Wounded Landscape I

Wounded Landscape I was performed and filmed in Aidu-Nõmme, in the vicinity of Kohtla-Järve in Estonia. For the entirety of the 20th century, this territory was exploited for its oil shale mining. Until recently, Estonia has been the second-largest shale oil producer in the world after China. Oil shale mining is known to result in hazardous waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and leaching can pollute surface and groundwater. Communities living in Kohtla-Järve are economically dependent on extractive and petrochemical businesses as their livelihoods. However, they also feel and are aware they are part of the sacrifice zone, all inhabitants of the Ida-Viru county are. Sacrifice zone is a term that designates sites, in this case – population too, that are disproportionately affected by toxicity and environmental harm and subject to “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), which creeps slowly but destroys with certainty.

Concept, performance: Daina Pupkevičiūtė
Camera: Saara Mildeberg
Performance took place on 11th May 2023 in Aidu-Nõmme quarry, Estonia

Wounded Landscape II

Wounded Landscape II was filmed in Gulbiniškės, Kaunas district. The area is the former Gulbiniškės ballistic missile base, built in 1959-1960. The entire infrastructure of the site covers an area of about 148 hectares, including a concrete road, launch sites, garages, missile storage and assembly hangars. The base is said to have stored intermediate-range ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. Each missile could carry a nuclear warhead for a distance of up to 2000 km.
The huge site is now used by volunteers for training exercises, by drifters on weekends, and you can find elk trails that stretch into the woods on the far edges.
A huge clear-cutting area extends from one of the former missile base hangars. Clear-cutting is logging carried out in so-called forest plantations or monocultural farmed forests, felling all or almost all of the trees. The concept of farmed forest is defended by businessmen and politicians who have economic interests in logging and who support it, usually on the basis of the economic arguments of speed and value in response to the ecologists’ arguments. In ecological terms, clear-cutting is a direct route to the irreversible destruction of biodiversity: the forest is a complex system of relationships, and damage to it results in lasting irreversible changes. Deforestation also contributes to soil erosion, disruption of water cycles and many other changes that have both local and global impacts.

Concept, performance: Daina Pupkevičiūtė
Drone operator: Mindaugas Barysas
Performance took place in early spring 2024

Wounded Landscape III

The performance Wounded Landscape III aimed to reflect on (human) relationship with the land and the landscape: how we inter:relate, how we perceive and define ourselves as individual and as a plural body through the links with the multiple living bodies that make the landscape. This reflection takes place via the body: through slow, monotonous movement of sewing and embroidery, with multiple bodies leaning against the fabric, and the slow unraveling of a conversation. The shared action, time and skirt-as-a-canvas become a space for the intimate sharing and slow presence.

*

– What are you working on here? (Sits down in front of me)
– I don’t know, I just feel like if I’m going to sit like this, and sew, I’m gonna work out what I have to do, you know? How to get back to all the data for that work about the ecocide and the war. I’m sort of mending, trying to mend things, you know?
– I have never done embroidery, can you thread this needle for me please?

*

– I just want to sit here for a bit (sits on the edge of the skirt).
– Okay.
– (Caresses the skirt.) What a beautiful fabric.
– I don’t have any more needles here. But I do have some more in my locker. Do you want to go get them and join me?
– (Hesitates a moment, smiles) Yea, where’s your key?

(Excerpts from the conversations that took place during the performance)

Concept, performance: Daina Pupkevičiūtė
Frame: 14 November 2024, part of “Listening in Practice” event presenting artistic research practices of the fellows of Inherit. Heritage in Transformation
Photo: Juana Awad