Flattening of the earth

This artistic work has been carried out in the framework of the Creative Europe project Magic Carpet in 2022. The focal point of this residency was the smoke sauna tradition “suidsusannakombõ” of the Võru community, a 75,000-person inhabitation located in southeast Estonia.

The smoke sauna tradition that has been transmitted from generation to generation became a common ground to reflect on the world haunted by the ghosts of modernity, where desire for control, expansion and growth are at the forefront, oscillating with the habitual human necessity for ritualistic cleansing and healing, both physically and mentally.

This performative work investigates transformational spaces in relation to bodies, identity, awareness, communication, and gender. In particularly, the ritualistic whipping ceremony in the sauna has given way to the problem of coordination and the bodily awareness of feelings, an awareness which is based on reflection and resonance in the opposite.

This first part of the work was a collaborative performance in the sauna space. The reenactment of the whipping ceremony as a fashion shoot addressed questions of identity and representation, for the constitution of a recognition of self.

The second part of the work was an attempt to enter into a relationship with nature at a larger scale through sound waves produced by a leather whip. The traces of the movement in the snow-covered landscape are manifested in a photo series. This mapping project relates also to the so-called Struve Arc - a chain of 34 survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and the first scientific proof of the flattening of the earth. The 34 images, which define a fictional line on the longitude were printed in postcard format in the attempt to send one postcard to a corresponding geographic coordinate which are overspun by the Geodetic Arc as a mean to define an imaginary unit.