Field Studies Artist Residency: Salla Hakkola

Meet Salla Hakkola, a musician from Finland. Referring to Salla as simply a harpist would be incomplete - while the harp is her main instrument, she has explored the relationship between the instrument’s acoustic and electric sounds as well as living equally in the worlds of composition and improvisation. Salla recently stayed with us and gave a performance in the main hall of the USVA House with electronic multimedia artist, Ville MJ Hyvönen. Here are some more details in Salla’s words about her stay on the farm:

What brought you here?

My artist friend Ville Hyvönen told me about the program and it seemed amazing and I wanted to participate.

What are you working on?

I'm working on new solo material for electric harp & voice combined with effects and loopers. I have this Baba Yaga alter ego, born as a part of a previous performance art project, which since then started to live its own life and became a kind of shamanistic gate keeper for me to enter the realm of my intuition and subconcsiousness.

Baba Yaga is a character from Slavic folklore, an ambivalent and fierce old witch that lives in the forest in a hut with chicken legs. She's a force of nature that can't be controlled. Sometimes she helps the protagonist and sometimes eats children. She's wise, ugly, powerful and unpredictable. Baba Yaga gives me the right kind of energy for letting go of the ideals of a "perfect harpist" or that of a musician who strives for perfection instead of spontaneous and genuine expression. I aim to forget that I'm a well-educated and trained musician, and work with raw material that is created in the moment. Working with her I never know excatly what's the outcome.

In my Field Studies residency period I deepened some of the extended Baba Yaga material I've already been workin on. Ville Hyvönen shared a residency period with me and together we workshopped a set based on my solo material, deepened by electronic sounds created by Ville from the harp and my voice and some live recordings, which he made on the spot.

How did you use the space?

There was something magical in the Meteorite building and the whole Koivula estate. I felt that being there was already a creative act in itself - a free and safe space for all the new ideas to find me and finding their way out to existence. Our setup for the gear was downstairs, but I was also spending a lot of time just looking out from different windows, walking up and down the stairs, finding different locations in the house to work on an idea in my mind or just not think anything at all.

Ville recorded sounds from the forest outside: the little creek, birds, wind etc. which we integrated in our performance. I especially loved the big spruce forest behind the Usva building - it looked just like the kind of place where Baba Yaga would live. I felt her presence. Didn't want to leave the premises to visit the shop or any other place, Koivulan tila had a strong atmosphere in which I wanted to stay the whole time of my residency.

More about Salla:

www.sallahakkola.com / www.harpistcomposer.com / www.instagram.com/salla_harpistcomposer