna of the Dark Days beyond. Each monthly folder contains a selection of artefacts created by the emerging Damiá speech community: short essays; poems; photographs; fonts; ephemera; short films; songs and sound recordings. These diverse materials chart a year from winter solstice to winter solstice documenting our collective and individual experiences through the lens of this new Queer language. Black Rope Almanac is an invitation to imagine new ways of being together at a time when our old systems have failed us. It is an indirect activism in the form of an example, a blueprint for a new way of relating. It is a time capsule, a strategy, a magic spell. As the final chapter of With Forests in Our Mouths, it also acts as a retrospective on a sprawling multimedia artwork and a bridge to a brand-new future magic. Join us. info(at)oncewewereislands.com <img width="4160" height="2340" width_o="4160" height_o="2340" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/754479bda7b51e87197e9967a77850f262e39e9ee40c782134e32a117c5f810f/IMG-20250131-WA0004.jpeg" data-mid="233231581" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/754479bda7b51e87197e9967a77850f262e39e9ee40c782134e32a117c5f810f/IMG-20250131-WA0004.jpeg" /> <img width="3636" height="469" width_o="3636" height_o="469" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="233231580" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> The above images include photography by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and Óscar González.&nbsp;With Forests in Our Mouths&nbsp;is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production, supported in 2024 and 2025 by the Kone Foundation, and part of the Metsän puolella community of arts and research projects. Also kindly supported by Titanik, Silence Residency, TUO TUO Residency, Kaivos Festivaali, Theater neben dem Turm, Ballhaus Ost, Finnland Institut, Lou gallery, XS – Festival for New Dance and Performance, Loisti gallery.&nbsp;Additional thanks to: Arnita Jaunsubrena, Kristin Gerwien and the team at Theater neben dem Turm; Karita Tikka, Joonas Martikainen and the team at Hiljaisuus Festivalli; Katariina Vähäkallio and the team at Kaivos Festivaali; Juha Hirvonen and the team from Riveria; the Old Mine, Outokumpu; Mirjami Schuppert and the team at the Finnland Institut; Remi Vesala and the team at Lou galleria; Kaitlyn D. Hamilton &amp; Joni Judén; Olivia Basterfield; Jennifer Bell; Abby Boak; Esther Boles; Niklas Ekholm; Amber Fasquelle; Ethan Folk; Kit Gee; Óscar González; Mmakgosi Kgabi; Inky Lee; Elena Polzer &amp; Fedor Herrmann; Taylor Mac, Machine Dazzle, and Pomegranate Arts; Anu Pasanen; Tuuli Haapanen &amp; Vaski Ylhäinen; Debi Kuisma &amp; Ida Loukkaanhuhta; the poets of Helialá; Xdzunúm Trejo; Anna Matveinen; Juliana Irene Smith &amp; Arvid van der Rijt; Esko Vihava; Claudia Basrawi; Halvard Haldorsen. With Forests in Our Mouths (2024) https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths-2024 Thu, 08 May 2025 08:32:33 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/With-Forests-in-Our-Mouths-2024 With Forests in Our Mouths Speaking Queer Utopias into Being 2024 Format: Constellation artwork Dates: Jan 2024 - Dec 2025 Venues: Multiple locations and online Chapter One: 05-21 Apr 2024, Titanik, Turku (FI) Chapter Two: 06-09 Jun 2024, Hiljaisuus Festivaali, Kaukonen (FI) &amp; from 20 Jun 2024, Online Chapter Three: 30 Aug 2024, Kaivos Festivaali, Outokumpu (FI)Chapter Four: 02 Oct 2024, Finnish Institute, Berlin (DE) &amp; as a print publicationChapter Five: 11 Oct 2024, JUCKPULVER Festival, Theater neben dem Turm, Marburg; 16-17 Oct 2024, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE)Chapter Six: From Nov 2024 onwards, weekly Damiá language class, onlineLanguage: English, Damiá, Finnish Project website: withforestsinourmouths.com Article: A Constellation Artwork <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/86cc37f939994c67c1703dcd31c42561ef5c31bbf8e4c00ce6b546aff4722ea3/WithForestsInOurMouths_web.jpg" data-mid="233231607" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/86cc37f939994c67c1703dcd31c42561ef5c31bbf8e4c00ce6b546aff4722ea3/WithForestsInOurMouths_web.jpg" /> Artistic direction, text, performance, design: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Working together as the Queer multidisciplinary performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, we will create and present the project With Forests in Our Mouths: Speaking Queer Utopias into Being. We will bring together live performance, filmworks, sound installation and publication to explore multiple visions of Queer utopias. We will use Queer biography, speculative fiction, and auto-ethnography as the raw material for this two-year project. With Forests in Our Mouths is a ‘constellation artwork’ and each chapter offers an entry into the artistic enquiry of the overall work. It can be accessed in various times and places and in various different combinations. Audiences are given space to overlay their own interpretations and to make their own connections. The stories we will tell are Queer myths brought back from a place that exists outside of time and place — a forested planet, ghosts from utopias of the past, journeys through time and space, sex and starships, strange grammar. We ask: What if Queer people had brand new words to speak with? What if we had a place that we could truly call home? The project is an urgent attempt to imagine kinder, more accessible, and more sustainable futures where Queer bodies can thrive; it is an artistic attempt to answer the question: Where do we go from here?; and it represents a radical reimagining of our working practices, freed from the limitations and demands of the boom-bust cycle of short-term funding models. For With Forests in Our Mouths we will be based in our rural home and studio in Outokumpu, North Karelia, with research trips, residencies, and public sharings taking place in locations locally, across Finland, and internationally. <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d4c3cedc570f0b5988aee1cd02383b2eb588bd4ba1bd6ece0611347bc104f9c8/WithForestsInOurMouths_3_web.jpg" data-mid="233231610" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d4c3cedc570f0b5988aee1cd02383b2eb588bd4ba1bd6ece0611347bc104f9c8/WithForestsInOurMouths_3_web.jpg" /> A Vision We reimagine ourselves as 21st century travelling players. Living novels. We will hold a repertoire of stories in our bodies, ready to be told. It is our magic that we can see the edges of other worlds, hear the words spoken there, feel it all keenly under our skins. The stories we will tell are Queer Myths, brought back from a place that exists outside of time; an elsewhere; a simultaneous layering of future, present, and past. We arrive quietly, by train or boat or on foot, with just the clothes we wear and the bags on our backs. We take our places on the simple wooden stage under the cinema screen; on the diving platform at the edge of the lake; in the clean white box of the gallery, facing out through the windows onto the river beyond; in the artist’s studio, the grand piano to our left, brushes and colour lined up on shelves under the window. We close our eyes, take a deep breath, open our mouths. A forested planet emerges. Ghosts. Journeys through the stars. Strange grammar. Sex and starships. Every time we tell our stories, they change form, take on new orders. They are never the same twice. Sometimes they are urgent; sometimes pulled up like strange fish from muddy waters; sometimes hanging in the air, bright and transparent. We do this job already — we have done it for years — but it’s easy to get lost in the glare of the lights and the glitter of costumes; the clutter of posters hanging at the door of the theatre; the press of the crowd. But when we take a moment to look inside ourselves, this is why we come here; why we put our bodies on view; why we travel to new places to find new stories; dig snow; hitch lifts; walk for endless hours in the forest. We also have a new magic. Our bodies can travel to multiple places and times as copies, traces, digital signatures. We are faith healers, not just of flesh, but as words on a page, shapes on a screen, vibrations from a machine. We become an archive, a song. We whisper into your ears wherever you are; in the city; on the bus; running through the trees; looking out over the endless sea. Our stories will be heard wherever they are needed. <img width="4262" height="2841" width_o="4262" height_o="2841" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a88785afaff61cce48c5edff9f14f8ec0ef6b8c620b87bc2a14fce832b9760fc/202402_TITANIK-BANNER_02_HORIZONTAL.jpg" data-mid="233231608" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a88785afaff61cce48c5edff9f14f8ec0ef6b8c620b87bc2a14fce832b9760fc/202402_TITANIK-BANNER_02_HORIZONTAL.jpg" /> Chapter OneLike Déjà-Vu But The Other Way Around Format: Exhibition, sound installation Dates: 05 - 21 Apr 2024, Vernissage 04 Apr 2024 Venue: Titanik, Turku (FI)Language: English, Damiá Artworks; sound installation: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanArtwork contributions: Esther Boles, Óscar González, Elena Polzer, Julia Cervantes &amp; Zach Blumner Poster banner: Elena PolzerPoster photography: Óscar GonzálezSound support: Arvid van der Rijt Featured voices: Olivia &amp; Margaret Basterfield, Jennifer Bell, Abby Boak, Elliott Cennetoglu, Amber Fasquelle, Kit Gee, Óscar González, Fedor Herrmann, Mmakgosi Kgabi, Inky Lee, Elena Polzer, Animal J. Smith, amongst others Like Déjà-Vu But The Other Way Around is the first chapter in the durational constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths — Speaking Queer Utopias into Being by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (2024-25). It explores Queer futures through a constructed Queer language called Damiá.The front room of the gallery houses a ‘folk archive’ (2020-24) including artefacts produced by the emergent Damiá speech community, such as textiles, photography, fonts, bookworks, films and songs. In the back room a multi-channel sound installation evokes a utopian Queer bar where only Damiá is spoken. Over interwoven voices, a large handsewn banner declares: bacve, asi ca asi daz, camsa! An ink drawing reimagines The Stonewall Inn in a parallel reality. The artefacts and installation blur fact and fiction and reflect the ongoing proposal of Damiá as both an idea and real-world multi-year community art practice. Together they ask what it would mean for Queer people to have our own language. The works fantasise on the notion of the Queer Bar as a kind of utopia — an everywhere and a nowhere. In this iteration, it is also a linguistic space; a quantum universe where we can speak to each other with brand new words. Aslan began creating Damiá as a Queer teenager and has worked with it ever since. It is a fully functioning language, with a dictionary and grammar, and Aslan speaks it fluently. In 2020, after more than 10 years living and working together, Chris began learning it in earnest. In the years since, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS have taught online classes to a growing community of Queer learners, and created and shared texts, performances, and artworks in Damiá. Damiá has only ever been spoken by Queer people.If you would like to find out more about Damiá, or even learn it, then contact us at info@oncewewereislands.com. <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a8c2cdba595df9e86f43f6eee6ceac8a49a560197a99b030ee02aa846a244777/DSC00805.JPG" data-mid="233231604" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a8c2cdba595df9e86f43f6eee6ceac8a49a560197a99b030ee02aa846a244777/DSC00805.JPG" />Chapter TwoTHICK TIME (OS GERMA / TIHEÄ AIKA) Format: Short film Dates: 09 - 11 Jun 2024 (festival premiere) / from 20 Jun 2024 (online) Venue: Hiljaisuus Festivaali, Kaukonen (FI) Duration: 17 minLanguage: English, Damiá, Finnish Text, film, performance: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanFinnish translation: Roy Boswell Additional photographic imagery: Óscar González THICK TIME (OS GERMA / TIHEÄ AIKA) is the second chapter of the ‘constellation artwork’ With Forests in Our Mouths. This chapter centres on a short film inspired by visits to the home of visual artist Reidar Särestöniemi (1925-1981) on the banks of the Ounasjoki near to Kaukonen village and research into the Queer histories of Reidar and fellow artist and lover Kalervo Palsa (1947-1987). Poetic text and imagery together dream a speculative moment from their lives in a parallel utopian reality.