A little freebie from deep rural baltic zone coz i’m feeling abundant. sign up for free or a paid subscription to get access to the rest of the diary and some older essays and poetry
Mon 11 July
After a 9 hour coach and bus journey via Pärnu, I landed softly and sleepily last night at Massia, a self-organised artist residency –and sister organisation of Performing Arts Forum (pa-f) in St Erme, nr Paris, France– near the south-westernmost tip of Estonia and about 12km from the Latvian border. It has been running since graphic designer and herbalist Sepi moved into the old Massiaru Koolimaja (Massiaru Schoolhouse) in 2016 as the project’s first live-in caretaker, and reminds me so vibrantly of DARP. The decor and material debris from the building’s history is jumbled, ever-present, embedded, inextricable.
Visitors are overwhelmingly artists, writers, dancers, cooks and refugees, and are local, international and everything in-between. They can organise their own stay whenever there is space (there is a clear contribution break-down online), choose an empty bedroom based on their preference – huge / cosy, cool / warm, bright / shady– then stop by the laundry cupboard to pick up bedding and sheets. This highly simplistic onboarding is supplemented with an email induction, personal correspondence with Sepi and membership agreement. From the initial virtual arrangement and linen collection i can sense the active communing has been built into the organisation, as decorative as the wall-hangings, as integral as the corrugated iron roof, as user-oriented as the light switches.
Writing after almost 18 months at DARP, my first experience of communal living, and taking into consideration all the complex feelings that have arisen during that time when being confronted with a (dys)functional horizontal structure, it’s so heartening to visit another space of sociocratic potential. As DARP does, Massia will undoubtedly have its own set of unique idiosyncrasies, hidden interpersonal issues, broken chains of communication, and unequal distribution of labour, but these must be seen as elementary responsibilities of the members to resolve within the framework of an ongoing investigation into radical non-didactic learning. Simply put, it’s clear that problems will arise in non-hierarchical projects and the challenge is to work through them with each other.
Attempting to organise without the safety of a rigid and well-trodden pathway is innately difficult; it requires an experimental approach to problem-solving and there are no corners to hide in. While the bulk of the day-to-day queries are bound to head directly towards a perceived “authority figure” –Sepi in this instance– it’s necessary for those participating in these frameworks to study their own normalised reliance on figureheads for direction, permission and validation.
First thing as I wake up, I jump into some shorts and a tshirt and run into the glade at the east-facing rear of the property. The sun is yellow-orange and so large. I start with some breathing exercises then some limb warm-ups and a short yoga flow with my feet in the grass. I finish off with some extreme slow walking, which is my favourite Pauline Oliveiros exercise (originally shown to me by Tash Cox at a School of the Damned residency in 2017). I was also channelling the focus on foot movement that the Buddhist Monks on Aegna practise. It’s such a beautiful place, totally quiet but for birdsong and the occasional fly.
All this open space has helped me become far more uninhibited, or at least far less self-conscious. I have lots of interesting feelings come up about repressed expressions and policed normativity. Embracing things that I could be ridiculed for has always seemed so dangerous, the social shame of being different or the embarrassment of people mocking you has always been so prevalent for me in London and Kent, the two places I lived almost all my life. I have not found Derbyshire to hold the same power since moving there, neither felt it when working in Lithunia or Spain recently. I cannot claim it is an innate characteristic in everyone who drinks British tap water, but the conceptual framework of “society” does seem remarkably reliant of making judgements of others to create a superiority / inferiority complex.
I take a big solo tour of the incredible school building, some of the rooms are still warm and vibrating from recent movement / thinking / mastication. Some of the other residents are convened in the kitchen, I uncork a bottle of rioja to share and we get stuck in with intros….
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Tues 12 July
banana apple pecan pastry glass of kefir with pomegranate jewels
wet as heck so no big trip to the bogs as planned
instead read under blanket then walk to ditches and collect herbs for library
onion lentils tomatoes herbs cracked pepper chopped olives rice aromat
hang with Sepi and writer called Jana in the comfy library sofas talking about plastic surgery and berlin
glass of red
it’s been really short and really sweet
pack my shit and get an early night
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