Since 2008 Global Container attendance has increased from twenty to several hundred and the after party has become slightly less depressive; naked, bloody and bodily art has receded into practiced and polished performances. Global Container is a, more or less, bi monthly one evening, loosely curated art festival in Culture Factory Polymer in Tallinn Estonia. Global Container once a mysterious, boring and/or scary experience has become a legitimate cultural happening, an institution. I have attended almost every Global Container event since first coming to work in Polymer in 2008.
The curators of Art Container collective in Polymer; Erik Alalooga, Sandra Jogeva and Tanel Saar produce art work collectively and exhibit internationally. They also run year round exhibitions in their gallery and organize Global Container in Polymer. There is a common misconception that Polymer is a squat; in fact it is quite expensive to rent a studio and most of us at Polymer have jobs; creative industries, service industry, sex industry, many of us teach. Erik Alalooga chooses to be in Polymer, in part because there are massive spaces for production and storage of monumental sculpture and installation. As the head of the Interdisciplinary Art Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts (an historic art school with no building, a sad story for another blog) Alalooga teaches his courses in the factory. His students acquire professional experience performing with machines and self made instruments; they learn in the old fashioned style of master and apprentice by working in the manner of their tutor and up and coming Estonian master of kinetic art; Erik Alalooga.
22 February 2013 Global Container XXVI started at 20:00 in Polymer’s black cube performance space. I am familiar with the performances because I watched some of the technical rehearsals in the freezing halls of Polymer during the past few months. Contact microphones were stuck to metal air ducts, sheet metal, plastic containers arranged into an installation and the students made sounds and actions. During the performance I could not see most the action because of the large, tall crowd. Alalooga’s performances were once known for their social and interactive quality but no longer; in the past few years he erected a gate, the same type of gate that was used to fence off the Baltic coastline during Soviet era; a hefty, rusty, impenetrable gate to divide audience and performers. When the lights went on and the room cleared one saw the broken apples on the floor and the stunning installation of machines and industrial objects.
Sandra Jogeva announced the schedule for the evening and led the audience to an adjacent factory room; thirty square meters floor with five meter high ceilings and painted white, a hundred people were packed in the gallery. The exhibition, by Boris Lafargue, the artist in residence at Polymer in February, included two video projections, wax cast sculptures and two installations of flags, The EU flag appeared as if most of the yellow stars had fallen to the floor. The other flag bore the text, “In Advance of our Burned Flags.” The overtly political intention and use of traditional art media seemed out of context of the traditional Polymer artistic discourse. Sandra introduced the artist to the audience and asked him banal questions like, “How do you pronounce your name?” Boris’ soft voice was over powered by the din of party conversation.
The most interesting occurrences in Global Container events are often the unplanned interventions and belligerent disruptions. My attention was captivated by an impromptu installation by Ivan Ivonovich. Leaning against the wall was an impressive display of fifty or so brooms and broom sticks; perhaps a reference to Jim Dine or Marcel Duchamp; the work stands in open discourse with Polymer style issues of reuse, a subversive undertone raised issues of capitalism and a changing Europe. Mr. Ivanovich is a the sole squatter of Polymer, an obsessive collector and more then eighty years old. He speaks only Russian, translated he seems more likely mad then brilliant; I choose to see him as the most dedicated, true and real artist among us.
Global Container audience was led down the stairs to the large hall where was a ten meter long table covered in a black tablecloth atop of which were monitors, computer stacks, cables, keyboards, a massive assemblage of technology. Five or six monitors played short videos by students of an art academy workshop about performance art for the camera instructed by Polymer members Mai Soot and Kilian Ochs. Difficult to focus on the video installation in the over stimulating environment I ordered a beer at the makeshift bar constructed from the relics of past installations; the roof of the bar is the ass end of Trojan Horse (2010) sculpture made by Ochs and Saar, the supporting wall is Townhouse (2012) installation by Justin Tyler Tate. My attention focused for a moment on an old television set transmitting a text based video reading “Video Killed Performance,”
“Actually,” I argued the point in my head, “film and video led to the performance star,” I have come to know these artists of Polymer and their connection to a cardboard box containing VHS tapes; performance art documentation of artists including Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci and Marina Abromovic, I imagined myself drunk enough to continue to argue with the video art about how the iconic videos of Marina Abromovitz burned into the collective unconsciousness of Polymer aesthetics.
