This exposition presents the speech written and performed by my drag alter ego, Maimu Brushwood, at the KuvA Research Days of the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, on Tuesday, 9 December 2025. The event, titled “10 Years of KuvA Research Days,” celebrated a decade of artistic research by looking into the diverse trajectories of past, present, and emerging doctoral projects. The anniversary programme also included a curated presentation of objectiles—artistic research projects-in-the-making—by doctoral candidates who began their studies in the 2020s.
The set-up of Maimu Brushwood’s speech stems from the second artistic component of my doctoral research, a drag performance (in the image) , through which questions of embodiment, performativity, and artistic authorship are explored. Within this frame, the speech reflects on how drag can function as a critical, humorous, and affective methodology in artistic research.
Timo Tähkänen, Doctoral Researcher
The Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki
timo_tahkanen@uniarts.fi, www.timotahkanen.com
Maimu Brushwood – Speech, Kuva Research Days 9.12.2025
Lipsync Perfromance:
Céline Dion – All by Myself
Words and music by Eric Carmen (1975),
based on Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Performed by Céline Dion, 1996 (Falling into You, Columbia/Epic Records)
------
Who did you listen to just now?
Me? Céline?
Or something trembling in between us?
Lip sync is not only about pretending to sing —
it’s about listening with the whole body.
Today, I’m not by myself.
I’m with you.
Hello—
dear listeners, dear hörande,
rakkaat kuuntelijat.
My name is Maimu Brushwood,
I´m poet, listener, a kind of researcher—
though I prefer to say:
a professional eavesdropper
on the invisible.
This setup — me, standing here, performing research —
mirrors the second artistic component of my doctoral project.
In that performance, I confessed to being jealous of menstruation —
to listen through the limits of my own body.
We are not just people in a room.
We are an archipelago of ears.
Ett öronlandskap,
kuuntelun saaristo,
trembling field of attention, an orchestra of reception, of resonance.
I learned to listen long before I called it art.
In another life, I cared for people
whose memories were slowly dissolving —
like watercolor in a glass of water.
There, listening meant more than hearing.
It meant staying with what could no longer be said,
with the trembling between presence and absence.
That experience stayed with me.
It shaped how I make art,
and how I understand listening as a form of care.
My research asks:
how does listening shape my artistic process as a queer visual artist—
and how does it shape the way art listens back?
I call it queer listening.
Sometimes I say: vikuroiva kuunteleminen1.
Sometimes: lyssnande som vägrar vara lydigt.
Listening that misbehaves.
Listening that leaks, laughs, and blushes.
It’s the kind of listening that doesn’t wait its turn.
It interrupts — with affection.
It is not only a method, but also a mood.
When I create art,
I don’t only look—
I listen through the brushstroke,
through the pixel,
through the trembling silence between two bodies.
Claude Cahun asks: Who are you?
And I answer: I am listening2.
Hans Belting says: The body is an image3.
Minä sanon: ja kuva on korva.
Bilden lyssnar.
In drag, I paint the ear on my skin.
Mascara becomes a sensor,
a microphone for invisible frequencies.
Every gesture—too soft, too much, too queer—
becomes a signal.
Kuunteleminen ei ole vain korvalla.
Se tapahtuu kehossa,
i kroppen,
in the pulse,
in the breath4.
When I perform, I listen with my knees, with my lipstick5,
with the trembling air between me and you.
Once, during my performance,
the music didn’t start.
The table was in the wrong place.
My notes trembled in my hand.
And suddenly—
everything was right.
Because the silence became the method.
Because the room started to listen with me.
Because queer listening is not about control.
It’s about surrender.
And perhaps that surrender
is also what I call resonance.
In my research, resonance describes
the vibrating relation between artist, artwork, and audience —
a living echo that transforms everyone involved.
The artwork is never still,
it listens back,
it hums with what has been heard, felt, and remembered.
As Jean-Luc Nancy reminds us,
sound never belongs to a single source —
it is always already in motion,
resonating through bodies, spaces, and meaning itself6.
And as Hartmut Rosa writes,
resonance is not harmony,
but the trembling possibility
of being in relation with the world7.
Today, I speak in English—
because this is the language of academia.
But my thoughts began in Finnish,
and sometimes in something wetter.
A language that has no grammar—
only breath.
mmm—
haa—
sili—sili—suuuh—
haaaaaa—
tsshh—mmh—ahh—
My dear listeners,
queer listening is a love practice.
It is how we hear each other
even when we don’t share the same language.
So—
if you understood nothing,
you have listened perfectly.
NOW I INVITE YOU TO LISTEN WITH ME.
Let’s try something simple — and playful.
Before we begin, I want to acknowledge something.
What I’m about to guide you through involves seeing, hearing, and feeling.
I know that not everyone in this room experiences the world through the same senses.
Please take part in whatever way feels possible for you.
Listening can happen through sound, through the skin, through the air between us.
As Tina M. Campt reminds us: listening is a way of attending to what is otherwise unseen8.
Breathe consciously.
You may sigh, huokaista, if that feels right.
Let your shoulders drop.
Feel your weight — on the chair, or on the floor.
Now, if it’s available to you, look around.
What do you notice?
How are things related to one another?
Take your time.
You can look wherever you wish.
There is no right or wrong way to see.
And then, if you want, close your eyes.
Breathe.
Let the air touch your skin.
Listen to the person next to you breathing.
Listen to the hum of the lights.
Listen to the texture of this space.
Listen to the other sounds in the room.
Notice for a moment
how the room shifts
when you attend not only to what you see,
but to what you hear —
or even to what you sense in silence.
How are you
in relation to what surrounds you —
and to others?
The following suggestions are fictional.
So please don’t worry.
You can open your eyes or keep them closed if you like.
What changes,
if I tell you
that the walls are painted in lead white —
a colour once bright, now forbidden.
Or that someone has hidden a winning lottery ticket somewhere in this room?
What changes,
if I tell you
this space is a spaceship,
and we are no longer on Earth?
What changes,
if I tell you
that once, during drag story time,
a child was curious about what was under my dress.
What changes,
if I tell you
this is the end of my talk.
Thank you, kiitos!
References
- Vänskä, Antti. (2006). Vikuroivia vilkaisuja: Ruumis, sukupuoli, seksuaalisuus ja visuaalisen kulttuurin tutkimus. Gummerus.
- Cahun, Claude; Leperlier, François. (2023). Claude Cahun. Thames & Hudson.
- Belting, Hans. (2011). An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton University Press.
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2002 [1962]). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge.
- Muñoz, José Esteban. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press.
- Nancy, Jean-Luc. (2007). Listening. Fordham University Press.
- Rosa, Hartmut. (2019). Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. Polity Press.
- Campt, Tina M. (2017). Listening to Images: Essays on the Affective Life of Photographs. Duke University Press.