Bring Back My Fire Gods
2018
Single-channel video, colour, stereo sound, 13 min
Original musical composition by Märt-Matis Lill
Singer-performer Sofia Jernberg, original poetry by Maarja Kangro, director of photography Erik Norkroos, B-camera Epp Kubu.
Kristina Norman (1979) is an artist and documentary filmmaker who focuses on ethnographic research around local and transnational political tensions. When addressing issues of collective memory and forgetting, and the memorial uses of public space, she often searches for ways to physically and symbolically intervene in the environments in focus. While many of her art projects are presented in the form of video installations, site-specificity and performativity are of great importance in these works. A number of her projects have provoked public discussion concerning the role of art and artists in the society, ethics in art, and the line between art and politics – most notably the vast research-based art project titled After-War, with which she represented Estonia at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Some of Norman’s more recent works are dedicated to the issue of migration, focusing on the aspects of memory and public representation.
Bring Back My Fire Gods uses a singing performance to deconstruct the phenomenon of the All-Estonian Song Festival. Norman takes as her starting point a recent discussion in the national media about why it is impossible to include a Russian-language song in the repertoire of the Song Festival, which exists to glorify national unity and continuity. Temporarily taking possession of the three main symbols of the festival – the singing, the festival fire, and the Song Festival Grounds – the artist shows that it is possible to look at the festival, and indeed the nation, as an inclusive amalgam of cultural loans and influences.
The festival tradition was first introduced to Estonians by the Baltic Germans in the nineteenth century. The fire is connected to the ancient myth of Prometheus. The Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn are an example of Soviet modernist architecture. The Estonian folk song “Transvaal, Transvaal” has Russian origins and refers to the distress of people in a distant country – in South Africa, during the Anglo-Boer wars at the turn of the twentieth century.
kristinanorman.ee