“Come on Cial, let’s make a new life / I’m out / Digging the patch / Thinking up a new name for you / It’s a serious business / I’m hunting for a colour in the wet earth …” The film lingers on ideas of re-naming ourselves and starting again. If Reidar were called Amber, and Palsa had called himself Chalk, would a different future have become possible? What’s in a name? THICK TIME weaves together English, Finnish and the Queer language Damiá, through four memories, as time layers up with earth, ink, roots, and dancing bodies. THICK TIME will premiere for live audiences at Hiljaisuus Festivaali and then be available to view for online audiences from summer solstice onwards, here on this website and on Vimeo. During the festival days in Kaukonen, the short research film Self Portrait as Heliotrope (2022) will also be screened. <img width="2000" height="1333" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/25ad5467a7cb783921f46279345dd772a991bea08773c397fd61d530b379e3bb/RememberingColours_web.jpg" data-mid="233231606" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/25ad5467a7cb783921f46279345dd772a991bea08773c397fd61d530b379e3bb/RememberingColours_web.jpg" /> Chapter ThreeRemembering Colours Format: Performance Dates: 30 Aug 2024, 19:30 Venue: Kaivos Festivaali, Outokumpu (FI) Duration: 40 minLanguage: English, Finnish, Damiá Direction, text, performance: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanFinnish translation: Roy Boswell Additional voices: Debi Kuisma, Tuuli Haapanen Rose, dust, bronze, pewter, ash … In this new live performance, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS take four black and white portraits from the 1980s found in a book in the local library and re-imagine them into a sci-fi myth. It is a time of ending and beginning. A time when old lives are left behind in search of a new world. The four figures from the photographs — the Journeyer, the Companion, the Navigator, the Hunter — tell of a New Karelia, a world in which colours are used as new names, and in which memories become dances. The body reworked as a tool to hold on to what is vital.&nbsp; ‘We can’t make something new,’ they say, ‘if we bring the past with us.’ In an empty industrial building at the top of a Strange Hill, Remembering Colours, is performed by Aslan and Chris with a tape recorder of ghost-voices, the shipping news and a carousel slide projector. The performance takes place as the late August sun descends and summer brightness fades into shades of autumn. … frost, sleet, magma, milk, charcoal, tar … Remembering Colours is the third chapter of With Forests in Our Mouths, a durational constellation artwork made up of multiple interconnected chapters shared across 2024 and 2025 and including performances, films, exhibitions and publications. <img width="3480" height="2458" width_o="3480" height_o="2458" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3070d2bae0ab9f78517a937061ae873ef759fcedacb4ddb282c909564c79792e/Heliala_OnceWeWereIslands.jpg" data-mid="233231609" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3070d2bae0ab9f78517a937061ae873ef759fcedacb4ddb282c909564c79792e/Heliala_OnceWeWereIslands.jpg" /> Chapter FourHelialá — A Gathering of Poems Format: Publication (limited edition print &amp; online PDF), short film Dates: 02 Oct 2024 Launch venue: Finnland-Institut, Berlin (DE)Language: English, Damiá, Italian, Filipino, Binisaya Editing; design, film: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanPoems: Stefani J Alvarez, Jacob Louis Beany, Moss Berke, Dion Zavea (Esther Boles), Micol Curatolo, Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Kit Gee, Sky Jing Lee, Anna T., TEINIART, and Jack YoungReadings: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Xdzunúm Danae Trejo-Boles, Mmakgosi Kgabi Helialá — A Gathering of Poems is a collection of thirteen new poems, presented in their original languages of composition with translations into the Queer, constructed language Damiá. The poems respond to the thematic impulse of Queer Utopias, and the printed publication represents the fourth chapter from the durational ‘constellation artwork’ With Forests in Our Mouths (2024-25) by Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS.On 2nd October, the publication will be launched at the Finnland-Institut in Berlin with poetry readings in English and in Damiá. A brand-new short film featuring all thirteen poems recorded in Damiá alongside cyanotype imagery will be shown in the Institute foyer. Printed copies of Helialá will be available to take home, free of charge to attendees. If you would like to request a free copy of Helialá please write to us at info(at)oncewewereislands.com or send us a DM, with your name and postal address. We can then let you know what the postage contribution would be. The first print edition of Helialá is 200 copies, and we will distribute on a first-come-first-served basis after the initial launch event in Berlin. If you would struggle to pay the postage contribution, please just let us know — a number of copies can be sent with postage costs waived. A PDF version of the publication will also be available to download online, after 2nd October. <img width="2000" height="1051" width_o="2000" height_o="1051" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ae3693d1629e720daeb88804ed626626e1ba3dc22ff4bca9ee35264f490eacbb/Palace-of-Ash-and-Rain-Web.jpg" data-mid="233231602" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ae3693d1629e720daeb88804ed626626e1ba3dc22ff4bca9ee35264f490eacbb/Palace-of-Ash-and-Rain-Web.jpg" /> Chapter FivePalace of Ash and Rain Format: Performance Dates: 11 Oct; 16-17 Oct 2024 Venues: JUCKPULVER festival, Theater neben dem Turm, Marburg; Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (DE)Duration: 60 min Language: English, Damiá Tickets JUCKPULVER: Available hereTickets Ballhaus Ost: Available here Direction, text, performance: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Light: Elliott CennetogluSound: Jean P’ark Image: Óscar González Don’t you knowThey’re talking about a revolution? There! You can see it through the trees. A tower, a wall, a path through the leaves. A place out of time. Everyone is welcome at the Palace — but you have to leave everything behind: memories, your old life, even your name. For your new name, you can choose a colour: Rose, Turquoise, Fuchsia, Sage. There are rooms for sleeping, workshops, an infirmary and gardens. There’s karaoke sung in a brand new language. A lonely dance we dance once a year. In this new live performance, Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS attempt to imagine a Queer Utopia: post capitalist, post trauma, post addiction, post sadness, post joy — an After to the mess that came Before. Don’t you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run … Palace of Ash and Rain is the fifth chapter of With Forests in Our Mouths, a durational constellation artwork made up of multiple interconnected chapters shared across 2024 and 2025 and including performances, films, exhibitions and publications.Accessibility: Palace of Ash and Rain aims to create a more accessible performance space for both audience and performers. Audience lighting levels will remain at a level where it is possible to move around and to leave the space if necessary. Alternative seating options will be available. The doors to the performance space will open at 19:30 and audiences are welcome to come and join us there to relax and get comfortable, listen to music, or ask questions until the performance begins at 20:00. <img width="1500" height="1000" width_o="1500" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/77a532fceb5fbefebaa42a0ddc31c9aaa7e6b7b74fb3a41a05010dbc2e80a9e6/DamiaD_Edit_6web_b.jpg" data-mid="233231605" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/77a532fceb5fbefebaa42a0ddc31c9aaa7e6b7b74fb3a41a05010dbc2e80a9e6/DamiaD_Edit_6web_b.jpg" /> Chapter SixTobba Mó // Speech Community Format: Language classes, linguistic tools, publications, fonts, translations, conversations Dates: Nov 2024 — Dec 2025Language class: Mondays, weekly, 18:30 GMT / 19:30 CET / 20:30 EET Venue: Online, various locations Language: English, Damiá Direction, artwork, texts, translations: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Language classes: Aslan Language class participants include: Ar Gogo, Siasta Topi, Zavea Dion, Iagot Cial, Habes Hareg, Vappalie, Coco Amen, Sarapa Saipa, Hala Batsba, Retec Hoc, amongst others Aslan, November 2024:

Damiá is a Queer constructed language that I began creating when I was perhaps thirteen years old. It has been a part of my life ever since. Sometimes secret, sometimes in the background, but always there. It has been like a radio set that I have carried around with me for most of my life that I can turn down a little but can never, ever turn off. There have been times in my life when it frustrated me. Why did I need this strange compulsion — this odd demand on my attention that I didn’t even really understand how to talk about? I even purposefully deleted all my files on the language, more than once, insistent that it could go nowhere, that I should focus on more important things. But then, days or weeks or even months later, I would find myself piecing things back together again, painstakingly reconstructing and continuing from where I left off. 

