Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The film Thirst is a post-human choreography of machines and displaced plants. Millions of tons of Estonian peat end up in greenhouses in the Netherlands, where it is used as a soil substrate for tropical Phalaenopsis orchids. Meanwhile, local communities in Estonia are left with dry wells and a lack of drinking water as their fragile wetlands are drained for peat extraction. The orchids from the Netherlands then find their way back to supermarkets and homes in Estonia. It is a thirst for luxury and abundance that keeps the capitalist machinery running. Thirst is one episode from Kristina Norman’s Orchidelirium film trilogy. Commissioned for the Estonian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Author and director: Kristina Norman Cinematographer: Erik Norkroos Composer: Märt-Matis Lill Choreographer and cast: Mari Mägi Produced by Rühm Pluss Null in collaboration with CCA Estonia

Kristina Norman (b.1979, lives and works in Tallinn) is an artist whose interdisciplinary work includes video installations, sculpture, and projects in the city space, as well as documentaries and performance. She is interested in the issues of collective memory, the memorial uses of the public space, but also the subtle sphere of the body politic that transgresses the boundaries between the public and the private. In 2009 she represented Estonia at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, with a solo project; a multilayered mixed media installation entitled After-War. The project was a study of a conflict around the relocation of a Soviet monument in Tallinn. In 2022 at the 59th edition, the artist again represented Estonia with an ecocritical exhibition “Orchidelirium. An Appetite For Abundance”, a duo show with Bita Razavi, curated by Corina Apostol. Norman’s experimental film trilogy commissioned for the Estonian Pavilion, offers multiple ways to reflect on the legacies of colonialism from a specifically Eastern European perspective.