Hosted across multiple archives in Tartu, 2024
Locations: Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, The National Archives of Estonia
Artists-in-residence: Bettina Hutschek, Rasmus Jensen, Mia Tamme, Vaim Sarv
In its third year, the Tartu 2024 residency programme continued its exploration of the concept of ‘embodiment’ by inviting artists to delve into the oral and written histories of Southern Estonia. They engaged with the significant archives in Tartu, questioning what stories have been deemed worthy of preservation, and examining the perspectives through which they have been curated. The artists investigated how to spotlight the overlooked narratives of marginalised communities, including women and queer individuals, and explored the concept of embodying an archive. During the residency, the artists visited the Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, and the National Archives of Estonia. Additionally, a collective trip to the Setomaa region allowed them to connect with local community members, engaging with embodied traditions and rituals to explore the concept of a living archive.
The residency culminated in a public event on 20th October at Emajõe Lodjakoda in Tartu, a revitalised site of an old boat-building craft. The event attracted a diverse audience, including members of the Magic Carpets network and local residents. Artists Bettina Hutschek, Mia Tamme, Rasmus Jensen, and Vaim Sarv presented performative lectures, audience interactions, and storytelling. The audience followed the artists between indoor and outdoor settings, experiencing narratives such as the connection between linen production and the abolition of slavery in the United States, intertwined with Estonia’s national awakening. Around the fire, visitors heard stories from the archives about food and cooking, while experiencing rustic cooking methods in real-time. Augmented reality allowed participants to engage with “thunderbolts” –typically archived objects – which appeared to come alive by the riverside. As dusk fell, attendees gathered again in the spacious shipyard, filled with the scent of wood and tar, to listen to an auto-ethnographic journey reflecting on the preservation of embodied traditions and the tensions they can create within different community groups.
Thunderbolts and Other Stones (2024)
Augmented Reality experience, booklet
Bettina Hutschek is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator based between Malta and Berlin. Her practice involves weaving together fragments of various realities to tell stories. Through her storytelling, she analyses contemporary issues and reinterprets them as modern “myths”. Her work explores the possibilities of knowledge transfer, questioning what we know and what we believe to know.
“Thunderbolts and Other Stones” investigates the myths and legends surrounding Estonian stones, including erratic boulders, “thunderbolts,” and healing stones. By delving into Estonian folklore, Hutschek explored how these narratives influence our understanding of history and national identity. Her performative presentation combines archival material with speculative storytelling through an Augmented Reality (AR) experience, blending historical and contemporary narratives.
the biography of linen (2024)
Performative Lecture (duration: 30 mins)
Mia Tamme, an artist and storyteller from Tallinn, engages with various forms of archives – imagined, institutionalised, and embodied. In her films, writings, and performances, she stitches together oral family histories and ethnographic research, reimagining stories that have been overlooked by patriarchal and nationalist archiving practices.
“The linen shirt (‘käised’) passed down in my family speaks more of global liberation movements than of my personal or national identity. I invite you to sit with me and untangle the threads of linen, connecting the abolition of slavery in the United States to Estonia’s national awakening. Together, we will spin flax fibres and reimagine the plain white shirt (‘särk’) that predates gendered clothing.”
cooker and the cooked (2024)
Interactive Performative Experience (duration: 30 mins)
Rasmus Jensen, a performance artist from Tallinn, explores extended notions of sensibility and perception through speculative body-based practices. His works seek to bring attention to peripheral sensory experiences, blending the fictional with the real to discover alternative ways of being in the world.
During the residency, he explored Estonian cooking practices that challenge the traditional separation between the cooker and the cooked. His approach dissolves the boundaries between the two, creating a shared, borderless body. This primitive, almost raw form of cooking contrasts with modern alienation, seeking intimacy with the environment and food through direct, unmediated experience.
Reworking Regilaul (2024)
Digital publication, storytelling
Vaim Sarv is an experimental vocalist, organiser, and poet whose practice intersects free improvisation, noise, and pagan oral traditions. Her ritualistic performances and community projects harness the disruptive and celebratory power of shared physical experiences. Sarv’s work focuses on decolonising the Finno-Ugric folk singing tradition known as regilaul.
“I examine the history of the traditional regilaul singing practice through a decolonial lens. By researching archives and conducting interviews with folklorists and singers, I am crafting a counter-narrative that challenges the nationalist interpretation of this oral tradition. In this reworking, I highlight the 19th-century transformation when indigenous serfs became European subjects, altering the practice of regilaul. For me, decolonisation is not merely theoretical but involves a material engagement with how modernity has disciplined bodies, voices, and listening practices. I resist this discipline by drawing from alternative vocal and bodily practices rooted in regilaul.”
Curatorial text by Ann Mirjam Vaikla