Performance/
saturday 14.11.2026, 4pm
at Cimetière parisien de Pantin,
164 avenue Jean-Jaurès, Paris

Finissage of the exhibition Demeure by Poush
Curated by Inès Massonie and Patrice Chazottes
Invitation by Tilhenn Klapper


Saija Kangasniemi
with Nastaran Yazdani and Anais Barras

The title of the performance is composed of the words ”floral wreath” in the three native languages of the performers. It refers to a ceramic object traditionally placed on graves in cemeteries.

Performers shared a collective diary-writing practice and an individual praying practice during the weeks of preparing the performance. Exploring how individual and collective experiences intertwine in the dance, they shift between the personal and the shared, between closed and open eyes, and between realities.

What kind of wreath of prayers is created by their shared writings and through movement and their voice?

14.10.2026, Saija

Yesterday, since the morning, my mind was occupied with violent and hostile thoughts.

Then, a woman came to the bookshop and was enquiring a book by Karin Boye that is called ”Pour l’amour de l’arbre”. I looked it up and one of the poems starts like this;

”There grows a tree beneath the earth”.



18.10.26, Nastaran

Three years after my father’s death, I went to visit his grave.

We brought his favourite flowers and a box of his favourite pastries. In Iran, wreaths are not as common as they are in European cultures, though you may see fresh flowers, potted plants, or occasionally a wreath, which we call halqe-ye gol (“a circle of flowers”) or taaj-e gol (“a crown of flowers”).

I remember one of my sisters pouring water over the gravestone and gently running her hand across it, as if she were caressing my father’s face. She talked to him the whole time.

My other sister arranged the flowers on the stone, one stem at a time. Slowly, she began to pluck the petals, still talking to him.

They asked if I wanted to come with them. I asked whether they were going to offer the pastries to the other visitors in the cemetery. In Iran, this is a common custom: people bring dates, halva, or other sweets to share in memory of the deceased. It is called Kheyraat, an offering made in the deceased’s name.

They left to give me some time alone with him.

I sat there with a string of green Shah Maqsud beads wrapped around my wrist like a bracelet. They were a gift from him,a beautiful strand of green stone. We both loved beads, though neither of us used them for praying. In fact, neither of us prayed.


I said aloud, “I wish I believed in an afterlife. Then I could tell you right now: look, I’m wearing the beads you gave me.”




19.10.26, Nastaran


It is autumn, though of course, seasons are intranslatable; it depends on where on earth you grew up. Beneath the grey sky, I find myself at peace, as though I have pulled a quilt over my head and simply rest there, quiet and safe.



20.10.2026, Saija


Last summer, I took the train from London back to Paris. The train was completely full. On the other side of the aisle, across from me, sat a young woman. She started crying. She covered her face with her hands, as if burying herself in the shelter of her palms. She cried and prayed, whispering. She cried quietly, yet so loudly. She cried with her whole heart. Deep sorrow. My mind could only imagine what could have had happened. The sorrow overwhelmed us all sitting next to her. I cant stop thinking of her. It felt she went somewhere far through the praying and her palms. Where did she go?




21.10.26 Anaïs


Je suis heureuse soulagée, fatiguée.

Aujourd’hui je suis avec mes grands-parents. C’est simple et agréable. Je fais de la couture avec ma grand-mère, et on a été chercher le pain chez Matias. Ma grand-mère est une femme dévouée : à dieu, à sa famille, à son village, aux gens de l’églises et aux morts. Ma grand-mère fait les cérémonies d’enterrement, elle remplace les prêtes. Ca m’impressione. Mirelle est une femmme formidable, je l’admire, une femmme modèle de sa génération. Femme éléguante, à la mode et femme au foyer, elle incarne une standar, l’idéal d’une époque. Ma grand-mère était à la campagne pendant mai 68, à la ferme, pas en train de faire la révolution. Ma grand mère n’a jamais gagné son propre argent. Je n’ai pas l’impression qu’elle a été malheureuse de cette vie là, mais je sens qu’elle a se regret de n’avoir pas avoir eu un travail rémunéré en dehors de la maison, avoir cette reconnaissance sociale - hors foyer.


Avec mon grand-père on a parlé de la peur de mourir quand on est a un age avancé, enfin je lui ai posé la question. Il semble dire, que c’est une fatalité qu’il a accepté comme une chose qui arrive et que ce n’est pas malheureux quand on meurt à 84 ans par exemple.




