hello, I had a very long and quiet spring at DARP and have (for now) teleported to east Estonia. Late last year I was invited by artists Sandra Kosorotova (who commissioned me to write Potluck Picnic in 2020) and Sille Kima to run some practical workshops at Kreenholm Plants, the community garden and permaculture project they initiated at Narva Art Residency (NART) in 2020. I negotiated that I would also spend a longer period of time in Narva to follow a personal project and take a room at the same institute. so here I am for two months, in a Russian-speaking border city with deep military and social history, getting dirty hands and tuning into the nuanced approach of a cultural organisation that has responsibility to accommodate (both in terms of entertainment and programming) for locals and international citizens.
As usual I will try and keep a daily diary –more for my memory’s benefit– and share the experience. I will also be posting some bonus content that you can unlock if you want to become a paid supporter. Plus you get access to all previous journals from Valencia and Vilnius, and a compendium of unhinged tweets.
Enjoy!
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Wed 1 Jun wake up at 3am at Greg’s to get a cab to Liverpool airport, one of those ones where it’s a real deep sleep but you bolt upright on your alarm and don’t look back. it’s busy but scousers are truly gorgeous people so I don’t dissociate and instead enjoy the strangeness of these non-places and the codings of holidaymaking: 5am beer and burger in a fake pub, huddling around charger docks, same family running past you both ways. check-in, eating the burrito Sonia made me in a brightly-lit lounge at 4am, flight and baggage collection all went without a hitch. jump on a bus to the coach garage and grab two chili cheese taquitos, a black coffee and can of g&t for the ride. I split the 3hr last leg between staring out the window at miles of fields and verges covered in pristine dandelions and mustards, and battling with a moderate sudoku on the in-built touchscreen.
when I arrive at NART i’m immediately greeted by Alexey, spun round for a quick half tour and then shown to my room. I unpack everything, get whisked out for the rest of the tour, then have a nice hot shower.
I meet with Alexey and the other resident artists out the front where we pick up scooters and convoy into town. Our guide gives a quick lesson on Narva history, as well as how the former twinning with Ivangorod is now a hard border. We drop the scooters and walk the river bank past castle-cum-museums, down to his favourite pub in the dockyard. He is obviously very close with the owners and might have even worked there at one point. I have a pint of regional lager, fried mushroom dumplings and potato pancakes, with a tonne of sour cream. Lagging after just an hour, I head back early, picking the same scooter back up for the return.
Thurs 2 Jun I join up with Alexey, and fellow residents Sasha and Pavel outside NART at 11, we walk round to Kreenholmi Manifaktuur, a former self-contained textile manufacturing town with its on railway network just minutes away from the institute. Six enormous four-storey factories, planned by Brits and built in the classic Estonian style of 1850s, are split by a canal with a powerful sluice that used to generate the mills. It’s now secured by 24 hour guardians, but frequently hosts events under cultural banners – opera and orchestras are much-loved, and a recent sound art installation by previous resident Jaakko Autio. Being in alert scavenger mode, I spot intact window sashes that I could use for some cold frames at the garden, as well as tens of brooms, some timber beams and nice rope. There’s also a new-looking tiled hatch between an empty kitchen and a dining room with paint peeling from the pillars and ghostly net curtains – would be cool to cater a meal in here?
I realise in the afternoon that the scant Estonian I brought with me, practised from youtube vids while packing bags and cleaning my room, will be basically useless here as 96% of Narvians speak Russian. The city is largely populated with descendants of Russians who moved over for work in the factories a few generations back. Pavel shows me his phone screen with a translation of “hello” into cyrillic script, “Здравствуйте”. He asks sincerely if I can pronounce it. I shrug.
Fri 3 Jun Jog to the boatyard and back with Sasha at 10am. On the way she promises to teach me some russian but not right now. It’s warm out and we’re both panting like puppies. I take a diversion on the way back to pick some lilac flowers and ground ivy. The temperate atmosphere is so similar to UK, a degree or two cooler maybe, but the flowers are about three weeks behind. Lilac season at DARP had just finished, but in Narva it’s just starting: my second spring <3.
I listen to The Natural Bridge by Silver Jews and think about my brother while getting lunch. It’s a slice of pie that Pavel bought for me, filled with shredded, fried turnip and smoked mushrooms, with two fried eggs on the side and a salad of that ground ivy, blueberries, orange segments, radishes and toasted buckwheat. The lilac goes in hot water with a slice of ginger and a spoon of brown sugar.
I spend the afternoon completing an essay draft and miss the free opening at the castle-cum-museum. The huge gates are open so I stick my head in a few rooms and bounce around the courtyard. When I feel they want me to leave, I amble around the city for a while, stopping to sniff a bush or occasionally look the wrong way at a crossing. Lucky for me, the Irish pub appears so I have a customary Guinness and a bowl of onion rings.
I stay up late making some pickles and ferments using various wild plants, kitchen leftovers and a few fruits from the Maxima whoopsy aisle. Dandelion bud capers, pickled radishes, pickled watermelon rind, lacto apricot sauce, lacto apples for sauce, lacto white beans and lacto onions. I like to process foods alone at night, mostly because I can’t upset anyone with my sprawling workspace. There’s this Brian Eno album I’ve been having on repeat and it’s zenning me out morning, noon and night.
Sat 4 Jun Wake up super late of course, must be rlly liking this hard bed and singular square pillow flex. It’s cool and dark in this room like a troglodyte cave I visited in Tunisia once. I read until I feel full of words and head to make french toast. I bought this baked milk called Topolonya Mlako which I can’t bear to drink so I add it to the eggy batter with a dollop of sweet mustard I bought from a lovely lady in a carpark. Toppings: cheese curds, blueberries, fig jam and fresh thyme. Also make buckwheat salad w beans sauerkraut , dill and oily herring to take to the garden.
