Aistit / coming to our senses

Weaving, yearning is a public sound installation by Kalle Nio and Hans Rosenström, that unfolds along a route through the busy King’s Cross area. It is a song consisting of four voices that softly drifts through a cityscape creating an invisible thread that weaves the listener, the passer-by and the environment together for a fleeting moment.

The song, composed by Aino Venna in dialogue with the artists, will play once a day for a duration of 20 minutes around the hour of sunset. It finds its inspiration from the evening sky and the precious air we all breathe. With its four voices, Weaving, yearning vibrates the air as it travels through it, reflecting off surrounding surfaces, moving on the skin of the bodies nearby, making its way inside the listener. The song reminds us of our shared existence and our interwoven lives that together form a delicate and temporary community.

Weaving, yearning is both a song and an event. It elevates a moment under the changing sky and is an invitation to sense the surrounding cityscape in all its glory. It offers the passer-by the chance to breathe in the atmosphere and its nuances, to take note that:  I am here and you are here too. Let us listen. Let this song carry us together for ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.’ [Simone Weil*]

The past year has thrown into stark relief the ways in which our lives are interdependent and how singular events ripple through communities and across continents. The awareness of how mundane individual decisions may hold unforeseen consequences for others has sharpened. Our entanglements can also be perceived as a remedy to lonely individualism and a vital invitation to attend to each other with care and tenderness. Weaving, yearning spreads over King’s Cross at dusk, summoning a gentle awareness of the presence of fellow beings nearby.