22.10.26  00:35, Nastaran


I am sitting in bed, with my left eye covered with a bandage. I remember I wanted to write something here, but I didn’t have access to the internet today.

I can’t stop thinking about how funeral ceremonies have changed in Iran over these past years. All these years in which so many people, specifically young people, have gone. Parents dance at their funerals. They sing and dance. Sometimes there is even music that sounds happy, and parents and friends dance.

Yesterday, one of my friends posted on her Instagram story: “The difference between demonstrations in Iran and France is that, in France, when you go with three of your friends, you know that the four of you will come back.”

I am thinking about how this changes the way we say goodbye to those who have gone, the way we accompany them. As if we are singing a lullaby to a child we are putting to sleep — something that comforts us, and perhaps also the child we are holding in our arms.




22.10.2026, 6:31, Saija


Dramatic encounter in the park.


Yesterday morning I climbed up through the park to the metro to go to work. I always take the same route. The park and it’s trees are so important to me. I’ve had so many encounters there, mostly with trees. It all started few years ago, when a woman was passing me and my daughter in the park and said ‘thank god for this park’, and I started to look at the park differently. My children call the park “äidin metsä”, which means “mum’s forest”. It’s a park, but it has become as a forest to us, as in Paris city there are no forests. So in the morning everything was as usual. In the afternoon I came back from work and was coming down the path and saw a shocking view. A massive birch tree had fallen over to the path. All it’s beautiful body was laying there on the ground. I went to it, the need to caress and comfort it. I went to look at the break. Right in the center of the core, there was a small brown rotten area. Maybe it had a disease. Then I went to touch the top of the tree, which once had reached so high up the sky.




22.10.26 Nastaran


I was thinking about this line that Saija sent us : ”There grows a tree beneath the earth”. I read it last night for my friend who is looking for a text for a piece she is about to compose for a choir. She asked me if I have read the poem she sent me from a Japanese poetess. I said no what was it, and she sent it again to me :


Arbre

Dans l’obscurité, l’arbre oscille certainement. Ses petites feuilles se livrent bataille. Après avoir été battues tout le jour par la tempête, elles poursuivent leur vacarme dans la nuit, sans connaître de repos.

Ah, ce n’est rien — les petites feuilles s’agrippent les unes aux autres, puis errent en tous sens ; tournées vers l’est, vers l’ouest, criant chacune de son côté, elles se tordent encore, puis soudain immobiles, s’épient mutuellement.

Parce que je suis dans l’obscurité, mes yeux voient mieux ; mes oreilles entendent mieux — puisqu’il n’y a rien à craindre, cet infini recommencement, cette usure sans fin

m’épuisent. L’arbre s’agite certainement. Bientôt l’aube viendra et le vent tombera, et lorsque moi-même je sombrerai dans le sommeil, l’arbre continuera de croître en silence.




24.10.26 Anaïs


J’ai fais rêver des gens. Non plus que ça j’ai proposé une guidance, où je guide une personne à faire un voyage dans d’autre dimension et espace temps, pour visualiser des linges de temps dans le futur. J’appelle cela la récolte de de rêves mais pour moi c’est plus un réveil conscient un état modifié. Il y a eu de très fortes et belles expériences. Tout le monde voit de la lumière derrière le portail. Un espace de lumière puis ça se dessine. Des formes des couleurs des paysages. Dans un certain futur il y aura beaucoup moins d’humain. Un homme de 2406 a dit qu’on devait profiter du présent qu’on a aujourd’hui,  ce qu’on a aujourd’hui ne sera plus, apprécions le pleinement maintenant car demain on ne sait pas. Je convoque au plus profond de moi que l’humanité s’éveille.

Nam myoho Renge Kyo.




25.10.22026, Saija

I was walking in “my forest” again, near where the birch tree had fallen. It had been chopped up into a pile. However, it had been left right next to where it had been growing, left to decompose where it once grew. Another birch tree of the same species grows right next to it. In this park, the park keepers often leave fallen or chopped down trees to decompose near where they once grew.




