Dear reader, here are some thoughts, memories and photos, that came out of my one month residency stay at Moks in November 2009 ...

One of the deepest traces in my memory are connected with silence that I had the pleasure of listening to when smoking a cigarette outside, staring through the window, taking long walks around the small lake and through the forest, lying in bed early in the morning, when light was still shy and I was concentrated on the outside just to hush up my thoughts ... or the silence I listened to when being with/sitting with people and listening to them or to myself ... always listening what silence spoke to me. Unconsciously, silence and the mere fact of being by myself most of the time gave me inner beauty and clearness. While contemplating, I realised I almost selfishly protected my "by my self" being there ... And again, I emphasise the importance of primary, basic activities like burning a fire, just sitting in front of the flames and enjoying purifying softness of the parching heat and sounds of redness ... and there, somewhere in-between, disperse silence emanates, that helps you to really hear yourself. Maybe this is all what there is around the mystery of silence, yearning, exploring and researching of it?

When I told people I would be at Moks the whole November, I noticed a hesitation concerning the persisting greyness of the day. But that was exactly what I wanted - to experience November light in Mooste (and Tartu, Pärnu ....) and all the varieties of hazes and yes, there are thousands of different greys and blues (from purple to the white pearl to dense black).

About curatorial dinners ...

The question how to perform a "curatorial research" on a personal level somewhere with very little things known, was challenging for me. But soon I found a satisfying possibility in phenomena of “dinners” – through intimacy of social ritual like eating together. And there I had seven different stories with different people and artists. Also, I have to say it was fun experimenting with local food supplies.

with Riho Kall
apple, orange, almond and raisin cake

with John Grzinich
tagliatelle with tomatoes, mozzarella and cheese, olives and red vine

with Evelyn Müürsepp
red peppers, zucchini, almonds, raisins with soya sauce and cardamom, rice and carrots with garlic and lemon, cake with cherry jam and chocolate from the market

with Toomas Thetloff
we changed roles, Toomas was the cook, we had liver, red beet and cottage cheese

with Patrick McGinley
mixed smoked and very (!!!) salty fish with cream sauce, rice, clementines with dark chocolate

with Erkki Luuk
smoked fish in cream sauce with garlic and butter potatoes with dill, mandarines with dark chocolate

with Anna Hints
I don't have a photo of our meeting, we met at Werner cafe in Tartu, we had coffee and carrot cake

[caption id="attachment_428" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="An elderly lady in the beautiful allotments recieves one of our homemade ice-cream lollies."][/caption]

Dear all...

A little late but life jumped back into the fast lane once we got back to Germany. Mooste seems a million miles away now. Which is sad.

Between the 15th of July and the 31st of August we spent a six week MOKS residency in Mooste, creating a body of work to address themes that emerged during the first week of our stay. Our work explored Estonian identity in the locality using a variety of participative and interactive techniques, a body of work that looks at the relationships between people, place and history.

Interventions included the creation of a moped procession through the village, sand mapping on the local beach, a photo-shoot in the baron’s clothes, hiding messages on homemade ice cream and infiltrating Google Maps.

Information and documentation relating to these events can be found on our website at http://treacleonline.wordpress.com/archive1/moks-residency/

We can't describe how much we valued our time in Mooste. For the first few weeks at MOKS we managed to balance work and life for the first time in many years. The question is how to keep hold of this.

Hope all goes well and look forward to seeing you all again some time in the near future,
Kaspar & Susanne

PS. Exciting scenes in the basement! We look forward to seeing how everything develops over the next year.

From many options this year we took the residency at MoKS(Mooste), Estonia,and we chose the best place to rest, to meet very interesting people and to think about our future creative activities.
MoKS center at Mooste is only 43 km (40 min by bus) from Tartu- the very important Estonian cultural centre with an excellent Art College, galleries and other interesting places. For us it was very easy to connect with all this, because Evelyn and John from MoKS team it made possible and introduced us to local artists and organized for us meetings with them.
We were very glad of our accommodation – having two large rooms and with local grocery and well equipped kitchen made our life pretty comfortable.
Very welcoming MoKS team added lot of good memories to this September residency.

