RHIZOME
Photo Petri Siikanen
THE RHIZOME
The Rhizome project by the Other Spaces collective introduced school students at Tehtaankatu Primary School in Helsinki to embodied learning practices.
Through a series of experiential and body-based workshops the project explored the concept of rhizome together with the students. The workshops examined rhizomatic structures and phenomena found in different environments, such as fungal mycelium, the internet and processes of diffusion.
The project was carried out in collaboration with HAM Helsinki Art Museum and the pupils and staff of Tehtaankatu Primary School in 2020-2023.
In December 2023, the instructions for the Battery exercise developed during the project, along with a documentary film about the project were handed over to Tehtaankatu School.
BACKGROUND FOR RHIZOME PROJECT
The project takes a close look at the diverse rhizome-like phenomena in our environment. Using collective corporeal transformation exercises developed by the Other Spaces collective, participants engage with creatures such as fungi and mycelia and phenomena that resembles rhizomes, including underground animal burrows, the internet, gas and language.
The rhizome ialso functions as a model of networked thinking and organization, characterised by multiplicity, movement, directionality and free association rather than hierarchical structure (see Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands: and Other Texts 1953-1974).
PERCENT FOR ART PROJECT
The City of Helsinki follows the Percent for Art principle, which allocates approximately one per cent of the budget of new construction and renovation projects to the commissioning of new public art. In recent years, active building development has enabled the commissioning of artworks for numerous public buildings across the city. HAM Helsinki Art Museum serves as the arts expert in these projects, and the commissioned works are incorporated into HAM’s art collection.
The Rhizome project by Other Spaces collective expands the range of Percentage for Art commissions. Due to its participatory nature, the work is included in the collection of HAM Helsinki Art Museum as a conceptual art work. In addition, the documentary film and the Battery exercise, developed collaboratively by the collective and the pupils, is part of the documentation of the art work.
OPENING RITE
The first workshop of the project took place in late August 2020 with thirteen classes at Eiranranta, Southern Helsinki, where the school had temporarily relocated during the renovation of the Tehtaankatu school building.
The letters of the alphabet were a starting point of the Opening Rite. Conducted with one class at a time, the workshop began with a warm-up, where each pupil embodied the letters of their own name using different parts of the body. The session introduced the origins of the alphabet and included a collective walking exercise, in which the class sought a shared rhythm.
In the final stage, each class formed a line and “wrote” four to five giant letters by walking. Together, the thirteen classes embodied the entire alphabet. This act of writing through movement was filmed from above using a drone. The alphabet created collectively by the pupils is used as a visual element in the project’s video work.
MYCELIUM, RAYS OF LIGHT AND COCKROACHES
In November 2020, Other Spaces carried out the second part of the Rhizome project: the first full workshop week at Tehtaankatu School’s temporary premises at Eiranranta, Southern Helsinki. The focus of the week was in introduction to the Other Spaces basic practice. Pupils and teachers were introduced to the collective’s working methods and thinking through the group’s classic exercises. These included forming a fungal mycelium, sending spaghetti “rays of light” through space, germinating plants, and embodying cockroaches.
A total of 17 class groups participated in 1.5-hour workshops, each facilitated by two artists from the working group. The sessions began with an introduction to the collective and the project, highlighting a key idea: while artworks are often understood as objects—such as sculptures or paintings—this project approaches art as something created collectively through our bodies.
Several exercises introduced different rhizomatic structures, and pupils were invited to reflect on what a rhizome might be. Their responses included fungal networks, tree roots, the human body, and humanity as a whole.
A Covid-safe version of one of the collective’s oldest exercises—the mycelium exercise—was realised using strips of fabric. Pupils were physically connected to one another, forming a living, breathing network through which water, nutrients, minerals, and various forms of information could flow. They were guided to listen closely to the signals transmitted through the network and to the subtle sounds it produced.
Through corporeal imagination, the workshop also explored sensations such as an earthquake and the spatial behaviour of light. In a particularly popular exercise, some pupils took on the role of cockroaches while others were humans. The exercise examined human behaviour from the perspective of a cockroach: when the inhabitants leave, the cockroaches roam freely; when the humans return, they quickly retreat to the edges and hide.
PUPILS’ EXPERIENCES FROM THE RHIZOME WEEK
The workshops concluded with a discussion session where participants could share their experiences. Here are some remarks made by the pupils:
”I felt like I was really a mushroom and underground.”
