In our contemporary everyday environment there are lots of factors, that cause both health hazards and indisposition for large numbers of individuals. There is no clear divide where ‘ordinary’ symptoms to ‘ordinary’ stimulus of the living environment end and become oversensitivity.

Mould Refugees Association

Canary is an embodied imagination of oversensitivity. It is performed on the second floor balcony in Kiasma for thirty people at a time. The name of the piece relates to the sensitive birds, which were taken to coal mines to measure the toxicity of the air. When the bird died, the mine was dangerous for humans as well. In Canary the place of the birds is taken by oversensitive human bodies, celebrating imperfection and mayhem.

The oversensitivity is related to space, the sounds, smells, light, air and toxins of the space. What happens when the space can no longer be inhabited? Canary models the hypersensitive person of the future by embodying the overloading of senses. We are suggesting a future, where people survive, but change radically. We are choreographing the symptoms of living in toxic places until the breakage surfaces and the person becomes an other, a hybrid.