Tree Reader (Piirimäe, EE)

After spending two weeks in May 2018 a residency at MoKS artist-run project space in beautiful Southern Estonia, I worked with trees, video and sound recording to create a short video ‘Tree Reader’ which was presented in the group exhibition ‘WILD/METSIK’, curated by Evelyn and John Grzinich.

Inspired by the earliest entirely mechanic recording devices and gramophones, I used a simple paper cone to amplify the sound of the textures of the tree barks. When turned the other way around, the cone works as an intensifier for the eye.

Wild is a frame for self-reflection, from understanding one’s thinking and behavioral habits to discovering new roles in forms of social and cultural engagement. Wild is an exercise in observing the subtle transition zones between human activity and plant and animal habitats, from spaces of civilized management to the wilding areas of abandonment, ruins and forgotten cultivation slowly fading into the ever evolving perma-forest of life.

— text by curators Evelyn and John Grzinich

WALK, duo exhibition with Edgars Rubenis (Valga-Valka, EE)

Exhibition ‘WALK’ grew out of from a residency in the summer of 2017 and a performative intervention carried out on the border on the 14th of August. The performance involved a six hour walking of the border line, that was interspersed with percussive activations/soundings of the border posts. In the course of the intervention we approached the border as a (musical) score. During the performance, we translated the border posts, which in their natural environment indicate a meeting of different territories, into musical instruments. In working with the border, our interest was to bypass its political and historically dividing roles and unearth in it a function that would allow to see its surrounding environment if not with an entirely new then at least with a radically refreshed eye. During the time spent together, the border became a living organism or more even a collective of organisms who were living inside the border area (trees, stones, bog, bushes). Also the identity of the Valga-Valka town itself is an archive of numerous histories and social fabrics, being one city, but in two countries (in Estonia and in Latvia). Valga-Valka’s original German name Walk serves as an anchor in “the other end of history” for the linking of the two cities into one. The actual walking also constituted the performance as a primordial act of moving through and being with a landscape.

‘WALK’ was shown in Valga Museum (17.02-10.03.2018)

On Becoming a Fossil (conversations with matter)

‘On Becoming a Fossil (conversations with matter)’ is the second piece growing out from the first conversations with stones during my residency in Salzburger Kunstverein. I wanted to highlight the space of potential in time scales beyond human and was driven by curiosity of experimenting with and finding ways of co-existence between humans and non-humans, or stones and non-stones. This piece is a subtle invitation into the geologic time through the tactile investigation and poetic instructions, giving the audience space to bodily and/or imaginatively experience the shared choreographies between more and less alive bodies.

‘On Becoming a Fossil (conversations with matter)’ was shown together with ‘The Longest Movie Ever Made’ in an exhibition ‘Performance Objects Bodies’ curated by Matteo Marangoni (iii) in Quartair (The Hague, NL: 15.09-07.10.2017) and in TETEM (Enschede, NL: 16.11.2017-28.01.2018).

The Longest Movie Ever Made

Marking the beginning of my love story with stones, this video of endless turning of stones was made during a residency in Salzburger Kunstverein and presented in an exhibition ‘Performance Objects Bodies’ curated by Matteo Marangoni (iii) in Quartair (The Hague, NL) and in TETEM (Enschede, NL).

Untersberg Daily, from April 2nd until June 30th 2017

During the artist residency in Salzburger Kunstverein in 2017 I woke up every morning to the majestic view of mountain Untersberg, whom Dalai Lama called ‘the sleeping dragon’. I started photographing the mountain daily – an action that became an immediate weather report and a ritual giving its colour to the unfolding day. Similar to the headlines in the newspaper, I challenged myself to come up with a textual miniature every day. Untersberg also inspired me to start working on the slow time perception of stones in connection to human sense of time.