”I felt even the earthquake felt real.”
”It was a nice experience to notice that I can make weird sounds.”
“I felt that I really was a sunbeam.”
”It was hard not to be allowed to speak”
“The mycelium was nice – you could kind of rest in it.”
“I learned that mushrooms have some sort of a thing underground.”
”The mushroom-thing was nice, I had a moment to think about the meaning of life.”
”Very weird.”
“I felt like a cockroach, a crunching feeling.”
“I learned what cockroaches do at night.”
”I like that we play but learn at the same time. This was a good exercise for that.”
“Sometimes it’s just good to calm down and relax.”
THE THIRD RHIZOME WORKSHOP WEEK
The pandemic has not discouraged us. The Rhizome, a collaborative project of the Other Spaces group, Tehtaankatu school and HAM, continued in April 2021.
During the week of May Day, the third part of the project took place inside and outside in the beautiful seascape of Eiranranta. Throughout the week, pupils and teachers explored a range of rhizomatic structures and phenomena. Classes independently viewed an introductory audiovisual presentation created by the collective, participated in 1.5-hour workshops, and concluded the week with a shared, school-wide Rhizome -exercise that was carried out with all classes simultaneously via the school’s central radio.
The presentation introduced the concept of the rhizome through examples such as plant root systems, animal swarming, the human circulatory and nervous systems, geological formations, and the global network of the internet.
At the end of the week the sun warmed us during the outdoor workshops that expanded on these themes through embodied exercises, including weaving spider webs, schooling fish, sensing the human body’s internal networks (fascia), and imagining large-scale rhizomatic structures such as galaxy clusters. As the project progressed, it was possible to work more deeply with the classes, as both the themes and the collective’s methods had already become familiar.
The workshops also introduced the idea of complex systems through playful, game-like exercises in which pupils became part of constantly shifting wholes, where each element affects the others in unpredictable ways. The climbing plant Boquila trifoliolata was used as an example of mimicry, highlighting the capacity to imitate and adapt.
On Friday, the week culminated in a collective exercise involving the entire school. Guided by two members of the collective via the central radio system, pupils and staff remained in their classrooms while taking part in a shared imaginative journey into the world of rhizomes.
During the exercise, the whole school collectively imagined a growing, interconnected rhizome extending from their own bodies and spreading throughout the building. Through this network, it became possible to send and receive messages across the school community:
“You can transmit and receive messages through the rhizome to your schoolmates across the building. We are all part of the same rhizome, where every part is connected to the others. Each part affects the whole.”
At the end of the session, each pupil drew a segment of a rhizome, contributing to a collective drawing that continued to evolve over the course of the project.
Project Rhizome is a Percent for Art project of the City of Helsinki, and is realized in collaboration with HAM Helsinki Art Museum and Tehtaankatu Primary School.
WORKING GROUP
Working group for Rhizome project: Johanna Etelävirta, Timo Jokitalo, Eeva Kemppi, Kaisa-Liisa Logrén, Minja Mertanen, Heli Mäkinen, Anu Nirkko, Sanni Priha, Jaakko Ruuska.
Working group for Opening Rite: Johanna Etelävirta, Eeva Kemppi, Kaisa-Liisa Logrén, Minja Mertanen, Heli Mäkinen, Sanni Priha.
Dokumentation working group: photography Jaakko Ruuska, still photograpy Sanni Priha, drone photography Petri Siikanen, sound design Jarkko Kela.
OUTCOMES
Rhizome workshops with the pupis continued from 2020 until 2023.
In December 2023 a video-documentation from the project was published and handed over to the Tehtaankatu school. Tehtaankatu school also received the Battery -exercise instructions. The exercise was developed together by the pupils and Other Spaces -artists.
The documentary film Rhizome, following the project is available here: https://vimeo.com/894637788?share=copy Please ask for the password from info@toisissatiloissa.net
Eeva Kemppi and Jaakko Ruuska discuss the completed Rihmasto project on Radio Helsinki in an interview by Anna Cadio, broadcast on 20 December 2023. Listen online.
The Toisissa tiloissa collective’s Rihmasto project introduces primary school pupils to embodied learning at Tehtaankatu Comprehensive School. STT Info, 26 October 2020.
Emma Vainio: The Rihmasto project introduces school pupils to embodied learning and non-hierarchical thinking. Dance Info Finland, 1 December 2020.