Irena Biechonska and Jerzy Biechonsky
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2009 a sügisega peaks MoKSi kelder soojapidavaks saama.
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Hello,
I was the resident for Moks this September. Well, I'll leave on Monday already, but it has been a great experience for me to meet the local people and learn about the countryside life style in Estonia.
I will have few photo shoots to go.
It feels like the real autumn has arrived.
Anyway,
I have some blog entries under my site, please check!

http://diary.kanakosasaki.com/

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The third X-OP event of this year took place in Novigrad Croatia in the frame of the Mediascape festival. In the X-OP "tradition" the meeting of the 9 partners provided a base for intensive discussions relating to the cooperation between the diverse group of project partners. While much of this is far too complicated to elaborate on here, the fact remains that cooperation and transparency are essential, not only for basic functioning within the project but also to generate new content with sincerity and a level of quality we are capable of. In parallel, we were treated to a series of artistic and curatorial presentations in the warm atmosphere of the Istrian sun taking while refuge in the shade of the Musej Lapidarium. In a sense one could get an overview of activities regarding artistic policies and practices from the region of Croatia and Slovenia which seem to differ greatly from those we are used to at MoKS. In between there was a touch of art, not quite enough for our tastes but a taste nonetheless with a few musical performances of the electronic vein and a spontaneous intervention in the city by Evelyn and Susanne Kienbaum of Berlin. What was the message here?Even with all the resources and beautiful environment of the Novigrad event, the most precious resource still remains to be time, of which there never seems to be enough, time to meet, time to share, time to listen from which new ideas and relations grow. If there is one thing to respect and understand, its the need for giving time to the process of the X-OP project, other wise that time will be sacrificed for continued misunderstandings and frustrations among ourselves, especially the ones who gave so much time in the beginning to make such a thing happen at all.

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The MoKS summer art symposium known as AVAMAA took place for the second time and again proved to be fertile ground for the exchange of ideas and experiences between all participants. Over 30 people took part in the workshops and projects hosted by the event. Thanks to the dedication of talented and creative workshop leaders like Derek Holzer, Elffriede, Taavi Taatsi, Bruno Humberto and myself, we seemed to exceeded any expectations the volunteers and participants may have had. The contributions of "infrastructure" also cannot be understated, particularly the evening meal coordination by Patrick McGinley and the breakfast by Mari. Other interventions like the breakfast film series by Taavi Tatsi of Worldfilm and spontaneous music and artist talk evenings showed even a high how density of activity can be accommodated within the flexible organizational structure of AVAMAA. Such a structure allows opportunities not always afforded in events of this scale, particularly in that the organizers themselves were able to take part  and even give workshops. We hope this kind of organizational research (in practice) will help to scale MoKS activities in the future as we expand. For us there is a fine balance between keeping an open flexible atmosphere and defining roles that keep clear of institutional hierarchies.

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Early in the morning on August 24th, just after AVAMAA, some construction workers peered through the windows at the back of MoKS only to find some artists sleeping on the hay inside. Tere hommikust! The renovation of MoKS has begun. First the facade and re-grading of the exterior will be done, while it is warm I suspect. In parallel the basement will be worked on to secure the foundation. Then they'll move on to the interior, heating system and other details. The amount of work is significant yet according to plan, everything should be ready by the end of 2010. Lets see... check here for updates.

This means some temporary changes will be made to the residency program, particularly for 2010. We are looking into some option to keep the residency open but probably scaled down and at another location. If you are planning to apply, please write and ask about the status of the program and be prepared for a flexible situation.

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We want to thank everyone for making this years Honey for the Ears concert evening a big success. Well over 100 people came out to see the variety of groups performing that evening. That does not sound like much but it was possibly the most people to come to any MoKS event. Mooste is not such a central place and the performers came from Finland, Tallinn for the night. Pastacas even had to go to Tallinn the same night to give another concert!

Pastacas + Mari Kalkun (EE)
twowho (FI)
Jüppala Kääpiö (CH/JP)
Kirtana Rasa (EE)
Pekko Käppi (FI)
Kago (EE)

Mooste photographer and graffiti artist Siim Tiirk has started a new blog. View his work here.