Blood Olympics

	The curtain opens on Pia Fraus's piece You Look Fine. A table in the middle of the stage, with Liina Siib, Marko Mäetamm and Pia Fraus sitting around it. There is a melon on the table. Everybody sits motionless until the music ends, and then the following conversation begins:
	Liina Siib (L.S.): Would you briefly describe the video Spooky Wood and the piece My Landlord is Trying to Kill Me. Pia Fraus (P.F.): Wild nature is full of mystery and logic. Dwarfs-butterflies armed with daggers rush among the trees in the forest like repressed emotions set free from cages. Marko Mäetamm (M.M.): Exactly. Death and wild nature. P.F: It's a wonder the trees don't come to life and attack you. M.M: Indeed. Forests contain memory and anger. Trees talk to one another. P.F: Yes. They have feelings. L.S: The hood as a fantasy of what? M.M: Fantasy about Little Red Riding Hood and ... P.F: In a word, Red Riding Hood's hidden fantasies that are revealed when the night falls. M.M: Oh! L.S: Butterfly connotes symbolic entrapment, capture. Mäetamm's image has the butterfly as the capturer, how would you explain that? M.M: Maybe Pia Fraus should explain that, my relations with that are a bit too personal. P.F: Butterflies are the purest representatives of chaos. Aimless wanderers.
	L.S: But in a dream? M.M: Well, in dreams everything turns upside down, and you are paralysed. P.F: What is that supposed to mean? M.M: In this fairy-tale forest you can only stand with your hands tied, and let the winged red hats... P.F: You mean red riding hoods? M.M: Yes, let the red riding hoods attack. P.F: Nowhere to run? M.M: Nowhere at all. L.S: What does death mean in your rhetoric? P.F: Be brave to live with the knowledge of death, or die. Death is the topic that interests everybody. There is no death in the unconscious. M.M: I don't have any rhetoric at all. But I have a melon here. Would anyone fancy some? L.S: Who has got a knife? P.F: and M.M. together: You are the one with a knife!!!
	Liina Siib silently cuts the melon. L.S: But in the video? Where is the knife pointing? M.M: Towards the subject ... I think. P.F: (eating) Mmh? All eat in silence for a while. L.S: Choice of animation and real worldview? M.M: Disney made his films for adults and children have completely adopted them. P.F: Children have adapted Disney's films and bought his company. M.M: Yes. Walt's twin grandchildren Patrick and Sean. They learned about the whereabouts of the company and, as they inherited 10 million dollars when they were just five, they promptly bought it. P.F: Promptly! And now the spectator recalls the children's stories of the golden age. M.M: We are playing mild and cruel games of modernism. P.F: Today's cynical world. M.M: You can say that again. L.S: Vague notion of a happy end?
	P.F: Everybody has his own version of the symbiotic image of the fairy and the red riding hood, but nevertheless the fairy usually turns up to punish you. M.M: The sun does rise in the morning, that's true, but the next night is already approaching, and then the next... P.F: Stop it. It gives me the creeps! L.S: Would you tell this story to your children at bedtime? P.F: and M.M together: No. L.S: Do you mythologize death in order to explain it somehow? Are things not what they seem? Symbolic order? M.M: People need myths, mythology. The desire for myths comes from ... P.F: The insecurity in one's life and in the world. Things are the way they seem to us. However... maybe the solution we've been looking for lies precisely there? M.M: Watch the video and you'll know.
	L.S: Butterfly effect? M.M: Butterfly effect. P.F: This is an ill-boding movement, like mosquitoes you are helplessly trying to repel. M.M: Screensaver rhythm - to repress... P.F: And paradoxically, also to evoke by similar repression! M.M: Yes, also evoke a screamsaver or virtual paranoia. P.F: Incidentally, My Landlord is Trying to Kill Me in fact tells about real-life experience and incidents. M.M: Naturally. Incidents that encourage paranoia and make one see through various sinister layers. P.F: Emotions projected at oneself - really dreadful! L.S: What is minimalist music? P.F: It's 'Aaaa - a'; 'you look fine'; 'a - a'; vibration etc. M.M: Indeed. L.S: Now, if you please, a short description of the video Blood Olympics and the piece You Look Fine.
	M.M: OK. I'll go first: A bunch of candles in the shape of the Olympic rings rotates on its usual trajectory around a highrise block of flats. Blood starts pouring out of the windows. More and more windows turn black, and the blood simply does not cease... P.F: My turn now: Monotonous music cannot restrain itself any more, and a total flood of blood and a substance mixed with guitar noise ensues. M.M: And then - the Olympic candles sink feebly to the bottom of the blood. L.S: Where did you get the inspiration for the video Blood Olympics? P.F: Yes, I've been meaning to ask that! Certainly the Olympic Games - the terrorist attack in Munich in 1972? Or a political allegory? M.M: Nothing of the kind! Everything is much more complicated, but I cannot talk about it. P.F: Any particular reason? M.M: Can't talk about it! L.S: What in your work is connected with allegory?
	M.M: The Olympic Games. Although this might sound controversial. P.F: Then the banal funereal symbols and the block of flats as a certain strategy. L.S: Pia Fraus's music is like the choir in a Greek tragedy, an inevitable catastrophe. The burning candles drown in blood, and one would like to seize a mop and clean the blood up. But it is no longer possible to get the blood off the key. Is that right? P.F: Blood Olympics is ruthless. No room for emotions here, you may try to escape, but... M.M: You will lose anyway. L.S: Some artists see their creative achievements as the fulfilment of tasks set in sport. For others, their art is the means of achieving the necessary elements of a possible criminal offence. Strangely enough, Blood Olympics is able to unite both aspects. Was that intentional? M.M: This is really strange. P.F: I must admit it was not intentional. M.M: The video has no aspirations to win any medals. P.F: The criminal line is born in a mysterious way when Mäetamm and Pia Fraus get together.
	Curtain. Pia Fraus's You Look Fine starts in the distance. Marko Mäetamm (1965), artist. Participated together with Kaido Ole in the Venice biennial in 2003. See also www.livonia.ee/maetamm/ Liina Siib (1963) artist, editor of Estonian Art Pia Fraus indie-band. In spring 2004 shared an exhibition with Marko Mäetamm. See also www.piafraus.com
	| Estonian Art 1/04 (14) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |