Hanna Tuulikki - SOURCEMOUTH:LIQUIDBODY - Fieldtrip to Hawick Alchemy Festival

SOURCEMOUTH:LIQUIDBODY is an audio-visual installation where the artist Hanna Tuulikki represents the flow of water from the birth of a stream to maturation by choreography, vocal composition and costume. She draws on an ancient form of Sanskrit theatre and spent a month in India learning the art. 
There are three interrelated films. The first one focusses on her mouth where she makes a series of sounds which suggest the rain, wind, insects and water in motion. As the river progresses, she layers up the sounds to suggest the bigger volume of water. The second film centres on her eyes where she uses her eyes to emphasise the direction of the water - she looks up to the top of the mountains and drops her eyes down like rain falling. The third film features her dancing, first on her own, then she layers herself up and has as many as 6 of her selves dancing. Her dance movement and costume represents the tumbling of water and when all six of her is on the screen, you can see the rapids.
Overall I liked it. With song, dance and rivers she was ticking three of my boxes anyway. The sounds she made with her mouth, which were close to what we would consider "normal" to our ears but not quite, was very intriguing and I felt, highly skilled. The harmonising was so blended that your ear was confused in to what it was hearing - I could have sworn I heard synthesised sounds in there. Her voice indicated to me clearly when the stream was little and the river was big.
While I thought the eyes looked effective being that big and lined with black on her silver skin, I did think it was harder for her to make them move in very many ways other than up and down. This made this bit less interesting in my view although I was fascinated how her whites were so white - that held my attention for quite some time.
The third screen was the largest screen and her dancing style reflected movements that I would associate with Eastern dancing - bent knees and feet pointing half out, hands in a prayer position. Here she really managed to effectively suggest the increase in the size of the river and the energy, before it slowed back down to the mature river.
The three films were pleasant to the eye and the ear. The artist said that this was because she was linking the river to deities so her theme was pleasant.
The artist does not consider herself a filmmaker, she had just chosen film to represent her art this time. She also felt to represent it to the viewer she had to experience it first hand, hence her learning the art and performing it all herself.



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