TALK AROUND THE FIRE
Tanel Rander: You start your exhibition text with the city. You say that a city has roots and they are watered all the time. What is growing in that city from these roots?
Inga Salurand: Watering is more like a metaphor in that text. The point is that if you want to live in some place, you water that place, so that it would be habitable. And if you feel you want to move somewhere else, then maybe you’ve been watering the place where you are for too long. As simple as it is.
Tanel: Watering is like feeding something, in order to keep it alive.
Inga: Yes, and in some sense it is related with remembering. If you live in a place, where you want to remember those who lived there before, if you want to keep traditions, etc, then you cannot change your place, because through these things you water this place.
Tanel: How is it with watering memories? Meaning what you wrote – if you chew one and the same thing, you’ll develop great chewing muscles. So, how is it with watering memories – are monuments similar to trees that people plant, in order to water them and train their chewing or memory muscles? (Remark: in Estonian language the word “mäluma” means chewing and the word “mälu” means memory)
Inga: These are like milestones and reminders, notes. You make a note, in order to not forget.
Tanel: What do you think, aren’t people mistaken with something, if we see all these people watering their Bronze Soldier monument with piles of flowers (red dianthus) in Tallinn. What has gone wrong there? Do these people have huge chewing muscles and poor imagination?
Inga: I don’t say what is right or wrong, I myself feel that one shouldn’t water one and the same place all the time. You could just move around and give water to different places. In some sense we grow our own burden, when we water monuments. And at some point we feel such heaviness.
Tanel: The burden of memory that can become an obstacle.
Inga: Yes, the burden of memory that means directly the space or time that doesn’t exist, but you still carry it with you. And when you are, where you are now, you still carry so much places and memory locations.
Tanel: In your installation these clay figures or buildings are mixed with plants. Are there any references to watering? Some of them need water, I even remember you were watering them. I was thinking that you were watering the houses, but you did it for plants. Does it express some kind of contribution...
Inga: I can answer to this very simply. I felt that there was a need for something organic between these houses. Something that has roots.
Tanel: Because houses don’t have roots?
Inga: Depends on house. Depends, who is living there or if there is anyone living there at all. Maybe nobody needs to live there, but there are still memories that keep existing. And they still have roots, I think.
Tanel (pointing towards the shashlyk bar): This house also has some kind of roots....
Inga: People who live in Rakvere remember that house because of certain rooms. It relates to them with certain people, their own personal experiences and memory clips.
Tanel: If a house has roots, which can be memory, for example, then the trunk and leafage of the house exist inside people and their memories. People carry the memories.
Inga: Yes, maybe.
Tanel: The basic structure of your buildings is ball or circle. You also wrote about the concept of nest, and a nest is definitely a circle, it is like genesis of the world around you, 360 degrees. Why there is no escape from these forms? People try to create complicated constructions, but I still feel that everything can be reduced to a circle...
Inga: Nowadays there are hardly any circle shaped houses. Mainly they are squares. I liked to play with geometrics, so that I’d have circles as well as squares.
Tanel: Are they always hollow inside?
Inga: Yes, they are. Someone also noticed that they don’t have doors. That is also not important for me. I like that they don’t have roofs, as they are empty inside. They are in vertical relation, instead of horizontal. A door doesn’t need to be put on a side like we are used to.
Tanel: What are we doing, when we are building such houses? Occupying the void? Or building a wall around the void, creating some isolated space?
Inga: I feel we just need that nest, that safe space, protected by external conditions. Inevitably it takes an empty place. It is because of necessity.
Tanel: The issue of leaving the nest seems complicated. “Kiss and Fly” means the zone, where you can leave something like that, your attachment.
Inga: It is a threshold zone, it is not this, yet not that, but somewhere in between.
Tanel: But what does it mean that your lungs are full of aurora borealis, when you are making that jump or shift?
Inga: I think it is about sensing. I tried to find the right word for that sensing.
Tanel: Is it like a call from somewhere else? Or should it be like a natural phenomena that takes you over, when you leave the nest and make that jump?
Inga: Leaving the nest doesn’t mean that you should leave your home or that you should move somewhere physically. I rather think that you should leave your home where it is in your mind. When people think about their home, they often mean their first home, childhood home that makes them feel warm and safe. If you ask people, what is their home, they often describe their childhood home. A lot of warmth and safety come along with it. It is a refuge, a sanctuary.
Tanel: Suddenly that human figure came to my mind. The one where these white threads come from and attach themselves into the houses of the city. That giant human figure is like aurora borealis that have raised above the city.
Inga: Yes, it is possible to see it this way.
Tanel: Can it be some transcendent symbol? Something you should remember when you are too much attached to life?
Inga: I mostly do these things by intuition and I don’t think about transcendence. But all these associations are correct, it can mean this and that. At some point I cannot explain things I do, they just seem right or I need to connect different materials by some mid-materials. For me this figure creates dynamics into that space, some kind of movement that is signified by a beam.
Tanel: Regarding teeth, I think a lot about the teeth of time. They work all the time. You make an exhibition or an artwork and then it just disappears. If not physically, then in the sense of meaning. How do you see these teeth of time in relation to your artistic work? Does it survive these teeth? Do you think about such things?
Inga: No, that is not something I work with. It survives as long as it does. I don’t want to get stuck there, I’d rather like to move on.
