LT
Teo Ala-Ruona is a Helsinki-based performance artist whose work focuses on somatospeculative fictioning. Ala-Ruona explores themes such as techno-trans-masculinity, sexuality, ecology, and toxicity through a combination of theoretical discourse, autobiographical text material, and psychologically and physically intense performance scores.
By often using his own body as a site for the various speculative stories to take place, he is experimenting on how through fiction he can transform himself, as well as the perspectives from which the audience looks at his body. He approaches the trans corporeality as an arena, where various normative processes of naturalization become infeasible. His work is committed to the transgressive and fictitious potential of performance art to expand our understanding of humanity, pushing the boundaries of our perception of normality and conventionality.
In SODAS 2123 Teo will be working on his upcoming performance Parachorale, premiering in November 2024. Parachorale is a performance for one performer, cotton candy, tattoo artist, a four-person choir and a sock. Parachorale explores the hauntology and paranormal experiences of transcorporeality. Teo creates pseudopsychic theories around the “supernaturality of transmateriality”, playing with the significance of the words. In Parachorale, the central body part is the skin — it is approached as an open area and a paranormal gateway. During the residency, Teo will finalize the script for the performance, search for choreographies through somatofictional exercises, and share his practice in the form of a workshop and a work-in-progress performance.
The residency is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.
Teo Ala-Ruona residency is organised by Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association. Residency curators – Aušra Vismantaitė-Silva, Monika Kalinauskaitė and Edvinas Grinkevičius. Activities of Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association are funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture.
SODAS 2123 activities are supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius city municipality.
