Georgie Goater, Maikki Palm, Gesa Piper: Memory Matter

This dance piece is devised from an ancient scripture found on a log.
It landed in Sofia’s hands
carried by the wind on that day we lay by the water.
Seeing through one lens while stumbling over another,
cracking and pouring out the pink memory matter.
The ground is glimmering underneath us.
Planting our faces into the sky,
time flipped so I could remember as far back as my death.
A funeral of clouds made a grand gesture,
opening, always opening.
The arms, scattered and free.
Sixty-four chimes sang Mirjami’s name,
shaking off the dust from their first home.
The moment to go home was now,
and the colour green followed us all the way.
An old woman thought I was holding a child
as the log lulled deeply into my body, from my body.
A piece of the bodyscape, Killingholma island.
Her smile of recognition carved out the last letters.
It rests here somewhere in the middle,
Now part of the living room.

Memory Matter by Georgie Goater, Maikki Palm and Gesa Piper, explores and unpacks embodied ancestral lineage(s) through the lens of "grandmother". The "the grandmother" is not only the literal family relation, but a portal to meeting concepts of time travel within oneself, and the impossibilities of encountering what is no longer present.

The three choreographers/dance makers have varying immediate lineages (New Zealand, Finland and Germany). The work delves into reimagine the line of heritage through herstorical perspectives. These perspectives collide and intertwine in corporeal explorations of real and imagined auto-narratives through time, in relation with one another, and with the grandbody that resides as immanent potentiality in each of us. 

The process invited encounters with family members to help shape the work, as an exploration to re-embody those choreographic agents who shape moments of life.

The work is co-choreographed between Georgie Goater, Maikki Palm and Gesa Piper, in collaboration with lighting and stage designer Sofia Palillo and sound designer Riku-Pekka Kellokoski. The international working group (New Zealand, Finland, Germany) co-creates the first GAB LAB collaboration between Zodiak and Globe Art Point.