AU: Chapter 1

English translation of the text of the audio work AU: Luku 1 / AU: Chapter 1, 2021

Translation: Johanna Koskinen
Language advice: Katie Lenanton

The text contains descriptions of an illness and its symptoms.
Teksti suomeksi

AU: Chapter 1

Leaving the apartment is easier early in the morning. You can turn your face towards the low sun visible between the buildings. You can run slowly through the residential area, and then across a narrow suspension bridge to an island where they've collected plants; it's a city project, sneakers are disinfected on the other side of the bridge. Another suspension bridge leads to another island, but you can't go there without permission. On this island, there's a historical zoo, they keep some species alive there these days, try to make them breed. You can run around the first island, faster and faster each lap.

The occupant lies in bed all afternoon and evening, and eventually all night. All activity, movement, and being upright are packed in the morning when the occupant is hopeful and energetic. Often, going out is difficult. Outside, it feels like you just want to get back inside as soon as possible and lie down in bed. Or you feel frozen in place, unable to take another step. Then again, in bed, it feels like you can't get out of it, or you can, but you don't want to, but you do want to, the occupant should want to, should want to do things, live in a balance of doing and resting, go places, earn the right to stay at home, and lie in bed. But at the same time, that's what life is like, there's nothing dramatic about lying around, and it's usually not unpleasant, but quite nice.

What's it like to be ill with something that has varying symptoms and isn't even recognised as an illness. It's something that's only a condition, that you suspect is only in your imagination, and yet, physical — vomiting, strange headache, a crushing weight on your shoulders, a body so tense that it's hard to breathe.

It's strange that the condition isn't visible from the outside, that it's impossible to measure it, even though they do try — take an ECG reading, an EEG recording, do an MRI scan, take endless blood tests.

But they find nothing, there's no name for the condition, and you just have to carry on. It helps to think that this is what life is like, what a body is like, what being a human is like. It helps to read and to play, it helps to have friends who don't know about the condition. It helps to imagine yourself being someone else.

Much later, the condition is given various names and definitions, none of which quite fit, which contradict each other, are inaccurate but coercive, and also useful.

The occupant works somewhere. They go there sometimes. The occupant is almost always in their apartment. The occupant owns their apartment. They wipe the surface of the table. They lean against a wall and watch. They run water from the tap. The water is too hot, so they wait. Take out a frozen product and wait for the oven to heat up. The occupant eats. Drinks water. The occupant is just at home. Has decided to stay at home.

What would society look like if it were centred around weakness? What does weakness actually mean? Perhaps tiredness, illness, ageing, childhood, death, softness, collapse, dependence, having a body, sensitivity. What does weakness need? Perhaps care or protection or help or nurturing or negotiation or collectivity or being alone or support or space or consideration or reciprocity.

The occupant stretches out on the soft rug and strokes their fingers through their hair and into the fringes of the rug. The occupant turns their hips to the right and then to the left, checks to see if the curtains are closed. Then the occupant knocks on the pine parquet three times, a portal takes them to the rug, which ripples a little, the pine parquet maybe has more eye-like wood knots. The occupant sits up, satisfaction running through their veins like liquid metal, this belongs only to me, I own all of this, I own the apartment, and I own this, and they don't even know about this, so they have no access to it, I have imagined this for myself.

The occupant walks around the second level of the apartment, goes from room to room, enjoying everything around them. Everything is fine in the apartment, everything belongs to the occupant and is fine for the occupant, safe, in its place, ordinary, everyday, delightful in a way that makes the occupant laugh as they look at a lamp, which is beautiful and harmonious, and they switch it on, the occupant moves their finger on the dimmer, looking for the perfect spot, and after finding it, they stretch out on the bed, the occupant endlessly stretches out on the bed, the sofa, the rug, the parquet, the vinyl plank flooring, the occupant endlessly falls into a lying position.

It might be an obvious thing to say that browsing for apartments online is about dreaming of a new self, a more adult self. Even if, in reality, you are already old, middle-aged, but somehow not really a grown-up, you don't own your apartment, you don't have a paid job, children, or a partner. Even if you don't always care about it, you do realise what it is, and yet norms aren't something external to the self, they attach themselves to the body as fibres, the body is made up of them as much as it's made up of veins and thoughts. They move the body, shake it, or hold it together, or just ripple a little.

The area contains an idea of its future. The idea of the future is connected to the present, to calculations about a rising sea level and strengthening winds, and to speculations about how the occupants' relationships will form and how the occupants will move around in the area.

The apartments in the area contain an idea of a certain kind of body, of a certain size, for example, that has a certain amount of money, that does certain things.

If the occupant is good to the area, the area protects the occupant.

Inside the walls of the apartment courses lake water, electricity, urine, faeces. Carbon dioxide-filled air seeps out, and oxygen comes in, 4G and Wi-Fi run through the walls, everything constantly collides with everything.

The occupant holds objects in their hands. In the palm of their hand rests a small trophy with AU engraved on it, found years ago at a flea market. They think of it as a prize for creating other worlds for themselves, as a reminder that it's an achievement to do so.

Oily liquid drips from one eye onto the sofa cushion, the other eye looks at the wall, gazing contentedly at what it has just done. Through a hole in the wall, a south wind blows through the apartment, growls and squeals carry from the nearby island as everyone leaves, water slowly rising above the calculated limit. The pipes hum, the freezer melts, everything spills over, electrical wires bulge out of the walls, vinyl planks revert to polymers, and polymers revert to oil, and oil reverts to the bodies of organisms and their ghosts.

Or: The occupant invites friends over. The ice cream maker's motor purrs as they lie together on the floor. The occupant knocks on the floor three times. It's different there now, everyone's fantasy entangled.