WORK

Valga igavese sõpruse kivi – a monument _{(click to read)}

I WAS HERE? – urban intervention_{(click to read)}

CONTEXT

This residency was organised by VARES took place in Valga/Valka on the border of Estonia and Latvia. It is a somewhat sad place with rather suspicious inhabitants. It is a place that is on the outskirts of history. Far away from any centre of power they have undergone history. Wether it was the soviet union, its collapse or the subsequent divisions of land, power and capital. It is a town that has only shrunk in the past fourty years. Inhabitants are suspicious and ask ‘Why are you even here?’

In the midst of this mostly empty urban enviroment we encountered some very poigniant expressions of life in reaction to this kind of enviroment.

And it made so much sense for me, the scale of these statements are as big as life itself. In a place where everything and everyone is just existing, decaying and shrinking there is little left except these big emotions, big questions and big exclamations. It is some person screaming they are in fact ALIVE. And that they want to LIVE not just EXIST. LOVE VS FREEDOME

It did not only happen in the form of grafitti. Here is an advertisement that was next to the main square. It advertises ‘alpha cursus’ and grapples with questions like ‘Is that all?’ There were also massive amounts of love locks on all the bridges crossing the waterways, something that initially suprised me. To see so much love in so many different shapes in this place.

The things i did were framed within this sensation and context. The residency itself was focused on experimental architecture and urbanism. Quite different from the usual art context.