Cooperations

The people chosen by artist Joanna Raikowska, including environmental scientists, writers, botanists, shamans and artists, were asked to go beyond themselves and “become” the soil-earth, the embodiment of Mokosh (Mati Sira Earth, Mother Earth) or literally-earth.

Participants were only instructed that they, as the earth, should direct their statements to people. For this performance, Joanna Rajkowska assembled an international group that performed these pieces from inside a crack in the Earth’s surface-a crack about 7 meters deep that runs through solid rock on an island near Turku. “We wanted the surface to speak as literally as possible”.

Anna Khudzik-Pavlik, at the artist’s request,” became ” the Earth – and she spoke like the Earth, she was her voice.

Here are the words of Earth:
Anathema
O mankind!
Oh, man!
You, who I gave everything
insatiable to, were still rummaging through my pockets!
I curse you!
You, for whom my chest was full
, cut open my entrails
and greedily gush blood from them
I curse you!
You who make my skin break
my eyes burn
and my juices start to rot
I curse you!
One breath of mine
-millennia of your existence
in silence I watch
the smoke cover the sky
you call your
own I curse you!
I
was, am, and will continue to be!
You
Die!