Things changed when a strange idea invaded my mind. I don’t know where it came from and when it first arrived it was rather unwelcome. It went something like this:

 But, of course! Damiá is a Queer language!

A language for the Queer community. OK. That meant I needed to ‘gift’ it to the Queer community. Who was I to gift anything to the Queer community? What if they didn’t want it? What if they all looked at me and laughed?

But some ideas will not be refused and this was one of them. I talked to Chris about it and it seemed to make sense to him. Then in 2020, he informed me, quite out of the blue, that he would like to learn Damiá properly and that we should use Damiá in our work. He became Second Speaker and the cat was out of the bag.
A lot has happened since then. Damiá has become a filter through which we understand Queerness and how the world could be different. It is a way of aligning utopian thought with the artwork we make in a practical way. It is a place we can go to and a real thing in the world which is also simultaneously a fantasy. We’ve made films and performances using Damiá, published books and zines in it too. A new alphabet with six different fonts. Chris and I use Damiá every day — when running in the snow, sitting in the sauna, cooking and shopping, whenever we don’t want to be overheard or understood. Another itching thought that wouldn’t go away:

 What if there were a whole community of Damiá speakers who used the language in their everyday lives? What then?
Tobba Mó / Speech Community is Chapter Six of With Forests in Our Mouths, our two-year constellation artwork and exploration of Queer utopias. Unlike the other chapters, it does not consist of a discrete output, such as a live performance, an exhibition, a film, or a publication. Instead it is a place where we explore together what Damiá means in terms of a tool to uncover and articulate what a linguistic Queer utopia might look like. It is a vessel that holds the weekly Damiá classes that take place on Zoom, linguistic and pedagogical tools and publications, such as grammars and dictionaries, fonts and almanacs. It is a place for translation of songs and poems and the expression of new ideas. It is built on the trajectory of a group as well as one-on-one conversations and is perhaps even a way for Damiá to become a means of expression for other artists. 

 Tobba Mó / Speech Community is a home for all the effort and imagination that Damiá attracts to itself and also a chance to document what happens. I don’t know where it will go, and as artworks go, it is quite a strange one. All I know is that it reaches from somewhere inside me — somewhere inside us now, because even though the community is young and fragile, it is real — toward a future that is unknown. 

If you would like to participate in Tobba Mó / Speech Community or find out more about Damiá and our artwork, please contact us at info(at)oncewewereislands.com <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0e0f080260869b939b8e3b180afb0539272e84d5b19cf819c454194b1dfa7716/WithForestsInOurMouths_3.jpg" data-mid="233232068" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0e0f080260869b939b8e3b180afb0539272e84d5b19cf819c454194b1dfa7716/WithForestsInOurMouths_3.jpg" /> <img width="3636" height="469" width_o="3636" height_o="469" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="232936277" border="0" data-scale="46" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> The above images include photography by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and Óscar González. With Forests in Our Mouths is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production, supported in 2024 and 2025 by the Kone Foundation, and part of the Metsän puolella community of arts and research projects. Also kindly supported by Titanik, Silence Residency, TUO TUO Residency, Kaivos Festivaali, Theater neben dem Turm, Ballhaus Ost, Finnland Institut, Lou gallery, XS – Festival for New Dance and Performance. Additional thanks to: Arnita Jaunsubrena, Kristin Gerwien and the team at Theater neben dem Turm; Karita Tikka, Joonas Martikainen and the team at Hiljaisuus Festivalli; Katariina Vähäkallio and the team at Kaivos Festivaali; Juha Hirvonen and the team from Riveria; the Old Mine, Outokumpu; Mirjami Schuppert and the team at the Finnland Institut; Olivia Basterfield; Jennifer Bell; Abby Boak; Esther Boles; Niklas Ekholm; Amber Fasquelle; Ethan Folk; Kit Gee; Óscar González; Mmakgosi Kgabi; Inky Lee; Elena Polzer &amp; Fedor Herrmann; Taylor Mac, Machine Dazzle, and Pomegranate Arts; Anu Pasanen; Tuuli Haapanen &amp; Vaski Ylhäinen; Debi Kuisma &amp; Ida Loukkaanhuhta; the poets of Helialá; Xdzunúm Trejo; Anna Matveinen; Juliana Irene Smith &amp; Arvid van der Rijt; Remi Vesala; Esko Vihava. Monthly Postcards https://oncewewereislands.com/Monthly-Postcards Thu, 08 May 2025 08:10:09 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/Monthly-Postcards Monthly Postcards Format: Digital postcards Dates: Jan 2024 - Dec 2025 Venues: Online Language: English Project website: withforestsinourmouths.com/postcards <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/491d3816df647a25b9338537295aed131a75b8eb7a07a199d719a2d58ea7284e/JanuaryPostcard_OWWIweb.jpg" data-mid="232935471" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/491d3816df647a25b9338537295aed131a75b8eb7a07a199d719a2d58ea7284e/JanuaryPostcard_OWWIweb.jpg" /> Text, design: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS Additional photography: Óscar González, Elliott Cennetoglu Archive postcard scans: Wikicommons (open source) Who are the postcards for? It is May in the second year and we are sitting on the blanket-covered sofa with the late afternoon sun streaming in across our faces and the video screen. We stop for a moment, thinking before we answer. They are for the audience.&nbsp; They’re for my mum.&nbsp; They’re for my good friend who lives in the north of England, and who delights in reading them each month. Perhaps they are also for ourselves. There so that we can trace these two years, and how we and the landscape transforms. And how we and the landscape stay the same. On the last day of every month in 2024 and 2025 we send out a digital postcard — here on this website, and the dedicated project website, and on social media. Each month contains an image from the preceding days and reflections on the things we have seen and felt. <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/652a4efe646e51b5d9098f8b0fefde0e377a4282ea9418c5b06af82713999db1/FebruaryPostcard_New.jpg" data-mid="232935484" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/652a4efe646e51b5d9098f8b0fefde0e377a4282ea9418c5b06af82713999db1/FebruaryPostcard_New.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d37333b7759a31a2d6935168a66664fe44b904fde8abdd014280ae305d4c2f8e/MarchPostcard_Draft2.jpg" data-mid="232935473" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d37333b7759a31a2d6935168a66664fe44b904fde8abdd014280ae305d4c2f8e/MarchPostcard_Draft2.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e652d92bd85872e20874924de7b30d55c36b1032055157fe4394cd0ff2c2e780/AprilPostcard_Draft1.jpg" data-mid="232935475" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e652d92bd85872e20874924de7b30d55c36b1032055157fe4394cd0ff2c2e780/AprilPostcard_Draft1.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4354049622c49cde11b554667d568cc395aef1537ae4d05230e9596307b35d92/MayPostcard_Draft5.jpg" data-mid="232935477" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4354049622c49cde11b554667d568cc395aef1537ae4d05230e9596307b35d92/MayPostcard_Draft5.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c4cf318445c510c2bb049e52f58d60f4f321deabe58dae0001229c1a741f26fe/JunePostcard_Draft4.jpg" data-mid="232935478" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c4cf318445c510c2bb049e52f58d60f4f321deabe58dae0001229c1a741f26fe/JunePostcard_Draft4.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cfac157a1788b79d81efdb46bc6ebcd7204ed90dd6d04b26553cdbbb036a05f6/JulyPostcard_Draft3.jpg" data-mid="232935480" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cfac157a1788b79d81efdb46bc6ebcd7204ed90dd6d04b26553cdbbb036a05f6/JulyPostcard_Draft3.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61ccc47551d20199d3dce7a9d2a5a97f3e067963add4cf4df5ea893d3398e771/AugustPostcard3.jpg" data-mid="232935483" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/61ccc47551d20199d3dce7a9d2a5a97f3e067963add4cf4df5ea893d3398e771/AugustPostcard3.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/db17042cc4ad226071c3f8f3916e5c63daaee576bc43cdc0e3638f225345c947/SeptemberPostcard_Draft1-.jpg" data-mid="232935485" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/db17042cc4ad226071c3f8f3916e5c63daaee576bc43cdc0e3638f225345c947/SeptemberPostcard_Draft1-.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/580e24e1cf20925eecbafd2aa71a19062688075f438a9c9c0ad8c5ad310c3beb/OctoberPostcard_Final.jpg" data-mid="232935486" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/580e24e1cf20925eecbafd2aa71a19062688075f438a9c9c0ad8c5ad310c3beb/OctoberPostcard_Final.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/39bbca1a7199b20695a7535245180144c1f36738fa28565903ec164575cd6933/NovemberPostcard_Final.jpg" data-mid="232935487" border="0" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5bbe704204ca64ba35e5a9ff006adefefe25198d4d528624034685354220cdd6/February25Postcard_Final.jpg" data-mid="232935490" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5bbe704204ca64ba35e5a9ff006adefefe25198d4d528624034685354220cdd6/February25Postcard_Final.