27.10.2026, Saija

first rehearsal yesterday

the sight of fingers intertwined on the floor, like a big pile of hands joined in prayer

and the sweeping motion with joined fingers, like women cleaning the floor together

cleaning emotions with water

water pushing and supporting

starting from the ground and finishing on the ground




27.10.2026 Anaïs

Une journée avec le symposium demeuré.e.s vivant.e.s. Ca m’a fait du bien cette journée en état de réception, sans production, juste écouter, recevoir, entendre, comprendre les pensées d’autres sur ces questions de deuils, mort entre vivant et mort.e.s. Deuil = mourning en anglais. Cette journée m’a donné envie d’explorer davantage la pratique de la fleur où l’on se tient les mains, tournent, se baissent. Ça me donne envie de laisser la voix résonner, vibrer, gronder, et de marquer une forme de rythme par nos pas, notre allure, notre écoute, de ses petits pas qui tournent en rond. Comment les fleurs écoutent ? Comment les fleurs s’offrent aux morts ?

Est-ce que nous sommes des femmes qui convoquent le pouvoir de la fleur, pour faire résonner leurs beautés, leurs puissances ? Est-ce qu’on devient des fleurs qui ont un message pour les morts ou pour les vivants qui regardent les morts ?

Les fleurs sur les tombes rendent hommage aux morts, elles cultivent symbolisent le lien des vivants avec leurs morts. Entretenir les fleurs sur une tombe, c’est entretenir symboliquement nos morts ? C’est une façon de dire je pense à toi. Moi pour ma grand-mère décédée, je lui chante une chanson, je m’adresse à elle par mes pensées, par mes émotions.

27.10.2026, 4:57, Saija

Äiti

When I pray for my mother

I imagine her with her pure heart

It’s warm beautiful joy

Maybe that’s what forgiveness means

or it’s where forgiveness doesn’t exist

it doesn’t have a meaning




Woke up in the middle of the night, went to the bathroom. A bright light from the rooftop window. Full moon. Next to it a second moon, orange red. I’ve already had that dream of two moons, but this time I was awake.




29.10.26 Anaïs




31.10.26




1.11.2026, 9:49, Saija


Clear blue sky, half-moon.




02.11.26 Nastaran

I wrote the date and left without writing anything else…

I had seen that Anaïs had dated it and even written her name. I thought, what happened next…? Then I got lost in the dream and fell asleep…

These days have been complicated… Physically, I was tired, and Davood was sick because of the gas at the demonstrations… He took beautiful photos, though.

I went for a walk the other day… I melt into the yellow of the leaves… I burn gently in the red of the leaves beneath the blue sky…

Cold weather and sunshine make me lose all sense of time and place…

Memories awakened in my cells, as if I were living through all the winters of my life again.




2.11.2026, Saija


Walk. Autumn leaves falling on me. Last days I have forgot to pray. I dreamt of one of my childhood forests. A forest surrounding my school. When I was a child it felt endless in all directions. In the dream I felt the same. Maybe that’s how the world use to feel. I visit the “grave” of the fallen birch tree often. Where it’s slowly decaying. Thinking about Anais’ question of the intention of our dance. I think of it as a prayer, constantly moving. As it unites us. Blue moments. Silent peaceful sacred. With my children. Like in the hospital when Untamo was born everything in my mind and in the hospital room were blue. And last night when they were falling asleep next to me. Untamo asks how the seed from the father goes to the belly of the mother. And if there used to be dinosaurs in planet Mars.




03.11.26 Nastaran

I was in a small city in Germany, whose name I could barely pronounce. I had a concert there.

I woke up in the morning and no one was home. I was staying in the apartment of someone I had briefly met when I arrived the night before. I made myself a coffee and went out onto the balcony.

I knew someone there. A tall walnut tree was standing there. I said hello, and we spoke in Persian.

Later, I told my brother on the phone, “I don’t feel like a stranger in places where I know the plants and can communicate with the children.”




5.11.2026, 7:21, Saija


I woke up at five. I washed my hair. When I came downstairs I saw my own reflection from the kitchen’s black window. The wet hair. I remember my mother, the first time I realised she had a drinking problem. It was the morning of 1st of May, after the celebrations, I was maybe 7 or 8. She had washed her hair, was standing in the kitchen, with the wet hair, smiling lightly, saying good morning, like everything was fine again.




5.11.26, 18:22, Saija

Unelma drawing on a white A4. She turned the paper and on the other side was a printed draft of my thesis from a few years back. The thesis is called praying -practices of presence. I was curious what this random printed chapter contained. It was about how the choreographer Deborah Hay sees praying in her book My body -the Buddhhist (2000). How she found praying through dance, as a feeling of profoundness and union.

