ikkööhäik – I’m ok is a site-specific project made in Copenhagen with a starting point in the local language. Maarit Mustonen and Anne Naukkarinen do not speak Danish but they approach the language through its texture, sound, rhythm, and interpretations. The work, a performance piece and an artists’ book, moves between an existing language and a new language located in between Danish and Finnish.
The verbal material of the work is written by Mustonen in Copenhagen. She has listened people speaking in public spaces and written down what she hears and how she hears it: hils stiine – de baiju omsii – oukei – de ee megafiiert – ikkööhäik ikkööhäik. Naukkarinen, who has background in dance and performance arts, approaches these words as scores: she interprets the words by voice and movements, creates gestures for each utterance. Mustonen and Naukkarinen work with the embodiment of language, its emotions and logics, and the possible spaces created by words. They examine, how do meanings emerge and sway? Who is the body who moves and talks? What kind of world language creates? The interest of the artists is in the familiar yet strange quality of language, its physicality, and imaginative dimensions.
ikkööhäik – I'm ok was performed in a private apartment, home of curator Karin Hald (Forlaget Gestus), in Copenhagen. The performance included also a lecture by speech and language therapist Alma Manley and a reading by Hald. Due to the intimacy of the performance space the work was not documented for camera.
The artists’ book ikkööhäik – I'm ok brings together verbal material, associative translations, and gestures developed for the work.