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a74c86e079ab73b70c9fb65fc0e413c76a4b19e1ed8039ace7b465561aae2042/March25PostcardDraft3.jpg" data-mid="232935491" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a74c86e079ab73b70c9fb65fc0e413c76a4b19e1ed8039ace7b465561aae2042/March25PostcardDraft3.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1d996e99a17d3f1d4e397df1f5377dc0b7a7d9f414032e031d476d2c2f818876/April25PostcardDraft3.jpg" data-mid="232935494" border="0" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ab787ba51c616f611b3405e1384b37d9cbb9f15c30167e7e2895e24280d64e66/July25Postcard.jpg" data-mid="236494463" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ab787ba51c616f611b3405e1384b37d9cbb9f15c30167e7e2895e24280d64e66/July25Postcard.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/287ea81eb5c45fbcc7815797c916be2560dadc6bc421e6c0117fc3ebfb5bcbb3/August25Postcard_v3.jpg" data-mid="237650612" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/287ea81eb5c45fbcc7815797c916be2560dadc6bc421e6c0117fc3ebfb5bcbb3/August25Postcard_v3.jpg" /><img width="1600" height="2044" width_o="1600" height_o="2044" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e84afd803049a6212d0a1c90c12056eff1ba5439994a920b6549fc6f20d6dd8d/September25Postcard_v5.jpg" data-mid="238831131" border="0" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f21237185e76175d51438690e972b90101c1e1ccd03167bee356c946ac49fa2b/December25Postcard_v1.jpg" data-mid="242298416" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f21237185e76175d51438690e972b90101c1e1ccd03167bee356c946ac49fa2b/December25Postcard_v1.jpg" /> <img width="3636" height="469" width_o="3636" height_o="469" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="232935469" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/352a63eafa2eab6500d5d271a64c9b8fe2329eac3290cb67f48bef2c40fb4935/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> The above images include photography by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Óscar González and Elliott Cennetoglu.&nbsp;With Forests in Our Mouths&nbsp;is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production, supported in 2024 and 2025 by the Kone Foundation, and part of the Metsän puolella community of arts and research projects. Also kindly supported by Titanik, Silence Residency, TUO TUO Residency, Kaivos Festivaali, Mustarinda, Theater neben dem Turm, Ballhaus Ost, Finnland Institut, Lou gallery, Esiintymä Festival, Loisti gallery, XS – Festival for New Dance and Performance.&nbsp; Crip-Queer Rurality https://oncewewereislands.com/Crip-Queer-Rurality Thu, 05 Dec 2024 13:40:11 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/Crip-Queer-Rurality ‘Crip-Queer Rurality’ as an Artistic Methodology Format:&nbsp;Research project; residencyDates: Nov-Dec 2024 Venue: Saari Residence, Mynämäki (FI)Language: English Publication: Online <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bd686024ebea0fe1ce6d1b4fb607d420f622a39b4d614a154232a3cfccbee769/Chris-Gylee-Aslan-2.jpg" data-mid="222930799" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bd686024ebea0fe1ce6d1b4fb607d420f622a39b4d614a154232a3cfccbee769/Chris-Gylee-Aslan-2.jpg" /> Research, text, documents: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS is Chris Gylee and Aslan. A Queer performance and art collective who creates work from performance, writing, and constellations of multidisciplinary forms including film, songwriting, publication. It is our passion to explore Queer and disabled life experiences through autoethnography, ethical exploration, science fiction, and a love of the forest. Through our work, we explore the changing interdependent ecologies of our ageing bodies and tell stories that are not commonly told in ways that speak to the body, the mind, and the emotions. A residency at Saari will give us the chance to create time and space to more fully investigate how a ‘Crip-Queer’ approach, with an emphasis on rurality and sustainability in its broadest sense, will transform our work as a performance collective. It will also enable us to do this in a calm and peaceful rural environment and with a community of other artists close by to exchange with and to challenge and deepen our investigation. This residency will enable us to take a radical approach to accessibility by bringing it to the heart of our working processes, thematic focus, and creative methodology. We wish to discover access as a driving force in our work rather than an afterthought or a practical problem to solve. We wish to give space to ways in which our working practices can change and evolve. Access is much more than a theoretical and ethical consideration for ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS. In February 2023, Aslan was diagnosed as autistic. Even though we have been dealing with Aslan’s specific access needs in an informal way for as long as we have been working together, an official diagnosis has convinced us that the time has come for us to stop and take time and space out of our daily routines to examine how disability affects and informs our lives and the way we make work togethe <img width="2048" height="1152" width_o="2048" height_o="1152" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1773aacd93964421d4892bed84759fdaa59338ead3fe48565c186f05fd7da2db/Saari_OWWI_1.jpeg" data-mid="222930833" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1773aacd93964421d4892bed84759fdaa59338ead3fe48565c186f05fd7da2db/Saari_OWWI_1.jpeg" /> Audio Presentation How Did / Do / Would You Feel If / When ?25. November 2024 *Original framing text edited for web publication For the presentation today, we made a short audio track (circa 12 minutes, also available as a PDF transcription) as a way of sharing some of our ideas and working practices with you. It is not an artwork, or even a finished work. It is something we made quite quickly for the purposes of this presentation exercise. The audio track consists of a series of questions that we have asked each other while we have been here at Saari. The questions reflect specific experiences we have had. We don’t offer any answers. Instead, we wonder what the questions might open up for you or what further questions and associations they might prompt. Perhaps some will resonate more than others. Perhaps none of them connect to your experience. Perhaps you have other more urgent-to-you questions. Walking and talking is a huge part of our artistic practice — to figure things out together, outdoors, in movement — and we have attempted to share a sense of that process by using our recorded voices in conjunction with sampled field recordings of the outdoors. We chose not to go on a walk together as a group as this is not accessible for Aslan, and instead invite you to listen to the audio in a place where you do not have to consider interacting or negotiating the space with others — where you can feel comfortable and at ease. After you have listened to the track, please take the 10 minute reflection time to think, rest, decompress or have a short conversation with a friend&nbsp; — or whatever else feels right to you.&nbsp;You can also share your thoughts with us by writing us a letter or an email, if you wish to.&nbsp; Links: —Audio Presentation (11 min 38 sec)—Transcription <img width="1600" height="900" width_o="1600" height_o="900" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3ae3f4e80f11e510c6ad8961b544d0e4e5ac4b7dc08c5b5d10ea3c92c862db0f/Saari_OWWI_3.jpeg" data-mid="222931752" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3ae3f4e80f11e510c6ad8961b544d0e4e5ac4b7dc08c5b5d10ea3c92c862db0f/Saari_OWWI_3.jpeg" /> Open Access Document Working as a NeuroQueer Artist: Loose &amp; Messy Tips &amp; Tricks09. December 2024 This is not a manifesto. This is not an access rider. This is not a policy document. These are some things we do in our practices. Access is love and access is a conversation. We love you. Come talk with us. Links: — PDF download <img width="1599" height="899" width_o="1599" height_o="899" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b279d288455871aaea335c00f1deae117993becdbb2b9ba8dd866300f3318b76/Saari_OWWI_4.jpeg" data-mid="222931755" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b279d288455871aaea335c00f1deae117993becdbb2b9ba8dd866300f3318b76/Saari_OWWI_4.jpeg" /> Reading ListCare Work — Dreaming Disability JusticeLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha The Future is Disabled — Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning SongsLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Thought In The Act) Melanie Yergeau Empire of NormalityRobert ChapmanIn My Language (8 min 36 sec)Mel Baggs Reimagining the Autistic Mother TongueJane Shi Autism and Emotional LabourAda HoffmanAccess Intimacy: The Missing LinkMia Mingus <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c5e6c81f566780a57040357b84575a57882c52cb9eb954779cffdd417ec2191f/Chris-Gylee-Aslan-7.jpg" data-mid="222930819" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c5e6c81f566780a57040357b84575a57882c52cb9eb954779cffdd417ec2191f/Chris-Gylee-Aslan-7.jpg" /> <img width="700" height="90" width_o="700" height_o="90" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9fa91da9b58d5aaaaad3ed8e754795e1f43bb794c29a7cbdfcb76d45097b0eb9/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" data-mid="222931701" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/700/i/9fa91da9b58d5aaaaad3ed8e754795e1f43bb794c29a7cbdfcb76d45097b0eb9/logo-sign-on-the-side-ENG-black.png" /> Landscape photography by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and portrait photography by Jussi Virkkumaa / Saari Residence ‘Crip-Queer Rurality as an Artistic Methodology’ is a research project by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, supported by Saari Residence and the Kone Foundation. Additional thanks to: the staff at Saari