Exhibition of six MoKS/Binaural related artists at Galeria Santa Clara Coimbra, Portugal
Photos of the Parahouse event in Berlin by John Grzinich. It was very difficult to get an overview that evening since I was busy with my "feed back" installation. You can see photos of this at the end (where people are feeding each other). Thanks to Marko for the conceptual push and to Moni, Joulia and others for helping organize. If only we had more time...
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Next week will be a busy one. The first X-OP events will happen, a conference organized by Media in Motion and a performance organized by Marko Kosnik. All this runs in parallel with Transmediale. More reports to follow soon...
Monday, January 26, 21.00
*Electropera Act 1: Parahouse_12
self-evolving participatory environment
by Egon March Institute and partner productions
Studio Martina Schumacher & Joulia Strauss in Ullsteinhaus
Monday-Thursday, 26th – 29th of January
X-OP- Conference Berlin
„True Art / Truely Merchandise“
at ConcentArt
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Evelyn and John from MoKS are spending a few weeks in Dresden Germany in a residency at 7.Stock. This literally means 7th floor which is what it is. We occupy a studio on the 7th floor of an old DDR administrative building in the center of the city. The building is mostly empty with the exception of a number of artist studios on the 6th and 7th floor. While this is an almost ideal situation there are a number of ongoing problems, mostly of a political nature with different administrative departments of the city. These problems essentially keep the 7.Stock project from growing and going more official. Nonetheless this artist initiative has hosted many artists and events over the past few years in a sincere and well coordinated manner.
Our aim here is rather open, to work on continuing personal projects and to prepare for a performance in Berlin. There we will take part in the parahouse12 multimedia event organized by Marko Kosnik in cooperation with X-OP project.
Where to begin. I have to say that writing this from a slight distance (one and a half months and back on the other side of the world), the most overwhelming feeling I have is of having left so many things undone. Not that I feel I did not do enough during my time at MoKS, but simply that there was so much more I could have done. One month was not enough.
My daily excursions into the disused sections of the decaying ex-collective farm did slow as the temperature dropped, and the snow came in. But I would not have switched the weather for a more mild and stable one. I saw many pictures of Mooste in the summer sun, and it almost looked like another place. The chance to see the weather change over the month, and its effect on the landscape and soundscape was wonderful. When I arrived at the beginning of November everything was wet and soggy. Even in the forest the snapping of twigs under foot did not make their usually brittle snaps and cracks. All was muted somehow. Then everything froze. Sounds became crunchy and crackly underfoot again. The last leaves falling on the frozen road where clearly audible from a distance. And then came the snow again placing a sonic mute on the landscape. And finally, as it came closer to my departure, the snow melted creating a constant dripping and running of water. The metal pipes leading from the guttering at MoKS make a particularly wonderful sound. And finally followed by the wet squelchy sounds of the ground returning to mud.
I could have stayed in Mooste and recorded it's amazing spaces for months. I'm luck to find one such site at home every few month and suddenly I was surrounded by many of them within 10 minutes walk. However the various excursions that John took me on where equally incredible, and still slightly hard to take in even now. The frozen rubble of one of John's favourite sites at Podra, a recording trip with Felicity Mangan, Maksims Shentelevs and Kaspars Kalnins to a large disused Soviet military base in north Latvia, sitting on the side of the road in the cold and dark listening to the singing of telegraph wires/poles swaying in the wind, and finally four of us by the side of a small lake (I think??), huddled inside a small metal box in the rain, setting the thing resonating. Felicity accidentally startling a flock of ducking, sending them flying directly over us.
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The activities Evelyn and John have instigated, facilitated or encouraged at MoKS are extremely impressive. As is the thinking behind it. Rather than trying to “raise” everyday life to the level of Art, it seemed to me to be a matter of simply using art as a way of living and exploring life and your surrounds. And much much more...........................
Thank you very much to Evelyn, John, Siim and Felicty for making my stay at MoKS such at enjoyable and thought provoking one.
We are slowly starting to process the documentation from AVAMAA. Thanks to everyone who participated and made it a really great event. Here is a series of photos that capture a few of the highlights.
Tero Nauha wrote an excellent essay AVAMAA IN MOOSTE for SIRP cultural weekly.