Tanel: These teeth prepare material to be swallowed and transformed. The clay refers to different types of chewing muscles that have decomposed and deposited Or is it rather dental plaque that inevitably sticks to these teeth? When the teeth of time work (I’m now just improvising here) and make everything dissolve, then something will stick to these teeth and because of that we now know how our ancestors lived. So, something gets stuck! And everything will not become this clay mass at all. But I wonder how is it selected...
Inga: I never take things things into details. It is a beautiful thought as such, the sticking of the clay, the link with dental plaque...
Tanel: Somehow it feels that dental plaque directly refers to that clay. And clay consists of all kinds of things, sediments.
Inga: I liked clay as material because it has been traditional and primeval material throughout times. It is very meaningful.
Tanel: But the red dot... The map and the red dot! Where does it come from? I started to develop paranoia towards a red dot on the pillow in the apartment of Liis Vares.
Inga: That’s very simple. I associated it with a map. Usually, when you drive somehwere, the map shows you a red dot, saying “I am here”.
Tanel: And it leaves a chaotic trace? The behavior of this red dot is unpredictable? Can it be the sign for free flying with no direction? Where did you get this red dot into your text?
Inga: I think it is the sign of a place. A pedestal that you hit into the ground – I am here.
Tanel: And it is variable. Alright. But regarding mask or fake – how did that appear? Is it related with movement? Do you feel more freedom, when wearing a mask? Masks tend to emancipate. It is called carnivalization. In carnivals hierarchies and orders are mixed up. Maybe a mask is necessary for some breakthrough?
Inga: It can be a natural instinct to hide yourself behind something.
Tanel: Maybe hide your nest?
Inga: Yes, also that. To hide yourself and your nest. When you hide yourself, then you already create a nest. You are hidden, you surround yourself with something.
Tanel: Where is a mask, there is also a refuge. Maybe that jump, Kiss and Fly while aurora borealis takes a place in your chest... maybe that jump and that mask are part of a ritual that helps you to get rid of your attachment. You put a mask on and you can make a jump away from your nest. Or the nest is still with you and you never leave it. It is rather about finding a nest within yourself and the nest is with you when you jump on a plane – whatever that plane would mean, generally it is a vehicle. So, the mask is perhaps a ritual that one should to in order to make temporary shifts.
Inga: Sounds logical, yes, it can be like this.
Tanel: Liis Vares has a lung X-ray at home. When I went there for the first time, it was taped onto a window, towards there (pointing with hand), which might be the North? I thought that if she would wait for the right season and if there is luck, there might be aurora borealis seen in these lungs. In case it is really Northern sky behind that window.
Inga: (mixes ashes in silence): Okay, yes.
Tanel: Have people realized what you wanted to say here? Or do you feel that you have said everything you wanted to say?
Inga: Yes, I think I said everything what I wanted to say. How and if that has reached everybody – that’s another story. But usually I like to listen how people see the artwork, instead of talking about how I see it. It widens the vision, I guess.
Tanel: To me this work is like a temple and I think it should be here all the time. So that people could come and think about memory. Just like temples and other spiritual spaces exist in towns.
Inga: I stared with the refuge. If it has such effect, then I think it is on the right way.
Tanel: Achille Mbembe has written about archiving as chronophagia, swallowing of time. And temples, graves and graveyards come along with it. A grave and graveyard is like this place here. Your houses look like tombs of some kind of culture. But it is definitely a temple, with its dynamics and relation between the dust and eternity. Although nothing is eternal there, it is all material. But it creates a situation for people, where they sense that the dynamics between dust and eternal is present. Fake teeth seem to be eternal, but still they will dissolve. But in contrast with clay plaster it seems like they are permanent. That there are some things that exist longer than us, for example the teeth of time. The other thing is your earlier work on the walls. I had a feeling that they are ghosts of people, as they are human shaped. Seems like a spirit has taken a human form. But there is definitely a spirit that has given form to these clay houses. As these are also man made. But there are also flowers, like those here in the garden. We don’t know who’s form have these flowers taken. The form of their own? As humans take the form of themselves, so do plants?
Inga: Yes, I think these graphic works refer to imagination. I felt I wanted to use them here because I remembered how they grew out of constant stimulation of imagination, when I was making these graphic pieces. Back then I worked a lot with night dreaming, between white sheets. And if you stay in such void for a long time, in a free white space, then it stimulates your imagination very well. And I simply wanted to document this in graphic form. I felt it would harmonize well with issues of memory and imagination.
Tanel: Lately someone said that man made matter exceeds natural matter on our planet. And if humans put their spirit into their production and if there is less natural matter than man made matter, then the spirits of nature are loose and they are looking for a place where to go.
Inga: I’m not completely sure if a spirit is a separate entity or if it exists in your head.
Tanel: Or it exists in this nettle here, as much as we have this nettle.
Inga: But you put this spirit into it.
Tanel: I just call it a spirit. I rather mean something like this – a nettle grows out of ground. And it is a nettle shaped nettle. Not shaped as a car or this kiosk there. And you can always be sure that it will be a nettle. It is like... kind of a paradox....
The fire is smoking. Jackdaws make noise. The sound of installation is leaking from the house. Sometimes a visitor gives a glance to the backyard and says some nice words about the exhibition. People are walking on the streets and carry along the experiences from the works of Inga, Liis, Bohdana and Daria. These experiences are like leaves at the treetop that the roots never see.
