Sweeping the Sea + The Old Oak + Strange House, 2023

Lou Sheppard & Laura Põld

3 Channel Video and Audio Installation, 28 minutes looped

Clay plaster rock installation, and tufted rugs by Laura Põld

With performances by Sigrid Savi, Juss Henslau and Vikerlased LGBT Choir, directed by Keio Soomelt.

Choral arrangement by Sander Saarments

Commissioned by Kumu Kunstimuuseum, for Art in the Age of the Anthropocene

Staged within Aru Quarry, one of Estonia’s largest active mines, Mere pühkimine + Suur tamm + Imelik maja documents three simultaneous performances exploring the past, present and future of sites of mass extraction. Drawing from Estonia’s Singing Revolution, (which began as illegal gatherings of Estonians singing outlawed folksongs to protest Soviet mining interests in occupied territory,) the work begins from an old folksong, “Sweeping the Sea, The Old Oak, Strange House” which documents the life of an oak tree (a cosmic or world tree within Estonian Folklore) and the families that lived around it. In the song the oak grows, then is cut and transformed into a sauna, (central familial architecture for Estonians) described as a strange, weird, or wondrous house” a kind of portal between past, future and the heavens. Working with composer Sander Saarments the song is recomposed as a unresolved melody and sung by Vikerlased LGBT choir,  Estonia’s only queer choir. This melody is echoed in Juss Henslau’s performance of a new folksong, composed from fragments of Heidelberg Mining Group’s Environmental Renewal Strategy Policy, which describes the planned restoration of the Aru Quarry Site. (The mine has since been reopened for phosphorite fracking.) Sigrid Savi performs an embodied exploration of the mine’s materials, running through, crawling over and falling down the massive piles of material. In the ‘strange house’ of the mine Sheppard and Pold ask what post-human and post-nature futures are possible within these extracted and abandoned spaces, figuring them as places of rehearsal and transformation.