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Two months in Mooste have left time as a plastic thing. It's collapsed and expanded simultaneously. I don't know how long I was actually there. My memory vacillates. By a clock of friends, I think I was there a year. But with all the things still left to do, do again in Mooste, it was only a dozen days.
With another week, here's how I'd spend it.
First, I'd buy a kilo of buckwheat, pouch of sour cream, and jar of ligonberry jam. Then I would eat it all. But I'd be sick, so I'd have to climb the hill past the lake and take a nap in a field. I would ride the bicycle back and forth from the post office when I felt better, and hopefully see one or two men passed out on the side of the road from boozing it too early and too long. I'd go blueberry picking in the forest and after climbing about in it's industrial vertical rhythms, I'd be inspired to paint for hours with the relief- the freedom of having no distractions. The next day I'd follow Evelyn around the forest to learn how she finds so many mushrooms. Then I'd write a book about it and she'd be famous. I'd collaborate! And walk up the hill to visit the 80-year-old woman who tends an impressive garden by herself. She swings her scythe high and swift. I want to hear John and Evelyn play the Jew’s harp again, and get lost navigating the dirt roads around Vissli. Apparently this is something that every MoKS resident does, and I wonder how many times the couple with the black Chow have asked one of us, "Were did you come from?" in the most confused manner, wondering how one actual walks to Vissli from New York. I would spend time with Roomit, and his posse, play hide and seek in the vodka factory with them, and recruit some for portraits and interviews. I'd like to do this every year.
Mooste is a place very conducive to making things. Or art. It gives you quiet. There is the landscape to chew on while you think, and the inspiration of Evelyn and John. Mooste has left me without haste or the frenetic forward motion of any clock that most new Yorkers carry around with them like a virus.
A sincere thanks to Roomit and the Allese family, Sveta Bogomolova, and all the Mooste noored for trusting me to paint their portraits, telling me their stories, and teaching me how to get over a hangover with pickle juice. Actually, I could have done without that.
Evelyn and John have put together an inspiring place that I am very glad to have been a part of. Thank you Evelyn and John for those 61 days, or however long it really was.
I’ll make you burgers anytime Mooste,
Jane
www.janelafargehamill.com
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The MoKS artist for May, Anna Marie Rockwell, created a whole blog for her residency. You can read all the details of her work and exhibition at:
[gallery]Is this my imagination that I still smell smoked even in Berlin?, after a week from smoky sauna in Estonia? It can't be true.
The smoky sauna was an amazing experience. The countless numbers of stars in the black sky, people jumping into a cold pond, drinking beers and going back to sauna to get smoked, mix gender, I felt shy but it seemed very natural thing to do.
This is not all did in Moks, though. I was very isolated in the forest at the beginning. I have never been this isolated. And I nearly had whole one month all for myself, no disturbance. Time there was just for my work and figuring out the direction in my life, which very much reflected onto my work. I sat in front of the computer all day and working on a image with Photoshop. When I got tired, I went for walk in the forest and field for several hours. I felt nature there. Nature in Estonia, I felt it close rather than as a object to over take. I felt with nature, the energy from nature, sky, land, forest and water. It may be to do with how pagans here respect nature, such as positive energy circle in the forest. There was an amazing coincident happened with my work and this circle. The day I made circles in my image, a local artist, Peeter Laurits, took me to the circle in the forest.
I have realized in the forest that we all need very basic energy to live. And we all have that in ourselves and also we need energy from outside to let that inside energy to come out. It is just like a seed has all the energy to grow in oneself and still needs sun to let that happen. John and I talked about this with the energy in quantum theory as well, if I remember it correctly.
Art is to represent this energy whatever the form we like. Every artist can pursue this individually, and that is great thing about art that we can all find our own way.
Living in a city and society, it is easy to forget about facing the limits of what human can make, compared with what nature can do. Nature is bigger than us and same time, we all have it in ourselves as our origin of energy. Art is to transform this energy and exchange with others.
Thanks to Evelyn, John, Mari and many other friends in Moks,
Mamoru Tsukada
http://www.tomiokoyamagallery.com/artists/+TABLE/eng/frame.html
MoKS would like to thank everyone who took part in the Kultuurijaam. In the past week there were over 15 events and artistic actions that took place around Tartu and Mooste. We hosted over 25 guests from abroad including 14 students from MAA art school in Helsinki. We will slowly be processing the documentation and putting some online soon. Remember if you need any help concerning art, Art Security is still ready to serve.
