This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2730852/2731431 which it is meant to support and not replace.

Page description: The page shows a two-part layout. On the left side, there are two photographs of an art installation titled Oumuamua, Gravity Escape (2022). The installation consists of a tall, vertical surfboard-object resembling a rock formation or coral, placed against a gray wall. Next to it is a flat-screen monitor displaying a close-up image of rough, grayish rock surfaces with cracks and crevices. The screen monitor displays a video belonging to the installation once clicking it.

The right panel contains text describing the artwork. The heading reads: 'OUMUAMUA_Gravity Escape'. The text explains that the installation explores human attempts to escape gravity and references the interstellar object Oumuamua discovered in 2017. It discusses themes of space travel and gravitational forces. At the bottom right corner, there is a small diagram with faint lines and nodes, representing a conceptual map.

Video description: The video is a montage of different scenes featuring the object shown in the installation: a theatrical replica of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua'. The object is presented in several ways. Some images are abstract, such as close-up shots of its surface and materials, animated sequences, and a small model placed in liquid. Other scenes are more dramatic and narrative. In these, a choreographer-performer carries the object through a forest like a surfboard, hangs it from tree branches, and performs physical movements that respond to and interact with the object. The video is divided into chapters. Each chapter provides information about 'Oumuamua' from multiple perspectives: historical, astronomical, and poetic. These elements are combined with more emotional and intimate reflections, expressed through the voice and presence of the performer.

OUMUAMUA _Gravity Escape

(...) It arrived on October 19, 2017. By that time, the flies had already disappeared and several swallows had collided with my bedroom window. October evenings were warm. Rick Deckard’s words brush softly my lips: ‘Sometimes to love someone, you got to be a stranger.’

Oumuamua_Gravity Escape is a choreographic installation that shifts the geo-centered human place-taking toward interplanetary scales and speeds. The work amplifies the history of site-sensitive practices by projecting the notion of place to outer space. It brings together speculative fiction, terraforming imaginaries, and the choreographer’s experiments on astroembodiments. Spotted in October 2017, Oumuamua is, according to NASA, the first confirmed interstellar body that moves through the Solar System. The work premiered in May 2021, when the vegetal and other organic lifeforms unfold in the northern hemisphere of the Earth. 

The project is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Performing Arts Research Centre, TUTKE, Theatre Academy University of the Arts Helsinki. 

Exploring Oumuamua produced a choreographic installation, in which I continue to examine the choreo-orientation with celestial bodies in space. According to NASA’s website: ‘The observations suggest this unusual object had been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system.’ In the project I interpret this object as an intergalactic queering body for its capacity to go beyond scientific classification and the perplexing way it moved through the Solar System. 

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