“praying became a dialogue with all there is”

She prays for no-one, prays about nothing, and not for answers.

One of her conditions for praying was:

“reorganizing the self into 53 million cells that are in active, nonlinear connection with all there is”

She talks about a profound and extreme form of perception, where the body  receives an infinite stream of stimuli. In doing so, praying is freed from content and replaced by attentiveness and awareness.




5.11.26, 19:09, Anaïs

J’ai vu que j’ai noté une date et mon nom, sans rien écrire. Cet acte manqué exprime bien une forme de dispersion que je peux avoir dans ma vie à vouloir parfois, et ne pas réussir. À vouloir et ne pas pouvoir. J’apprends à faire moins, j’y arrive parfois puis je n’y arrive plus, je me sens déjà en retard. J’adore ce temps décrire ici sur cette page commune. Je n’ai pas encore réussi à l’inscrire dans une routine, j’aime les pratiques et la discipline qui s’inscrive dans une quotidienneté, des fois, je pourrais en faire pendant toute la matinée, pour y arriver j’aurai besoin de me lever beaucoup plus tôt.

Quand je vois ces inscriptions sur la pierre, je me dis que toutes les pierres sont des tombeaux. La roche est une mémoire des vivants - un témoin du temps qui passe, elle donne une trace et une forme au temps.J’ai mis une main sur cette roche et j’ai senti une énergie puissance, une chaleur qui a envahi ma main et tout mon corps. C’est un état de prière, comme dit la citation de Deborah Hay, un etât d’ouverture et de conscience. Je me sens dans cet instant dans un état de connexion profonde à mon être et mon environnement comme si les frontières se dissoudaient. Sentiment d’un tout - d’une unité - d’une joie.

Demain on danse et on prie ensemble. Réjouissance.




7.10.26, 20:38, Anaïs


Tellement émue de voir cette danse à trois. Je la trouve extrêmement belle, délicate et puissante.


Ce bercement, balancement permanent est fantastique, il m’évoque étonnamment est très justement le deuil. Le balancement d’un passage celui d’un corps vivant à un corps mort, le passage d’un monde à l’autre, le passage du visible à l’invisible. Je nous vois comme des femmes qui expirent mettent en mouvement, faisons circuler le deuil d’un monde, nous exprimons une tristesse qui semble n’être pas forcément la notre mais celles de ceux qui sont partis et ceux qui pleurent encore leurs morts.


Merci à vous deux, merci à chacune, merci à nous trois.




07.11.26, Nastaran

1- I was lying next to Davood. He had come back to his apartment for a short lunch break, and I asked him to close his eyes for ten minutes before heading back. I found myself gazing at the edges of my own body, wondering: Where does my arm actually begin? I could see that there was no clear distinction, no precise boundary. My body had no definite edges. Then I looked at his skin, at everything in the room, and realised that nothing had such clearly defined boundaries either. Nothing had a sharp outline, a precise dividing line, like the ones you see in anime.

2- I love seeing the three of us dancing together. I love this pace, our tiny steps, the way we intertwine, our movements and our waves.I can’t write in more details about it yet. I need to watch the video again, and perhaps again, and let the words come to me, the whispering sentences, then I will be able to think about the eyes.

3- Anaïs’s gentle note passed through my body so softly, almost like one of those waves from our dance. Today, as I was walking through the streets, lost in the fog, I found myself thinking about how much I love you both.




9.11.26, Nastaran


I read Saija’s sentence, this came to me : در من درختی می‌روید There grows a tree within me. I thought it would be good for part 2, then I remembered some lines of a poem from Forogh Farrokhzad, the name is Another Birth- Une Autre Naissance. The translation of the part which I remembered  is :

 

I shall plant my hands in the garden

And I will grow I know I know oh I know

And in my hand's inkstained hollow

The swallow

Shall lay its eggs.





13.11.2026, 7:09, Saija


Last year in November (4.11.2025) I wrote to my diary:


heard on the radio: in Chinese language, there’s a symbol for grief or mourning that consists of a heart symbol with a symbol for autumn on top of it.


Fall is a time of letting go, a practice in letting go. The trees show us this. They drop their leaves, transform, clean themselves, decay, they show us the natural process of death and rebirth every year.