How do you think, is it something new to the world?
Katja: Kik in der Kok is definitely a good reason to show art and video work never shown in Estonia before. Also on the global scale we are dealing with effectively radical young contemporary art that is not afraid to engage with bad taste, questionable aesthetics and ethical choices. It is also a kind of event that tries to go beyond some of the traditional festival formats and create a wholesome and sometimes troublesome experience that reflects our life today.
You also write in the press-release, that this will be a cross-media event. In what way?
Anna: First of all it is film, secondly it is Internet, and we are also planning to have some gallery space for performances and installations. So it is more about video arts and live participation. One of the main goals is actually to make people participate, become part of this culture, not to be only a passive viewer, but maybe we will make some games or experiments where they can film themselves and do something they wouldn’t normally do. We will also have an afterparty with music.
Will it be only in Helios?
Katja: The festival is full time in Helios, including the after party and cleaning session after it. We hope to sustain the novelty of the festival by holding it in this old yet fresh space in Tallinn.
What will be the 2011 event about?
Anna: well, don’t tell it to our sponsors (laughs), but we are expected to be the most scandalous project of the Tallinn 2011 program. For us the last theme exhausted itself and we don’t want to dig into pornography further, because we just lost interest in this topic and now we would like to research more into present day, but not with pornography, but how people generally express their sexuality through new mediums like the Internet, Youtube, cameras and mobile phones. On the other hand we see it as a research into the archeology of pornography, because certain elements in those videos we are going to show, they come from old times and we would like to give the viewer a different perspective on it. Not just to take one separate period of time, like Now, but also related to what was before it, to see it in a more continuous line. For us it is really a research project, rather than a scandalous statement on the liberty of sexual rights.
First time you made it in 2007, was the team same then?
Anna: No, it was me, Katja and Edward Milhuisen. Katja and Edward work mostly with the program of the festival and I helped with organising, sponsorships, lectures and more technical stuff. But the idea originated in the 9th grade at school, where we were studying together with Katja. We were just sitting together and it was one of our jokes that when we grow up, we are going to make a porn film festival. At one point Katja mentioned that to Edward and he said: “Yes, why don’t you do that?!”, so he was the trigger behind the project. A small and cozy team.
What can you tell me about the name of the festival?
Anna: Oh, that was the whole story. I think I still have that A4 paper with different sketches of the name, and they were absolutely dry on inspiration, but it came from this book that I read, when I was a child about old stories of Tallinn. There was a story of Kik in de Kok tower’s guard, who had an amazing cook – his wife. Every time when she cooked something he couldn’t guess what she made and after he started working in this tower he could see the kitchen from a window and he started to guess always what she prepared for him. She became depressed about this and her husband felt sorry for her and said that he could see everything from the window. So we used this cliché symbol of a standing tower and the name sounds good.
Yes, it sounds like “kick in the cock”.
Anna: yes, so it has both sexual connotations and relates to Tallinn, as well as to the phallic symbol of the tower. But I don’t remember how this story came out, probably we were trying different symbols of Estonia and this fitted the most.
How do you find material for the project?
Anna: This a bit painful, but interesting process: when Katja was working on her graduation project – The Post Internet Survival Guide, she was going to a lot of web pages and image databases, where she saw images that were interesting and surprising. I guess this was her first inspiration and she collected a large database of different Youtube videos as well. From there this material grew, me and Margo Niit also joined and we started to look for full feature films as well as festivals or artists profile.
I think I saw a mobile picture of naked Kersten Kõrge sleeping on the sofa in Margo’s Facebook profile; can that be included as a piece for the festival? (joking)
Anna: No (laughs), we would like to see it in a more complex way. This sexual reality isn’t just a naked body; some of those videos have no relation whatsoever to the naked body, but maybe what the person does to the body: wears different costumes, putting on some strange masks. Depends what they want to express with that, or there is a whole subculture of people just showing their abs with titles like “nice belly”. You can’t see the face, only their abdominal muscles that turn side to side. The amazing thing is that comments below these videos are a lot more positive than to any other videos and you know how usually trolling works: usually you get comments like “bullshit”, “you’re an idiot”, but for these ones you get “wow, great belly”, “Hollywood abs” and so on. Really! So sexuality can be really different, not only two naked people riding each other, which was more of a theme of the first festival.
Is your role in the project same as the last time?
Anna: Yes, more or less the same. Well, since our team has different backgrounds and everyone has something to add, first of all we are going to participate in a long dialog from which we are going to find new directions to show to our viewer. Basically I’m helping out with the media plan and organisational questions. We don’t have strict divisions or functions, for example, for Margo it is more convenient to deal with financial things, since he lives here. This time we are doing all officially, which for me and Katja is a different world.
How does Tallinn 2011 help you?
Katja: Tallinn Capital of Culture foundation helped us to finance a large part of the festival. Without them the festival would not be happening.
19:00 Introduction EST
19:25 Film: ‘Youtube anthropology 01’ ENG
20:15 Lecture by Kiwa EST
20:45 Introduction to Ryan Trecartin’s work EST
20:50 Ryan Trecartin ‘Sibling Topics’ ENG
21:35 Drinks!
22:00 (free) ‘Wariazone’ ENG+ID +EST sub.
Kiwa & Terje Toomistu;
Q&A with Kiwa after the movie EST
14:00 Introduction EST
14:10 Talk & dicussion with Thijs Witty ENG
14:55 Short film: ‘An Internet Date
with Sasha Grey’, Luke Gilford,
Chris Cumingham ENG
15:15 Film: ‘Youtube anthropology 02’ ENG
16:30 Short film:
Billy Rennekamp (USA) aka Ralph’s ENG
16:50 Lecture / Skype performance:
Kaisa Eiche & Maria Rõhu EST
17:15 Film: ‘P.opular S.ky (section ish)’,
Ryan Trecartin ENG
18:05 Performance: Helga Wretman ENG
19:00 Introduction EST
19:05 Wendy Vainity
collection of short animations ENG
19:25 Documentary:
‘Because We Are Visual’ ENG
20:30 Performance: ‘The Coming Community’
Sam Hancocks ENG
21:15 (free) Film: ‘Zuma: Tales of a Sexual Gladiator’
~ 85min ENG (sub)
23:00 Afterparty
Egyptian Lover with Jamie Jupiter (USA✈)
New York City Survivors (FIN✈)
Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots
Deathcats
Sex Drive Live
Marco Tasane w. beats and dance!
Quueennaive
4-got-10
Katja Adrikova
Antelia ja Ketomees
Berl
Hiiesalu
Vladimir "wovka" Ljadov is an amateur film photographer and occasionally a freelance journalist. Lives in Tallinn, is fascinated by technology and vintage graphic design, spends a lot of time in latest generation social media and does PR for a living. Believes in diversity, discordianism and is against insularity.
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Anna Dobrosovestnova Chungin Chungin and the Strap on Faggots Dinosaurs Edward Milhuisen Estonia Festival Helios Internet Katja Novitskova Kersten Kõrge Kik in Der Kok Margo Niit Off Beat Cinema sex Tallinn Tallinn 2011 The Post Internet Survival Guide
