Social Sculpture Mural Project at PostsovkhoZ
August 5-15, 2005
Location: Mooste, Estonia
what Each summer, over 20 international media theorists, artists, art organizers, and activists converge in the rural towns of Mooste, Estonia (population: 400) and Rasina, Estonia (population: 100) for PostsovkhoZ, an open forum that questions the social, cultural and economic issues facing rural life in post-Soviet Estonia. PostsovkhoZ, a multi-purpose, cross-disciplinary event for creative interventions in a context-specific location, is a symposium hosted by MoKS, an NGO cultural organization dedicated to local and international cooperation in the fields of arts, social and environmental research in Mooste, Estonia.

In response to this year's thematic investigation of the relationship of Public vs. Private, Pond will collaborate with village youth and artist/writer Kaie Luik in the creation of a mural. The mural will visually translate the day to day activities of the surrounding village into vectors that schematically describe the place. Youth will be involved in the observation, charting, and creation of these patterns which will be painted on the side of a pre-existing Soviet-era block housing. Intended as a means to characterize and reify the village's sense of place, the social sculpture mural project invites discussion about the community's identity formation within larger geopolitical developments (e.g., Estonia's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the evolving patterns of urbanization in a transforming political economy).

This project is made possible by CEC Artslink and MoKS sponsors: Eesti Kultuuriministeerium (Estonian Ministry of Culture) & ja Kultuurkapital (Estonian Cultural Endownment)