Grab barrow and tools; sort composting in the outdoor bin (chop kitchen waste and layer with paper strips); immediately find a huge chicken of the woods. I go to Kreenholm Plants, the community garden that I am stewarding for these two months, and just walk around surveying it for a few hours: take a list of wild plants I recognise, find hidden raised beds, look where the sun moves over the plot, swat a million mosquitos away, videocall Hugh.
Here is an interview with Kreenholm Plants co-founder Sandra Kosorotova about the project, featuring a quote from me in her opening answer.
Later on Johanna, NART director, heats up the sauna after dinner so I sit in there until I feel dizzy, take a cold shower and try ten more minutes concentrating on my breath. Pavel asks me if I’m okay. I’m not. People on the internet are telling me to buy a furry white hat that will make the sauna more bearable but that sounds ridiculous. Apparently with it I can “avoid getting straw hair” and “regulate my temperature”.
Sun 5 Jun
run & yoga
fruit
writing
omelette
garden party
circus
trike
beer
macaroni cheese
bed
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Mon 6 Jun Grabbing a banana and apple for the road, walk south towards Pribrešnõi, the allotment area on the verge of the huge Narva Reservoir, dense with garages and fishing bays and known locally as Little Venice. I’ve only brought a pencil, diary and bottle of water so I sit and plan my week on a big rock, with clear water lapping at my feet and powerlines buzzing overhead.
Tuesday 7 Jun Early hot run down to the same spot as yesterday. Already decided I’m gonna spend a lot of time down there. Therapy session full of smiles, noting in particular my mood depending on my surroundings or company. Boring breakfast of fridge stuff on toast. Gather all the tools and go to the garden to introduce my work to other residents, water the plants and do some herb identification. We translate common english names into Russian, Estonian and Finnish and harvest some greens for dinner. Sasha and I cook a huge buffet for all residents and director:
Leek & potato soup
cottage cheese and gherkins
Buckwheat, dill and pickled chilis
Potato, egg, lemon balm salad
Sunflower seed and parsley pesto
Garden salad w garlic honey dressing
We share wine then the visiting EKA tutors turn up and we give them plates stacked with food. Some artists share their project updates, obstacles and requests. I drink some beer that Pavel got at the party on sunday for cheap as the bar was packing up – 3.5L for 15euro
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Wed 8 Jun another busy one! read poems from old clinic book while drinking coffee and eating banana then zip off to Pribrešnõi for 3rd day in a row. this time, we look at the garages at “little Venice”, including two NART have access to for potential projects. not much in them: bed or sofa, fireplace, shelving or some oooold coathooks. all authentic soviet shit. think I will take a weekend to write and walk before I leave.
later, a guided tour at the castle museum with bare dilapidated stone and hard institutional coated steel like vector drawings. Great city views from 1370s tower ofc, especially of Ivangorod castle opposite side of the river, which copied the style 200yr later when medieval period was long gone. presented my residency project to fine artist students in the garden, never know how useful my practice is in this context when I’m yapping about dematerialisation and decarbonisation when these poor students just want 2 paint gorgeous things.
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Thurs 9 Jun so late, can’t remember much. went to market for veggies, forgot eggies. collected old brooms and beautiful metal frames from kreenholm factories.
did a bunch of gardening tasks, including saving the whole place being mown down. just about managed to use a combo of rubbish estonian and crude gestures to stop council-contracted gardeners in time. raked up and laid out the grass they cut in the sun to make mulch. bees were desperately feeding from the obliterated comfrey, I lifted both out of the bed and onto KP for saves. weeded the star bed then added a thick layer of lovely year-old compost.
Lambo drove everyone to the beach for a quick swim and pizza
critted EKA painting students’ work from their week-long seminar in Narva then joined everyone for lager and birch brushes in the sauna
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Fri 10 Jun Bought some seedlings as I won’t have succeess from seed on my timeframe: beet, courgette, marigold, parsley from a guy growing them in trays and spooning clumps of cute, healthy plantlets into newspaper which he folds into carton
Unloaded a few more barrows of compost onto the beds at the garden, wait for rain promised by high air pressure and northernly winds
Also collect 50kg of ground clay from the gallery on invite of EKA tutor. He complains (rightfully) about the lack of foresight of student ordering clay for the exhibition without a plan for its afterlife. he links it back to how I spoke in the garden about opening up critical conversations about material lifespans. single-use addiction and poorly-planned disposal enforces class subjugation through expected undesirable labour lumped on others.
i add some clay to the composted beds, some to the new compost pile and store the rest under an old poncho I find in the storeroom surrounded by small granite stones
omelette, pickled radished and salad > scooter to technorave at RoRo bar and a few bottles of Leffe
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Sat 11 Jun Postponed heading to Tartu as I need to not be sitting on coaches for three hours or running around a city in a thunderstorm this weekend. Instead I’m laying on the couch reading, celebrating SashaPasha exhibition opening and spending time with Varia, Lambo and french bulldog kiwi before they return to Finland.
notwithstanding I cycle 17km to the beach to watch sundown and eat bbq with a few russians who stand very close to me when they speak, and back again gone midnight guided by the white night
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Sun 12 Jun Legs hurting, i don’t manage to make it far from my room until a rainy pre-dinner walk to Narva Venice while I have a long catch-up phonecall with Jamie. I get back and cook dinner for the residents: lactofermented apricot and horseradish glazed aubergine was the highlight of the spread. We sit on the balcony talking about visas and grandparents, share some red wine and daim bar chocolate, then I slink off to bed