Residence and our co-residents; Juliana Irene Smith &amp; Arvid van der Rijt; Elliott Cennetoglu; Ilmari Tiitinen; Debi Kuisma &amp; Ida Loukkaanhuhta; Nadja Leham; Kit Gee; everyone who communicates their needs to us. Queerhill Histories https://oncewewereislands.com/Queerhill-Histories Thu, 16 Nov 2023 09:47:18 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/Queerhill-Histories Queerhill Histories / Kvääriä Okuhistoriaa Format:&nbsp;Monthly research group Venue: Outokumpu public library,&nbsp;Koulukatu 7Dates: Nov 2023 — Mar 2024 First Meeting: Thursday 30 Nov 2023, 17:30-19:30 Second Meeting: Thursday 14 Dec 2023, 17:30-19:30 Third Meeting: Thursday 01 Feb 2024, 17:30-19:30 Fourth Meeting: Thursday 22 Feb 2024, 17:30-19:30 Fifth Meeting: Thursday 21 Mar 2024, 17:30-19:30Language: English &amp; Finnish Project Instagram: @kvaariaokuhistoriaa Email: info@oncewewereislands.com <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/229b785b9371217cceee0ef269c93fa762142d48aab78f956c5b20fadb765efc/Queerhill_Histories.jpg" data-mid="197050021" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/229b785b9371217cceee0ef269c93fa762142d48aab78f956c5b20fadb765efc/Queerhill_Histories.jpg" /> Working group: ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Nadja Leham, Debi Helmi Kuisma What does Queer mean in this time and place? How can Queer history be defined and what even is history itself? We will share a common space where being Queer in any way is welcome to explore these topics. Together, we offer Queerhill Histories&nbsp;as a space to be discovered, to emerge, to take shape, and to be articulated into something new. Each meeting has a theme or topic and the event series will be facilitated by the organisers so you can just show up — there’s no need to prepare! Meetings will be held once a month from November 2023 to March 2024. The event series is intended for anyone who — in one way or another — feels the desire and need to share a space dedicated to Queer people. We are inspired by the following definition of Queer, as proposed by the Institute of Queer Ecology (2019) as “an expanded understanding of Queer Community that includes nonhuman kin and prioritizes anyone subjugated, regardless of race, class, nationality, ability, income level, sexuality, gender or species.” Under 15s must be accompanied by an adult. There is no upper age limit.We adhere to the principles of safer spaces. You can find out more here. The concept and the event series are part of Rainbow History Month, a project organised by the Friends of Rainbow History in November 2023. Queerhill Histories / Kvääriä Okuhistoriaa is created in cooperation with ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Nadja Leham and Debi Helmi Kuisma and supported by the Friends of Rainbow History.Event information When? The fifth meeting is on Thursday, 21st of March 17:30-19:30. Further meetings will take place once a month. More details will be announced soon. Where? Outokumpu Library, Koulukatu 7, in ‘Gallery’ room. We will meet you at the main entrance. Language The working languages for the project are Finnish and English. Some material will be presented in English or Finnish only. We will do our best to translate or assist with understanding where needed and to accommodate other languages. Further questions info@oncewewereislands.com Accessibility information There is a wheelchair ramp outside at the entrance. There is a three centimetre threshold at the entrance. There is a wheelchair accessible toilet. We do not have a sign language interpreter at the event. The meeting is held in a space called ‘The Gallery’, on the left-hand side of the main entrance. In the room there are windows facing the library corridor, from which one can see into the space where we are meeting. You can participate in the meeting in a way that is suitable for you. You can either just listen, or participate in the conversation. You can leave and come back to the space in whichever way is good for you. It is OK to sit on the floor or change position. There will be snacks and soft drinks available at the meeting. The food will be vegan and nut free.COVID/ flu season info: If you have cold or flu symptoms, we kindly request that you stay home and rest. Let’s also remember, however, that some people constantly have flu-like symptoms due to chronic illness etc. You know best how you are feeling and we trust that everyone can make an assessment of their symptoms themselves. If you would prefer to keep a safe distance from the other participants during the meetings, please let us know at the beginning of the gathering or beforehand via email at info@oncewewereislands.com. You are welcome to wear a mask during the meetings and we will also have some FFP2-masks at hand upon arrival. If you have more specific accessibility needs you would like us to know about or in case you have additional questions, you are welcome to write to us at: info@oncewewereislands.com Mitä on queer/kvääri tässä ajassa ja paikassa? Miten queer-historia määrittyy ja mitä oikeastaan on historia? Tervetuloa näiden teemojen pariin jakamaan yhteistä tilaa, jossa kaikenlainen kvääri oleminen on sallittua. Yhdessä tarjoamme Kväärille Okuhistorialle tilan löytyä, syntyä, muodostua ja jäsentyä joksikin. Jokaisella tapaamisella on jokin aihe tai teema, ja järjestäjät fasilitoivat tapahtuman siten, että voit vain tulla paikalle. Tapaamiset kerran kuukaudessa marraskuusta 2023 maaliskuuhun 2024. Tapahtuma on suunnattu kaikille, jotka tavalla tai toisella tuntevat halua ja tarvetta jakaa queerille, LGBTQIA+:lle ja sateenkaariyhteisölle omistetun tilan. Meitä inspiroi Queer-ekologian instituutin (IQECO, 2019) muotoilema määritelmä termille queer. Sen perusajatuksena on, että jokainen, — mukaan lukien myös ei-inhimilliset lajit — joka tuntee kuuluvansa yhteiskunnassa vähemmistöön tai alisteiseen asemaan, on osa queer-yhteisöä riippumatta taustastaan, rodullistetusta asemastaan, taidoistaan, tuloistaan, kansallisuudestaan, seksuaalisuudestaan tai sukupuolestaan. Alle 15-vuotiaille aikuisen seurassa. Yläikärajaa ei ole.Noudatamme turvallisemman tilan periaatteita. Lisätiedot tästä. Queerhill Histories / Kvääriä Okuhistoriaa on osa Sateenkaarihistorian Ystävät ry:n järjestämää Sateenkaarihistoriakuukausi-teemahanketta Marraskuussa 2023. Yhteistyössä ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Nadja Leham ja Debi Helmi Kuisma. Sateenkaarihistorian Ystävät ry:n tukemanaTapahtumatiedotMilloin? Viides tapaaminen 21.03. klo 17:30-19:30 Tapaamisia kerran kuussa. Tiedotamme pian seuraavista tapaamisista. Missä? Outokummun kirjasto, Koulukatu 7. Huoneen nimi on Galleria. Tila ei ole sama kuin viimeksi. Olemme teitä vastassa aulassa. Kieli&nbsp; Suomi ja englanti.&nbsp;Jotkut materiaaleista löytyvät vain suomeksi tai englanniksi. Yritämme tapaamisen aikana parhaamme mukaan tulkata ja mahdollistaa, että ymmärrämme toisiamme, sekä ottaa huomioon tarve kommunikoida muulla kielellä kuin suomeksi ja englanniksi. Lisäkysymykset&nbsp; info@oncewewereislands.com Saavutettavuustiedot Kirjaston sisäänkäynnillä on liuska ja ovi avatuu sähköisesti. Ulko-oven kohdalla on parin senttimetrin kynnys. Kirjastossa on pyörätuolilla saavutettava wc. Kokous pidetään huoneessa, jonka nimi on “Galleria”. Siinä on ikkunoita joista näkee sisään huoneeseen käytävästä. Meillä ei ole viittomankielistä tulkkia. Tapaamisen saa osallistua haluamallaan tavalla. Voi puhua tai vain tulla kuuntelemaan. Tapahtumasta saa lähteä ja / tai tulla takaisin itselleen sopivalla tavalla. On ok istua esimerkiksi lattialla tai vaihtaa asentoa. Tapaamisessa tarjoilemme pientä purtavaa ja juotavaa. Ruoka on vegaanista ja ei sisällä pähkinöitä.COVID/ flunssakausi-info: Jos sinulla on flunssaoireita, on hyvä jäädä kotiin lepäämään. Muistetaan, että joillakin on jatkuvasti esimerkiksi pitkäaikaissairauden takia oireita, jotka muistuttavat tartuttavan flunssan oireita. Tiedät itse parhaiten miten voit ja luotamme siihen, että kaikki itse tuntevat omat oireensa ja kehonsa parhaiten. Voit tapahtuman alussa kertoa, jos haluat, että pidämme sinuun turvaväliä. Taapaamisessa voi halutessaan käyttää maskia. Meiltä voi myös saada FFP2-maskin. Jos sinulla on erityisiä saavutettavuustarpeita tai muita kysymyksiä, ole yhteydessä: info@oncewewereislands.com First Meeting 30 Nov 2023 — 17:30-19:30Outokumpu Public Library At our first meeting, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS performance collective will share some of their Queer history research interests, including the 2023 project reexamining the paintings and life of Reidar Särestöniemi from a Queer perspective. We will also talk about our plans for the upcoming meetings and what we hope to discover and share together. We ask: How can we activate an interest in the specific Queer history of Outokumpu? Are there any notable figures or written histories? Are there other hidden ways to trace Queerness in the area? How do we create layers of Queer history ourselves through our meetings? Ensimmäisessä tapaamisessamme ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS -performanssikollektiivi kertoo joistakin queer-historian tutkimuskohteistaan, kuten 2023-hankkeesta, jossa Reidar Särestöniemen maalauksia ja elämää tarkastellaan uudelleen queer-näkökulmasta. Puhumme myös suunnitelmistamme tulevien tapaamisten suhteen ja siitä, mitä toivomme löytävämme ja jakavamme yhdessä. Kysymmekin, miten voimme herättää kiinnostusta Outokummun Queer-historiaa kohtaan? Onko olemassa merkittäviä hahmoja tai kirjallisia kertomuksia liittyen teemaan? Onko muita piilotettuja tapoja jäljittää alueen queeriyttä? Miten luomme itse queer-historian kerrostumia tapaamistemme kautta? Second Meeting 14 Dec 2023 — 17:30-19:30Outokumpu Public Library At our second