Zodiak Laboratory is Zodiak's residency concept. In May 2024 the ZodLab residency artists are the members of Yumi collective.
Yumi is a multidisciplinary art collective consisting of members with multidisciplinary practices encompassing street dance, contemporary dance, performance art, sound design, rap lyrics, video art, and photography. All members of the collective share a common background of 10–20 years of experience in breakdancing.
Yumi is a Korean name with one of its many meanings being ‘wandering beauty.’ Ironically, ‘jumi’ in Finnish refers to the demanding physicality of breakdancing, which can sometimes stiffen the body. Practitioners of the style also find themselves in most intricate physical knots, occasionally making it challenging to untangle from them or continue movement.
Our upcoming performance is an improvisational multidisciplinary performance piece consisting of sound, text, and movement. The project's title, Gömböc, comes from a miraculous three-dimensional shape that should not exist as it has only one point of equilibrium. Typically, natural objects seek balance from multiple equilibria.
In the residency, we focus on practising the group's improvisational techniques. We concentrate particularly on the relationships between sound and impulses and bodily experiences within the space. The group's dance backgrounds are primarily rooted in movement improvisation and exploring different directions and forms of movement. Commitment to movement and its fluidity has evolved into a unifying skill for our group, which we aim to explore and develop during the residency.
The project's sound design and movement material are largely based on meticulously practised and defined interactive improvisation, allowing the collective members' personal backgrounds to come to the forefront. Both our shared connection to hip-hop culture and numerous collaborative exercises form a cohesive framework for boundless creation. The spontaneously created sound environment is constructed from both the sound designer’s and other performers' live recordings, comprising musical elements, speech, and song.