In need of a pause I went to Mika’s studio in another part of Polymer factory. Katri, who used to have a studio at Polymer was visiting and at the moment I arrived to Mika’s studio she was performing home surgery on the tip of Mika’s forefinger; an unhealed injury since a month earlier when he and I were in London building an installation. “Why is the wound black?” I asked, Mika explained, ”It is from the candle,” he pointed to a bent rusty nail that Katri was using to open his wound which she had sterilized by holding in the flame of the candle. I suggested, “This isn’t a prison camp, go to a doctor, you are Finish for fuck’s sake.” I invited Mika and Katri to see the student performance about to begin in the large hall but they offered me a drink and I sat down near the fire place, They had a lot of food which I ate including salmon which had been dumpster dived in Helsinki.
Staying in Mika’s studio I missed the student’s next performance but had seen it before in another venue; an unmusical concert performed on machines with contact microphones stuck to them. Repletion is good in a proper art career. It is important to repeat themes, events, genres and forms to engage people over time, so curators know what to expect from you.
When I returned to the large hall, Global Container had dissolved into a cocktail party environment, the industrial setting, momentarily heated and chic. Artists and culture managers networked, audience talked in small grouped circles. I saw Gintarė Matulaitytė and thought I should write an essay for Echo Gone Wrong. An American artist called Kent was speaking loudly that Estonians are unforgiving about mispronunciation of Estonian vowel sounds. He was explaining that Americans are used to hearing English with different accents and pronunciation but Estonian’s don’t understand their own language if pronunciation is not perfect. A few months earlier I had told him almost the same theory but Kent put a drunken and aggressive spin on the whole bit.
I went to Art Container studio to print my train tickets for the first leg of my journey: I was heading to Tartu to teach a workshop and then to Riga to Totaldobze for a meeting and then to Turkey for a month to build an installation. On the sofa in Art Container studio sat Tanel Saar looking very serious. Katri was nearby tending to Mika who was bleeding from the top of his head and had the start of a black eye. “What the fuck happened to you?” I asked.
“You know, things like this happen to me,’ Mika smiled, blood on his teeth, “I fell down.”
I was unable to print my train ticket because all of the computers and technology from the house were used in the media installation in the large hall. Jan, the director of RöNK, an environmental activist collective situated in Polymer, was counting the money from the bar. He announced, “Two hundred and sixty Euros and forty two cent.” Sandra asked if it is profit. Jan switched to Estonian language and explained that he didn’t yet know.
I asked Jan to lend me five Euros. He handed me the weirdest, dirtiest saddest five Euro bill and wrote down the sum in his notebook, “Now every Polymer activist owes me money,” Jan exclaimed.
I went to my studio to have a coffee and finish packing for my upcoming travels. I took my bags to catch the 6:30 train to Tartu. On my way out I walked through the familiar corridors of Polymer Factory, The party in the large hall was reduced to a small group of people too inebriated to understand the party was over. Kent was performing an impromptu interpretive dance show for nobody. He held two spotlights on his face which revealed a bloody injury on top of his bald head and another on the underside of his jaw.
Broken beer bottles and debris littered the floor by his feet. I picked up a few pieces of glass and accidentally picked up a blood soaked piece of textile. Kent noticed me, he grabbed my elbow, pulling me close to him, his bloody face next to mine, he gruffly commanded “Sit down with me, let’s talk…” As if to a naughty dog, I responded abruptly,”No.”
I picked up a piece of news paper to wipe the blood off of my hands but the newspaper fell open and the inside was also saturated with fresh, wet blood. The palms of both my hands stained bright red, “Everything is covered in blood.” I groaned. Kent retorted drunkenly over his shoulder, “Well fuck you then, you’re not serious.
I left the large hall behind, I walked through the corridors of the old factory; Ivan Ivonovich was collecting empty bottles, someone slept on an abandoned sofa, a group of teenagers whispered in a dark corner, I walked past Raul Kurvitz’ wood pile installation and out the front door and into the yellow lit, snow covered car park, through the steel gates, away from Polymer and continued on the twenty minute walk through the quiet Saturday morning streets to the train station. At the greasy spoon diner open all night at the train station I bought a cabbage pie with the dirty five Euro bill Jan gave. The lady at the cash register looked suspiciously at the bill and then at me for a while but then handed me a cabbage pie in a plastic bag and four Euros and twenty cents in change. I arrived early at the train platform; around fifty people waited in the cold dawn, only the sound of crunching snow disturbed the peaceful silence. I had been feeling the excitement of one about to travel abroad to exotic places only to reflect on the previous night, to look around and have the realization that I am leaving someplace exotic.
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