meeting, there will be a number of different communal task stations to help us delve more deeply into our shared Queer history interests. You can take part in just one activity, move between stations, or even propose a different task you would like to initiate. We propose the following task stations: 1) mindmapping our Queer history interests and topics we would like to investigate together this winter 2) exploring Queering the Map and maybe contributing some new local additions 3) writing and crafting to make entries for a folder of Queer memories and Queer art 4) ordering Queer books in from the catalogue, exploring the library’s shelves in search of Queer related books, making a recommended reading list for other Queerhill Queers. As always, there will be vegan / nut-free snacks and time to talk. Toisen tapaamisemme ohjelma koostuu erilaisista aktiviteeteista ja tehtävistä, joiden ajatuksena on mahdollistaa yhteinen tila, jossa tutkia jo olemassa olevaa kvääriä kulttuuria ja historiaa, sekä toisaalta luoda sitä tässä ajassa ja nyt, jkonkreettisia jälkiä jättäen. Voit osallistua vain yhteen tehtävään, siirtyä pisteiden välillä tai ehdottaa erilaista tehtävää, jonka haluaisit aloittaa. Ehdottamamme aktiviteetit: 1) Ajatuskartan luominen kväärin historiamme kiinnostuksenkohteista ja aiheista, joita haluaisimme yhdessä tutkia tulevissa tapaamisissa 2)&nbsp; Queering the Map -kansion tutkiminen ja ehkäpä uusien paikallisten lisäysten tekeminen 3) Kvääriyteen liittyvien muistojen ja kokemusten kirjoittaminen tai muu käsin tuottaminen yhteiseen kansioon 4) Teemme kirjastoon varauksia ja tilauksia queer-aiheisista kirjoista ja etsimme niitä kirjaston nykyisestä valikoimasta. Voimme laatia kirjoista myös suosituslistan queer-ihmisille ja aiheesta kiinnostuneille. Kuten aina, tarjolla on vegaanista/pähkinätöntä purtavaa ja aikaa jutella. Third Meeting 01 Feb 2024 — 17:30-19:30Outokumpu Public LibraryAt our third meeting, we will listen to, and collectively read aloud, extracts from the play Ihana tytär Erika - Huomioita nimestä (The lovely daughter Erika - Notes on a name), written by Emil Santtu Uuttu. The play was originally presented as site-sensitive audio-play in autumn 2023 in collaboration with Kiasma and Teatteri Takomo, at the archive hall of the Suomalainen Kirjalisuuden Seura. The script is a non-fiction that responds to a fragment of oral history stored in the Finnish Literary archive in 1964. We will read in a combination of Finnish and English (translation by Roy Boswell), and there will also be time dedicated to discussing our reflections on the text and our experience of reading it together. You can participate in the way you like and also just listen. Depending on the amount of participants, we might form smaller groups. Note: The play quotes extensively from publications and debates on gender, sexuality and disability, to highlight the changes in language. The play quotes obsolete terms, nicknames and derogatory language. These might feel uncomfortable to read or hear. Kolmannessa kokouksessamme kuuntelemme ja luemme yhdessä ääneen otteita Emil Santtu Uutun kirjoittamasta näytelmästä Ihana tytär Erika - Huomioita nimestä. Näytelmä esitettiin alun perin paikkasidonnaisena ääninäytelmänä syksyllä 2023 yhteistyössä Kiasman ja Teatteri Takomon kanssa Suomalaisen Kirjalisuuden Seuran arkistosalissa. Käsikirjoitus on&nbsp; pohjautuu katkelmaan suullista historiaa, jonka Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura vuonna 1964 arkistoi. Luemme näytelmää yhdessä suomeksi ja englanniksi (Roy Boswellin käännös), ja aikaa on myös varattu keskustelulle omista pohdinnoistamme ja kokemuksistamme suhteessa tekstiin ja sen yhdessä lukemiseen. Voit osallistua luentaan haluamallasi tavalla. Voit myös vain kuunnella. Riippuen osallistujamäärästä voimme jakaantua pienempiin ryhmiin. Näytelmässä siteerataan laajasti sukupuolta, seksuaalisuutta ja kehitysvammaisuutta koskevia julkaisuja ja keskusteluja, jotta kielessä tapahtuneet muutokset voisivat tulla näkyviin. Teoksessa siteerataan vanhentuneita termejä, pilkkanimiä ja halventavaa kieltä. Niiden lukeminen tai kuuleminen voi tuntua epämukavalta. Fourth Meeting 22 Feb 2024 — 17:30-19:30Outokumpu Public LibraryWelcome to our fourth and penultimate meeting, which will again take place in the library’s gallery space. This time the themes will be creative writing and discussion. We will work with fragments and artefacts from our shared Queer histories to activate imaginative and creative responses. Can we look at an old photo and imagine a Queer life? What thoughts come up when we consider the words ‘Queer History’? What inspiration does our mind search for when we begin to compose a poem? This meeting will consist of several shorter exercises guided with prompts and simple writing tasks to respond to. If you wish to bring an object, photograph or piece of writing that feels important to you, please feel very welcome! We will make space to respond to all the different inputs, and there will also be time to share your own thoughts on the tasks. You are free to participate in the exercises as you wish. For example, you can just listen to the discussion, and there is no obligation to write. You are welcome to simply spend time in a shared space dedicated to Queerness Tervetuloa neljänteen ja samalla toiseksi viimeiseen tapaamiseemme, joka järjestetään jälleen kirjaston galleria-tilassa. Tällä kerralla teemoina ovat luova kirjoittaminen ja yhteinen keskustelu. Tarjoamme muutaman erilaisen kirjoitustehtävän, joiden jälkeen on mahdollisuus jakaa omia ajatuksia tehtäviin liittyen. Tehtävät sisältävät oman ja yhteisen kväärin historian tutkimista ja vaihtoehtoisten historioiden luomista inspiroituen objekteista, teoksista ja omista kokemuksistamme. Mitä kvääri historia merkitsee/on minulle/meille? Mikä inspiroi minua/meitä kirjoittamisen pariin? Halutessasi voit tuoda mukanasi jonkin sinua inspiroivan esineen, kuvan, teoksen tai muun objektin. Tapaaminen perustuu luovaan tilaan, yhteisyyteen, jakamiseen ja henkilökohtaisen mielikuvituksen tutkimiseen. Voit osallistua harjoitteisiin vapaasti haluamallasi tavalla. Voit vain esimerkiksi kuunnella keskustelua, eikä kirjoittaminen ole pakollista. Olet tervetullut vain viettämään aikaa yhteisessä, kvääriydelle omistetussa tilassa. Fifth Meeting 21 Mar 2024 — 17:30-19:30Outokumpu Public LibraryIn our fifth meeting led by Vaski we combine drawing and Queer music. We approach drawing from the perspective of feeling: both how it feels to work with different materials, and how we feel in the space, listening to music and each other. The excercises direct towards abstract experimentation and play instead of a figurative approach. No previous skills are required to participate. There are some structured excercises as well as time to explore freely and have conversations. Art is an important part of preserved Queer history, and as we experiment together as a group, we're creating some of our own.You're welcome to participate in the excercises as you like, or by simply by being in this space with us. Materials provided in the library. There is also space for conversation and snacks. Viidennellä tapaamiskerralla yhdistämme piirtämistä ja kvääriä musiikkia Vaskin johdolla. Piirtämistä lähestytään tunteen näkökulmasta: miltä tuntuu liikuttaa kynää paperilla, ja olla tilassa toistemme kanssa musiikkia kuunnellen ja keskustellen. Harjoitukset ohjaavat abstraktiin tutkiskeluun ja leikkiin esittävän ilmaisun sijaan. Piirrustustaitoja ei tarvitse olla osallistuakseen. Teemme muutamia yhteisiä harjoituksia, ja aikaa on myös kokeiluun ja keskusteluun. Taide on tärkeä osa säilynyttä Queer-historiaa, ja yhdessä kokeilemme jatkaa tätä perinnettä.Voit osallistua harjoituksiin haluamallasi tavalla. Olet tervetullut myös vain olemaan yhdessä tilassa. Materiaalit löytyvät paikan päältä, ja tilaa on myös keskusteluille. Tarjolla on evästä. The lead and thumbnail image is a digital collage of two photographs taken in the studio house of Reidar Särestöniemi taken by Chris Gylee (2023); a scan of a vintage postcard of&nbsp; Outokumpu Ltd Copper Headquarters, Helsinki, Finland, architects Blomstedt &amp; Lampén (1959); Tree in Finland photograph by Tiia Monto (2018); queer prism flag by Hamed Sinno (2023). Queerhill Histories / Kvääriä Okuhistoriaa is created in cooperation with ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, Nadja Leham and Debi Helmi Kuisma and supported by the Friends of Rainbow History. Thanks to: the staff of Outokumpu public library;&nbsp;Mandi Markkanen at&nbsp;Sateenkaarihistorian ystävät ry. Big Bangs & Black Holes https://oncewewereislands.com/Big-Bangs-Black-Holes Tue, 14 Feb 2023 14:42:13 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/Big-Bangs-Black-Holes Big Bangs &amp; Black HolesA Digital Double-Bill Format: Film Dates: 19 - 30 Jun 2023 Venue: Online at ballhausost.deLanguage: English, with English subtitles Duration: 60 min (Dogs of Love), 32 min (We Come With Nothing) Films on demand: Available to view below <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9b9792be95a7a173c7398a31260a8b0fa1caefbbc4ab36c959b52923d463518/BigBangs_OscarGonzalez_web.jpg" data-mid="174795296" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a9b9792be95a7a173c7398a31260a8b0fa1caefbbc4ab36c959b52923d463518/BigBangs_OscarGonzalez_web.jpg" /> Artistic direction, text, performance, edit: Chris Gylee &amp; AslanComposition Dogs of Love: Elie GregoryComposition&nbsp;We Come With Nothing: Mars DietzLight design, additional film: Elliott CennetogluPhotography, additional film: Óscar González Response texts: Inky Lee, Parvathi Ramanathan Additional sound support Dogs of Love: Aude Langlois Production management: ehrliche arbeit — freies Kulturbüro Supported by: the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of NEUSTART KULTUR. Kindly supported by Mustarinda Residency. Big Bangs &amp; Black Holes is a digital double-bill by Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS. Dogs of Love (2019) and We Come With Nothing (2021), created initially as stage works, are shown side-by-side for the first time, reimagined for film and animated with poetic imagery.Dogs of Love investigates the intimate connection between two people. Starting with a real-life love story, two lovers run in opposite directions through time and space, through pasts and futures populated with real and imagined stories of Queer togetherness. Footsteps echo as we dive deep into togetherness, loneliness, crisis, and intimacy. Can we ever really leave someone we have been in love with? We Come With Nothing explores the dark side of entanglement. Inspired by the form of Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘constellation novels’ and ghost stories, it conjures a shadow-world of broken connections. What happens when a relationship ends in estrangement? What is this ‘nothing’ we are left with? What do we discover when we stare into this black hole? The films are available to view, free of charge, as films-on-demand at www.ballhausost.de from 19 — 30. June 2023. See below for specially commissioned response texts by Inky Lee and Parvathi Ramanathan.