Nana-Francisca Schottländer is a Copenhagen-based inter-disciplinary artist working at the intersection between dance, performance, installation, and conceptual art. Her work revolves around encounters and intra-actions with other-than-human entities and phenomena such as rocks, fungi, water, soil, and entire geographical areas with their inherent lifeforms and dynamics. Central to her work is the use of her own body as a living tool for research and creation.

In the series HEAVY KINSHIP, Schottländer explores the co-creative potentials of encounters between rocks and humans, between stony and fleshy bodies, trying to understand what it takes to engage in respectful, reciprocal, and intimate exchanges with something existing on such radically different terms than ourselves

By invitation from partners of the In Situ network she has done a series of research residencies focusing on landscapes of rock and water marked by human extraction and production, investigating the ongoing, mutually forming dynamics of entanglement that shape landscapes, bodies and civilizations.

In each place she has worked with embodied research, sometimes in collaboration with photographers documenting the process. On many of the residencies she has conducted workshops based on the method of GOING VISITING, in each place modifying the workshop to address the specific dynamics of this particular context and explore them from an embodied, curious and caring perspective.

The following texts are excerpts from field notes from the different residencies, accompanied by images documenting the workshops and research processes.

Andreas Strand Renberg

MATERIAL DISPLACEMENTS

Research residencies in the quarries of Rødshue and Blåkollen near Fredrikstad

By invitation of Østfold Internasjonale Teater / Østfold International Theater

June 2022, November 2022 and May 2023

Photos by Andreas Strand Renberg

(Material from the residencies be shown in a series of pop-up installations in the centre of Fredrikstad accompanied by several performative interventions, including a series of Rock Bonding Sessions).

Blåkollen:

I’m lying body to body with a prehistoric giant. Granite. Collapsing bone on collapsing stone.
Layers and textures. Stages of processing.
My shadow falling on the stone. The shadow of the stones on my skin.
Fleetingly we mark each other and leave traces in each other.
Small body, journeying through a huge image.
Now lying belly to belly with a mountain of gravel. A sort of drifting, shredded mass.
The notion of minced meet comes to mind. I find a strange phenomenon here; when I observe the processed materials, it seems as if they are moving in slow, fluid formations, contractions and expansions.
As if the act of blasting the rock from its stagnant origins started this motion that cannot be stopped.
As soon as the movement, the collapse is set in motion, it is unstoppable. The journey has begun.
Am I welcome here in this unstable landscape?
Our extractions of these landscapes could be compared to a sort of auto-immune disease, breaking down bones and tissue.
How does this resonate into my worn out bones and tissues?
The inherent collapse, the omnipresent fall, is pulling my body.
I must collapse to rise again.
Find my journey onwards from here.
Born again from rock.

Andreas Strend Renberg

Rødshue:

Soft, ancient bodies. Sharp edges. The waves of the ocean licking the landscape into rounded curves. Countless invitations. Cracks and soft folds that hold, shelter for life to unfold.

This is a caring place. A place for holding and being held. A place for making a nest, a refuge.

The contrast between my soft body and the hard, sharp rocks softens, as we lean into each other, holding each other tenderly.

We become soft together.

A rocky embrace between flesh and stone as they gently pulse together, rise and fall with the waves of breath.

We rest together here, weighed down, safe, held

HEAVY KINSHIP vol. 7: Extraction and Care Research residency and performance in the Zu’Surfuru mine in Fluminimaggiore By invitation of Breath Days Festival / Teatro di Sardegna July 2022 Photos by Laura Farnetti for Breath Days Festival
Arid landscape. Crushed rock. Chemical residue. Traces of violence. Crumbling machines and buildings. Greetings from 500 million years ago… Talking to the stone. Ancient, hot anger. ‘I’ve been torn apart and put back together again more times than you can imagine’. A history of violence. Geological, colonial, material… The village is created from the mountain: buildings, roads, piazzas. The money earned through extracting minerals, creating a living, generating wealth. In a way the village is the mirror image of the mountain, turned inside out to house human bodies, needs and aspirations. The extraction of the mountain requires the extraction of the worker’s body: Silicosis - rock dust affecting lungs and breath. Generosis - the constant drilling affecting the nerves and sensitivity of the hands. Loss of hearing due to constant exposure to loud sounds. The mined mountain is a crumbling body. The body of the miner is a crumbling mountain. What happens to the wounds of the landscape and the wounds of the bodies who worked it, when the mining stops? Holes. Cuts. Scars. Spiders live here. Snakes live here. Memories live here. The echoes still reverberating. With enough time, the wounds become places of new beginnings. Mountains are slow and old, humans are fast and young. Our destruction was fast. The healing of the mountain is slow. It takes time. Maybe it’s time to shift our roles. Maybe it’s time to become the parent; nurturing and caring for the mountain by cleaning and restoring the mountain. One rock at a time. Maybe that kind of caring will make my body strong as a mountain.

The flow of minerals is constant. Stone and plant in each other. Human and mountain shaping and being shaped by each other. Bonding, grounding, mending, replenishing, restoring.

And this too - the mining and the healing - will become part of the ever forming layers of the world.

HEAVY KINSHIP vol. 8: Rock, Flesh and Water - Stages of fluidity and notions of time Research residency and performance in Cava di san Mauro in the Lona-Lases region By invitation of Pergine Festival June-July 2022 Photos by Elisa Vittori for Pergine Festival
"Porphory is the red gold. The mountain is our child. Our golden child. It gave us our wealth. How do we protect it?" I ask the stone what I can do for it. It replies "You can dance with me." "Dancing with porphory. Lifting it up, like a soaring mountain. Letting it fall. Letting the fall reverbate into my flesh. Again and again. Falling with it."	©Elisa Vittori
© Elisa Vittori

© Elisa Vittori	© Elisa Vittori
Moving with surfaces and cracks. Feeling how the tensions and structures reach deep, deep below me. Putting it down in front of my feet and letting the road unfold from there. Perhaps porphory likes to rest under my feet, under the feet of the world? To hold us up…? The rocks are always moving, always traveling. In the quarries, the stones are separated from their origins and shipped into the world on a fast-paced journey. To land in other places and form part og other geological events, by human intervention. All mountains crumble. All bodies fall. How does rock fall? How does flesh fall? How does water fall? How do we rise together anew?	Elisa Vittori

HEAVY KINSHIP - research residencies within the IN SITU network — Part 1

MATERIAL DISPLACEMENTS

HEAVY KINSHIP vol. 7: Extraction and Care

HEAVY KINSHIP vol. 8: Rock, Flesh and Water - Stages of fluidity and notions of time

Linked

Nana Francisca Schottländer

Østfold Internasjonale Teater

Teatro di Sardegna

HEAVY KINSHIP - research residencies within the IN SITU network — Part 2

HEAVY KINSHIP - research residencies within the IN SITU network — Part 3