Pen of the Month: TEACH ME NOT!

“The body is fragile, though.”

Touch                                 as                                       Relief

Touch                                 as                                       Restriction

Touch                                 as                                       Softness

Touch                                 as                                       Boundaries

Touch                                 as                                       Solid wooden objects penetrating the body

TEACH ME NOT! begins with two naked bodies, masked as pigs, standing motionless while a short text is projected onto the floor. One line reads, “No is a means of staying alive.” A reflection on Sara Ahmed’s "willful subject” - the one who says no, who resists. Ahmed reminds us that saying no is often a survival tactic.

The simplicity of this sentence transferred me back in time, where, for some, "No" is a boundary; for others, it is a risk, a danger, a punishment. I was pulled into a memory when saying "No" meant being beaten into silence. I began to reflect on the unspoken "Noes" etched into my body and the echo of traumas that resurface when those refusals go unheard.

The body, here, becomes more than a vessel. It becomes an archive. A living container of memory, sensation, trauma, and even sound. I wondered: how many hands have left their traces on my skin? How many forms of touch provoked movement, pain, or resistance?

Philosopher Gabriel Josipovici, in his book "Touch", offers a compelling meditation on this subject. He privileges touch over sight, suggesting that tactile engagement enables a deeper, more intimate relationship with the world. Drawing on literature, art, film, and lived experience, he presents touch as a portal to presence where medieval pilgrims or modern lovers might find deeper truths. But what happens when touch is not desired? When it disrupts rather than connects? When it lingers as a wound?

TEACH ME NOT! takes up these questions through a stark and visceral examination of power, intimacy, and the gaze. The performance centers the body as an object to be observed, controlled, and ultimately reclaimed. There are touches we forget, but the body does not. A flinch, a twist, a protective gesture. These are not linguistic memories, but somatic ones. The choreography here does not emerge from form, but from resistance - each gesture is haunted by what it cannot say.

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As the performance progresses, the initial stillness gives way to fragmented, involuntary movements, accompanied by glitched soundscapes and high-frequency distortions. This sonic atmosphere, saturated with dreamy dissonance, evokes the persistence of trauma and the disorientation of memory. The performers’ bodies seem to search, struggle, and reclaim what has been taken or silenced.

Later, the tone shifts: the dreamy glitches give way to ritualistic rhythms, heavy with drum and bass. The performers, still masked, carry giant wooden dildos, phallic symbols that become objects of ritual, spectacle, and violence. They grind against them, penetrate themselves with them, enacting a grotesque homage to societal obsession with phallic dominance. It becomes a choreography of submission and revolt, one that mirrors how the world continually yields to the force of the phallus.

“The universe is fucked by a giant dildo.”

This grotesque moment points to the foundations of masculinity: man as dominator, as ruler, as abuser. From Aristotle’s rational animal to the omnipresence of the male gaze, we are reminded of how deeply our lives have been shaped by patriarchal power. TEACH ME NOT! dismantles this  binary structure, by choreographing a historical movement through their dance, as a metaphor of dismantling such embedded and embodied ideology requires unpacking the history of existence.

TEACH ME NOT! opens a broader conversation about hierarchy—between teacher and student, observer and observed, dominant and submissive. It is a space where touch becomes political, and memory corporeal. The sound and the choreography drifted my body to a world where I remain pondering about the touches that lingers in my body and remain in my memory. 

Photo: Susanna Vento

Moe Mustafa was born in Kuwait in 1985 to Palestinian parents, brought up in Jordan, and is currently based in Finland. Moe is a visual and sound artist, performer, and writer with an MA in Art and Media from Aalto University. 

His work spans text, sound, and performance, often focusing on themes of identity, memory, sexuality, and diaspora. Moe’s recent projects include Mascu-Fuck, a performance commissioned by Kiasma in 2023, and A Floating Body of Cloud, an audio essay exploring environmental sound and diasporic identity, commissioned by YLE and set for release in 2025. 

His work investigates the intersections of sound, politics, and emotion, with a focus on queer Arab experiences. Moe’s practice often questions the dynamics of belonging and desire, creating evocative narratives that challenge societal norms.