THE VOICE OF COLD WATER, 2020-2023

I am referring to Lake Ladoga in this project, the largest freshwater lake in Europe. The lake, which by its size and wave mode can rightly be compared with the sea. I would like to offer a new perspective on the place, even if this view is still too far away from us or too close to take it seriously.

I imagine the lake to be a large living being, which is not limited only by the human gaze. Ladoga, like other inanimate matter, has life, an inexplicable energy lies deep inside it, which allows this place to remain unchanged in the changing conditions of human habitation.

Like any other entity, the lake expresses individuality. It remembers, stores memories. Water, currents invisible to the eye — everything is a silent witness of past and present events. Not only people do things in the past and present — all living beings do it in one form or another. But unlike the memory of a person, the memory of a place has a long time duration: the place remembers itself from the day of its appearance.

A person and a place intersect, intertwine with each other. I include portraits of people I meet on the lake shore in the project. So, a person looks at a place, and a place looks at a person. The look of the person in the photos suggests that a creature of another species is looking at him. It’s an unfamiliar world that can be uncomfortable.

I want to believe that a new look at inanimate nature can allow us to organize a new relationship between a person and a place. A new form of caring about the place and its inherent forces could help us realize how related all bodies are to each other, how we are all woven into a dense network of relationships. In an intertwined world, to damage one part of this web is to risk harming yourself.