&nbsp; Response Texts by Inky Lee and Parvathi Ramanathan Inky Lee — Part 1&nbsp; We Are Afraid, But ... I remember seeing the live performance of Dogs of Love in 2019 at Ballhaus Ost. The trust and intimacy between the two performers, Aslan and Chris, was tangible. I remember them holding hands during the bows and Aslan kissing Chris’s cheek, while Chris looked dazed. My friend, who was sitting on my right, turned to me and said that they were jealous. I remember once spitting out to a friend, “I just want to love someone and them to love me back!” They answered, “Ugh. That's what everyone is writing songs and making movies about.” We held each other and groaned. I am a cynic when it comes to the idea of everlasting romantic love between two people. Or perhaps I am just refusing to give in to capitalistic society’s scheme of selling romantic love as the ultimate key to happiness and fulfillment, and thereby turning it into a social obsession. However, when I do witness a love that resembles this ideal, I marvel, as if seeing a miracle. Dogs of Love portrays this kind of love. It travels through spaces of safety and loneliness. It is risky to love, to open oneself to an unknown that can break down the walls of security. Only by taking this risk, however, can one wriggle out of one’s cradle of loneliness. when we love / we are afraid Together with loved ones, one can find the courage to destroy old habits of (false) safety, to ‘scare ourselves’, and then find a reimagined security in and with one another. Miracles are created only through destruction. We Come With Nothing looks at this destruction. Destruction is not entirely without hope; it is a gesture of reaching out towards dreams that may be shattered or which have existed only in one’s imagination. Destruction may not be the end of the story, however. Instead, it may be a step towards crossing over to the other side. Just like when Aslan and Chris climb hills aimlessly, searching for a moment of major shift in their lives. Or when a woman who experienced a collapse within herself arrives at a moment when she can take the initiative to cross over to the other side of that collapse, and become a part of a collective dream. In both Dogs of Love and We Come With Nothing, there is hope, longing, persistence, and attempts towards building a queer utopia. This is a utopia dreamt up and created by Aslan and Chris for themselves, as well as a shared utopia of chosen families where we can be safe and happy with one another. Part 2&nbsp; Back to the Body We Come With Nothing feels like a mind racing through a series of bad dreams, or memories that keep recurring unexpectedly, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth. The tempo is breathless. The colours are subdued and grey. This creates a sense of anxiety and a feeling of being trapped in a loop of unpleasant thought cycles. The details and characters in the intersecting stories start to lose their individual meanings, but the overall feeling of troubling dizziness rushes on like waves in a stormy ocean. The contents of these feelings are not something extraordinary, but rather an accumulation of discomfiting states that most of us pass through repeatedly in our daily lives. In the film, they are vocalised as “A list of stuff to bury”: Self-doubt, sadness, loneliness, frustration, regret, rejection, pain, powerlessness, deception, shame, guilt, blame … Everyday objects and scenery, such as chairs, curtains, buildings, and the sky, are seen on the screen. Although they are “normal”, the experience and memories of them in our day-to-day lives are absorbed by our bodies, leaving less room for emptiness and serenity. Thoughts, memories, and feelings also take up space in our minds and bodies in this way. How can we be free from them? Can we? The film seems to be searching for an answer to these questions. It is a relief when the pace of the film slows down to the tangled bodies of Aslan and Chris. The words that have been filling the soundscape stop. This scene is titled “Courage”. To be courageous is to take oneself out of one’s head, come back to the body, and take action. In Dogs of Love, “The Back to the Body Movement” is mentioned several times. We see Aslan and Chris, on two separate screens, running steadily through varying colours, seasons, and landscapes. Running is a metaphor for their love. It is a repetitive action that is not always easy. It continues only through active choice and will. Unexpected challenges and negotiations with oneself and the surroundings arise. At times, it is also a pleasant, liberating, meditative, and even addictive experience. They choose to run, despite the risk of finding out that there is nothing or something terrible at the end. In We Come With Nothing,&nbsp;it is stated that: “‘Nothing’, used as a pronoun, is the absence of something that one might expect or desire to be present …”. In Dogs of Love, Aslan and Chris run towards and through the risk of feeling all the emotions demonstrated in We Come With Nothing: The perplexity of things gone astray in attempts of love. Although they sometimes express despair, uncertainty, and loneliness in not knowing if they will still find love in the end, they keep on running. This is their brave decision of loving one another. At the end, all other thoughts fall away and only their love remains, as they repeat: we kiss we kiss we kiss we kiss Parvathi Ramanathan — Part 1 Is This the Time? Imagine that moment when a five-year old is blowing out the candles on their birthday cake. Was it you in your imagination? Was the cake your favourite flavour? Or was it just an image that was already there, retrieved from an advertisement for a greeting card company, perhaps — part of a montage of feel-good moments, celebrations, and sorrows? Dogs of Love retrieves the imagination of such a montage by placing Queer bodies in significant moments in history and also in the future. The idea of what may be significant, too, is undone by zooming in on the lives of the two protagonists and then referring to world events through the way that they shape them. Or perhaps these are events that shape Queer lives in other places and other times. 2033: MHV Vaccine Trials Begin.1985: Kate Bush Releases ‘Hounds of Love’. Hopping, traipsing, and eventually leaping across time, the protagonists weave themselves in and out of past and future centuries. Their fantasies allow kingdoms with Queer monarchs to rise and then fall again, and for humans to grapple with the resurgence of nature — themes driven by their political and environmental concerns. In these reincarnated lives, the sensations of the body remain intimately at the centre as the protagonists are placed in different locations and constellations. Throughout it all, they are connected to one another, tenderly but firmly, as lovers. Love. That is the point of it all. If Dogs of Love is a joint declaration of that statement, then&nbsp;We Come With Nothing is a dialogue that tries to comprehend the wrecked remnants of endings. Here, the erratic sticky-smooth flow of time becomes evident through lapses in memory and differing perspectives on what occurred, or what could have occurred. There is no reincarnation here but rather a sensation of being stuck in the body. In this entanglement, one keeps peeling away from and digging away at the sense of self. In examining endings and absences, something becomes present. “‘Nothing’, used as a pronoun, is the absence of something that one might expect or desire to be present ...”