Danse de la terre, 2024

three-channel video installation
sublimation print on canvas
digitized 35 mm & 8 mm cine film and HD video
Stereo sound
8 min 25 sec

In the three-channel video installation, Danse de la Terre, Niina Vatanen combines different sources from self-shot Super8 material to archival material and phytograms made with plants. Spring and plants take center stage in the work. The ending of winter and the return of spring, the rejuvenation of nature, have traditionally been celebrated with different kinds of spring rituals that also strengthen the close bond that humans have with the Earth and its cycles. Plants have always been of tremendous importance for humans, as sustenance and raw materials, but also as symbols and the foundation of spiritual culture. For this work Vatanen has gathered plants from the local nature and her own garden. She captured the plants on cine film using the phytogram technique. Vatanen also used plant-based developer emulsion to develop some of the black-and-white film featured in the work. Vatanen’s work is an homage to the earth we walk on and the plants that our life is completely dependent on.

This fragmentary video installation was inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s dance piece Rites of Spring (1913), which depicts rituals held in the celebration of spring, and Sandro Botticelli’s late 1400s painting La Primavera, which depicts an allegory of the arrival of spring. The name of the installation, Danse de la Terre (Dance of the Earth) is a quote from the final scene of the first act of Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring, where the people go wild with a passionate dance, hallow the earth and become one with it

Directing and cinematography: Niina Vatanen
Editing: Jenni Toikka
Sound design and music: Simo Laihonen & Sami Pekkola
Mastering: Samuli Tanner
Archival material: Kansallinen audiovisuaalinen instituutti (National Audiovisual Institute)