unnfaleide

Unn Faleide (she/her) is a dance artist and curator working in Stockholm. Her interests lie at the intersection of dance and performance, the sculpted and the written; meaning, she is concerned with art that is simultaneously dealing with permanence and inscription and at the same time works with live-ness and what happens in the moment. She got her BA in dance at The Amsterdam School of Arts (2013) and proceeded to work as a dancer who occasionally studied philosophy. After ten years working for Cullberg, Sweden's most renowned touring dance company, she decided to do a masters in curation of art at Stockholm University (2023-2025).

The idea that different mediums produce different ways of thinking-doing and that there is a way to carry over the thinking-doing from dancing into writing and visa versa was introduced to her in 2015 by Eleanor Bauer. Since then, she has tried to let dance unfold in various textures and texts, as well as letting writing become a way of dancing. These days she is investigating how dance might be a way of curating and organizing and is speculating as to what extent the collaborative efforts within the field of dance might be of significance to other nooks and crannies of society.

Even though you will never read these words I felt compelled to write them, like that email I composed and was intending to send to my ex that I never actually sent; full of questions that I wanted to have answered but will never have the pleasure of having answered because the answers I would like are not the ones I will receive because I can’t, because my ex can’t. And it’s not just that, I also have conversations in my head, conversations with people who have hurt me in some way or maybe I hurt them; it can be difficult to tell who hurt whom. In these thought out exchanges I make it all better, and I get to live out parallel versions of existence. Your story made me see you, which made me see me through you, and realize how lonely it all is and how much time is spent waiting and how little there is to lose in admitting failure, in giving up, in sending an email, in trying to fix things, in trying to get validation, or even being somewhat seen outside of oneself.

(So I decided that I’m not waiting anymore.)

Dear Harris,

Let me tell you about a feeling, the feeling of trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up; the feeling of aspiring towards something. There is something about that sensation of gathering all the passion (shrug, I get embarrassed by the word), lust and desire for otherness, and projecting it into the future; like a star sending all its light into space. Stars keep shooting their light in multiple directions towards nothingness, towards a colorless void without resistance and they keep doing it until they die and even after they die, the light just keeps going. Dreaming, projecting, sending into the future, for the future; but a future one is no longer fully there for. Whatever fully there really means.

?

So I guess I can relate to the feeling of being completely preoccupied with my own beam of desire and ambition, this projecting of energy forwards and backwards and all around, in order to possibly achieve something that I will not be fully there for; because by the time I get the often very abstract thing I've been longing for I'm already searching for another thing, and the beam of attention and power is focused on something else something further down the line, something that may never really happen anyway. And this keeps going on and on and on. Wanting to “make it” someday, and the "making it-part" keeps transforming, shifting and escaping me, but the beam keeps shooting.

(This idea of making it is not just an insular story of success, it's a hope that the world will become a radically different place where a complexly articulated idea of justice is governing and people have permission and are encouraged to figure out and express themselves fully.)

And then, when I met you, Harris, a couple of weeks ago I started to sense something else; an ebb. The beam of energy started ebbing out, the feeling of longing and wanting started to evaporate and the future got all foggy and gray and I slowly stopped trying to make out shapes in the blurriness. Harris, I think you made me realize that there is no point in chasing ideas that were shaped and constructed in a body long ago, you made me see the temporality of desire, you made me understand that the body keeps shifting; we are no longer what we once were like on a cellular level;. a cellular set-up long gone. The maps that were constructed for us are still lit by some light, but the authors are dead, and the bodies that make up us now are moist and alive and they don’t have to be constrained by ghostly ideas of the past.

You have some sweet moves, some moves that tell a different story, not a story of waiting and accepting the status quo, but a story of smoky landscapes, swamps, and maybe even pleasure; pleasure in going with change. Anyway, I am writing to tell you that in the time that we spent together you did something to me, maybe it wasn't all good, definitely not all bad. I know that you lied at times, but I guess it doesn't matter. Talk is cheap, writing costs more and actions are a whole other matter. I will stop soon. I guess that is my point. It's when you stop trying, stop waiting and stop attempting you might end up seeing the current landscapes. Harris, I guess this is a resignation letter, a way of stopping for a little while and taking in the view.