Performance/ Video 12,20min, Kisko, Finland, 2023
This work emerges from my research on depleted mine pits and historical excavation and discard activities in northwest China and Finland.
In the performance, I attempt to approach the process of discarding, and perform the act of discarding at the Orijärvi deposit, a depleted copper mine in Southwest Finland. Standing next to a pile of weathered copper ore rocks, I kept throwing a fishing net into the air, pushing the morphing twisted monster out of my sight, although it always returns to me after a while. I imagine the excavation-discard process as a slow-motion discus-throwing movement, a discarded mine pit would be like a discus thrown into the void, while the mine pit became a trap. Within the void of the trap, something has been erased. Through the performance of discard, I attempt to reveal the overlapping layers of excavation and hidden human traces.
This work is also a parody of a jokey Chinese urban legend, according to which, if my excavation were an ancient tomb, I should bring a fishing net in case the ghosts and corpses resting lying inside jumped out at me while I was excavating the treasures. At that moment, I could throw the always useless net at them, tangling them, cancelling out their power by a crucial throwing.
Camera: Okko Oinonen
Image 5-7, A sequence of film stills of my performance at the Orijärvi Copper Mine in Kisko, Salo, Finland (2023)