Radical Runosong: Decolonizing Self and Tradition
This talk is about land and kin, dispossession and desire, solidarity and silence. It is a critical celebration of the oral tradition of runosong, a style of singing which has been practiced for centuries by Baltic Finnic peoples on the land now called Estonia and elsewhere. By drawing upon the wealth of alternative vocal and somatic practices embedded in runosong, the talk enacts a fugitive search for historical consciousness. Working against the grain of Estonian nationalism and its Eurocentric tendencies, this involves mapping and resisting the ways in which divergent bodies, selves, and forms of physical sociality have been disciplined through the interplay of brutality and privilege inherent to modernization. The talk is a provocation, but one born out of love and a sense of obligation to the ancestors.
VAIM SARV
Vaim Sarv is a disabled vocalist and organizer living in rural Estonia. She is a student of Baltic Finnic oral traditions which he interweaves with storytelling, archival research, bodily noise music, and free improvisation. She works as a part-time janitor at Massia, where he is engaged in commoning practices both ancestral and otherwise, and is a member of Daylight Project, an autonomous art collective based in Tallinn.
Cover photo: Kihnu elder Kossu Mari photographed by Helmi Üprus in 1947, Estonian National Museum, 1097:6.
