Frames of Festive Spaces. Single-channel video with sound, 30’. Courtesy of the artist. Video available at vimeo.com/181850865
As the material for this media-critical work I use Besides that my artwork is an endeavour in exploring
two pieces of news aired on the national TV, one how ideological art takes up new meanings and
involves the mural by Okas and the other one the functions in different historical contexts, it also
lunette paintings by Jansen. The „picture scandal“ tries to highlight the inconsistencies in the official
(pildiskandaal) broke out in autumn 2014, and historical narrative today, when it comes to the
concerned a class photograph taken in the hall of condemnation of the undemocratic regimes that
the History Museum, as part of an inauguration ruled the Estonian nation in the last century. In
ritual of first-graders of the Russian-language addition, Festive Spaces is an attempt to show
school of Lasnamäe. According to the National what lies at the other end of the official identity
Broadcasting, taking pictures against the background policy, which aims to deny agency to the largest
of The Friendship of Nations has an anti-Estonian ethnic minority to choose places where to carry out
undertone, as its iconography depicts Soviet symbols collective rituals that help them to connect with a
and subjects. The second piece of TV-news is centuries-long history of the presence of Russian
from 2013, and is about the decision to restore and culture in Estonia (5).
put on public display in the Parliament building
the two Jansen’s paintings representative of the
authoritarian regime of the 1930s.
References
(1) Festive Spaces is based on a site-specific live performance titled Star-
Bright Hour (Tähetund) which I gave in the Estonian History Museum in
August 2015. The piece was produced by SAAL Biennaal performance art
festival. Anneli Porri’s curatorial text for Silence. Darkness... can be found
here: http://www.kunstihoone.ee/en/events/silence-darkness/
(2) Evald Okas, 1915 – 2011.
(4) Lasnamäe is a Soviet-era residential area of Tallinn with the largest
Russian-speaking community of Estonia.
(5) Long before the castle of Maarjamäe became the History Museum and
before Evald Okas painted Soviet symbols on its walls, it was a summer
residence of Russian count Orlov-Davydov, 1837-1905.
(3) August Jansen, 1881 – 1957.
REVIEW
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