“We found nothing”, “Nothing was there,” Is the end really the final end, without a dialogue? If there is a dialogue, is it the end? Once We Were Islands’ inspiration for this work from Olga Tokarczuk’s constellation novels is evident through the constellation of the slabs of time the audience crashes into. And just as Tokarczuk’s interwoven stories allow readers to “project order onto the sky” (interview with Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2017), so the rooms we catch a glimpse of in We Come with Nothing have an architecture of the audience’s making. Together in Dogs of Love and We Come With Nothing, we grasp at lifelines of love that are at once forming and fading. Part 2 Sitting at my desk in Berlin, I watch the films that together make up&nbsp;Big Bangs and Black Holes. I notice it suddenly and then am unable to un-see it after that – my face is reflected on the bare wall of a roving room in the performance film We Come With Nothing. Later, a pile of rocks under my nose. My forehead,&nbsp;stamped with the words “Evil is the opposite of good, a quality of God”. Now, I cannot un-read it. The tandem between the video-graphic images and the phrases culled from literary works, allow for a sensually slow entanglement layered with meaning. The deserted rooms become conspicuous by their absences. Among the unused clothes-hangers jutting at odd angles, I see the hands that left them there in a hurry. I see the empty chairs set against the wall, dented by the weight they once carried. Is this the same room that once resonated with the hubbub of conversations in many foreign languages? Is this the moment when love was put in the deep freeze? But it is not the audience who are the magpies placing fragments into a constellation, but rather the makers Chris Gylee and Aslan. As a viewer, I am just a weaver bird. A pulsing sound composition (by Mars Dietz) urges time forward, but I am still left in the hallway that the camera went out through. The ordering of themes for each montage also leaves voids that inspire me to distrust or disagree with the narrators’ voices. I wonder, is it perhaps the absence of human bodies that lead me to this wandering? For when ‘Courage’ brings us to two bodies in foetal position, resting and cuddling together, their tugging fingers pull me back to their narrative. From the floating sensation of We Come With Nothing, I land firmly onto the paths of the two runners in Dogs of Love. The perspective of the camera in the performance film snatches away the distance that a live performance setting may provide. We see the two lovers running ahead of us on parallel-sectioned screens. Like characters in a roleplaying game, we follow them bounding over their own wooded paths – one into the past and the other into the future. Through the next hour, I find that my breathing is bound to their cadence. The questions they ask of each other as fascinated lovers tie me as a viewer to the cavities in their bodies. Can you feel the air inside your mouth when you open it and smile? How heavy is your heart? What colour is the fluid running up and down in your spinal column? They run unrelentingly through glitches and flickers, through snow and sun, in diverse hues of colour. When past and future are placed on these winding paths of a forlorn northern pine forest, the tales of their reincarnated lives ring as an ominous survival quest. I wish then, to seize controls of this roleplaying video game and swerve them away, or back, or onto the other’s path. Peering into the woods that escape from me on either side of the screen, I wonder, is this the time to talk about love? Bounding along on two running paths at once, I wonder, will I see you&nbsp;around the next turn? <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c1d95fb2e096e2aa16e6dba0f9bfff6d48bafa4f46b8c058606f739bb9e77d33/BigBangs_OscarGonzalez_web2.jpg" data-mid="181942342" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c1d95fb2e096e2aa16e6dba0f9bfff6d48bafa4f46b8c058606f739bb9e77d33/BigBangs_OscarGonzalez_web2.jpg" /> <img width="2953" height="1181" width_o="2953" height_o="1181" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e1231efcc83618e7afd9d5ebafe2cd695e67eb312278e29b136a9a44bc863e45/BigBangs_Logos1.jpg" data-mid="168397730" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e1231efcc83618e7afd9d5ebafe2cd695e67eb312278e29b136a9a44bc863e45/BigBangs_Logos1.jpg" /> The above images include photography by Óscar González.&nbsp;Big Bangs &amp; Black Holes is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost. Kindly supported by Mustarinda Residency.&nbsp;Additional thanks to: the team at Ballhaus Ost; Katelyn Stiles; the team at Theater neben dem Turm, Marburg; Jukka Orenius; the residents of Okun Konttori Oy, Outokumpu; the team and fellow residents at Mustarina residency; Kysy Fischer; Óscar González. The Crossing https://oncewewereislands.com/The-Crossing Tue, 08 Feb 2022 10:40:01 +0000 ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS https://oncewewereislands.com/The-Crossing The Crossing A Queer Sci-Fi Told With Brand New Words Format: Performance, Film-AdaptationPremiere: 28 Feb - 13 Mar 2023*&nbsp; Venue: Ballhaus Ost, www.ballhausost.deLanguage: Damiá (with English &amp; German subtitles) Duration: 75 min Film on demand: Available to view belowScript Publication: Online PDF * Live performance premiere, 27-30 October 2022, cancelled due to COVID. Direction, text, performance, design: Chris Gylee &amp; Aslan Cinematography:&nbsp;Ethan Allison FolkEditing: Ethan Allison Folk, ONCE WE WERE ISLANDSLight design: Elliott CennetogluSound design: Mars DietzGerman translation: Lea Martini Outside eye: Mmakgosi KgabiPhotography: Óscar González Banner design: Elena PolzerPoster design: Kruse &amp; Müller Surtitling support: Panthea Featured music: Girls in AirportsProduction management: ehrliche arbeit — freies KulturbüroFunded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds. Kindly supported by: Hiljaisuus / Silence Residency “Heaal ten iaa mo silé mo cacsel vai dol-dol Cacsel zeza ten taa caden sie ga A iaa t-helia silé mo helia maa? A iaa benai sibé mo donia mazze?” Somewhere across an unimaginable void, set apart from the rest of humanity, lies a world inhabited only by Queer people. A utopia for sure. But how long would it take for the storm clouds to gather even here? The Crossing is the story of how fault lines arise and drive a dissident back across the void to their former home in search of answers to painful questions:How do we face up to the failure of our ideals? In the face of inevitable compromise, how do we remain true to ourselves?&nbsp; A crumbling theatre in a future Berlin, a city struggling to find its feet again after a series of great upheavals. The dissident stands before an audience. They once burned with zeal for their new home. But now, they find themselves cast out, unable to conform or stay silent. In brand new words, they tell us the story of their journey back home. Written and performed entirely in Damiá, a Queer art-language developed by Aslan since they were a teenager, The Crossing was originally conceived of as a live stage performance. This film adaptation was created after the premiere and 2022 shows were cancelled due to COVID. The film is available online, free of charge, for two weeks from 28th February to 13th March 2023. The text is translated for the audience with subtitles into English and German. The Crossing asks:&nbsp;Could a revolutionary Queer language be the place where we finally build our home? <img width="3028" height="2019" width_o="3028" height_o="2019" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8d8a4471eb16e5753e3e0f4d5c7fdad63bbd4ca6233033d2467955d91803e5f2/OWWI_The-Crossing_Horizontal_credit_OscarGonzalez.jpg" data-mid="150166695" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8d8a4471eb16e5753e3e0f4d5c7fdad63bbd4ca6233033d2467955d91803e5f2/OWWI_The-Crossing_Horizontal_credit_OscarGonzalez.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a60d5508b93b3afbced483333813e997df95a0da24285a619b6c704b1be0e67d/The-Crossing_web1.jpg" data-mid="164330642" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a60d5508b93b3afbced483333813e997df95a0da24285a619b6c704b1be0e67d/The-Crossing_web1.jpg" /><img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ed404b7a94fcbed3dc2f1e5e8b0ed210dbc696b5909893304a41994fae90cf03/The-Crossing_web5.jpg" data-mid="164330647" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ed404b7a94fcbed3dc2f1e5e8b0ed210dbc696b5909893304a41994fae90cf03/The-Crossing_web5.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f95087f056fec46530ea131f52b24e35d1ff02b9837f4ba7977ab85a3928a713/The-Crossing_web3.jpg" data-mid="164330644" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f95087f056fec46530ea131f52b24e35d1ff02b9837f4ba7977ab85a3928a713/The-Crossing_web3.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4c0c519ece7b66c1744312a0a23ec740f2f4a9cd76a061ccdbd7a2f8443f4a19/The-Crossing_web4.jpg" data-mid="164330645" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4c0c519ece7b66c1744312a0a23ec740f2f4a9cd76a061ccdbd7a2f8443f4a19/The-Crossing_web4.jpg" /><img width="1920" height="1280" width_o="1920" height_o="1280" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/45d303ddf256529f0955ccae0227bf7667d4c20fa18d5931f9897b2196c77841/The-Crossing_web2.jpg" data-mid="164330643" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/45d303ddf256529f0955ccae0227bf7667d4c20fa18d5931f9897b2196c77841/The-Crossing_web2.jpg" /> <img width="471" height="278" width_o="471" height_o="278" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7306411b0e6fee229cb56542f9020cade1e327b0a3b39e6037be06a96bc25132/TheCrossing_Logos.jpg" data-mid="135116773" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/471/i/7306411b0e6fee229cb56542f9020cade1e327b0a3b39e6037be06a96bc25132/TheCrossing_Logos.jpg" /> The above images include photography by Óscar González.&nbsp;The Crossing&nbsp;is a ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS production in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost. Kindly supported by Hiljaisuus / Silence Residency.Additional thanks to: the team at Ballhaus Ost; David Maß at Panthea; Inky Lee; Girls in Airports; Kat and Maja at Kaja Management; the staff at the National Archives and Records Administration, and at the Ronald Reagan Library; the film-makers of all of the collaged archive footage; the team at Theaterwerkstatt Pilkentafel for the initial writing residency; Hiljaisuus / Silence Residency and the people of Kaukonen village, Finland.&nbsp;