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Artefactourists are a collective of five members from Estonia: four choreographers Valeria Tagel, Keity Pook, Sigrid Savi, Kadri Sirel and a dramaturge Kerli Ever. Artefactourism, a neologism created by the group, means the act of remembering that is triggered by places and artefacts. Their work explores the intersection of memory, identity and place: how a place contains and triggers personal and collective memories; how these memories (in)form identities; how the personal and collective identities manifest in the place. They see ourselves as alternative archivists, considering urban spaces as museums-in-flux that incorporate traces both of the personal trajectories as well as of collective narratives that intertwine, mutate or overwrite each other.

Artefactourists believe that these everyday journeys in time and space form our individual and collective identities, but also include ways of rerouting. The group formed in 2022, their first work being a dance performance “Artefactourism: Rumours and Ruins”, premiered in Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, Tallinn. Currently they are developing a concept of site-responsive performative tours in urban spaces that would be informed by the place’s past, current topics and possible futures emerging from the site. The tours are one stop in the Artefactourists’ journey of developing a nomadic co-creation method that can host several trajectories while maintaining a common ground.

...................... is an Estonian choreographer, performer, and artist researcher whose often site-specific projects address the topic of production. Be it self-production, production of meanings, values or products, she works with the dancing body to investigate the tension between individual and societal desires. Her methods include improvisation and somatic practices, documentation, and co-creation to reimagine the value of dancers’ labour within capitalism. She graduated from the Viljandi Culture Academy Dance Art department (EST) and holds a Master’s degree from the Home of Performance Practices at the ArtEZ University of Arts (NL).

.......................... acquired the profession of choreographer and dance teacher in 2017 at the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy, Estonia and currently works in Estonia as a freelance dance artist and dance teacher. During her university studies she had exchange studies in Austria and Portugal. In the past her movement research focus has been on identity, authenticity and memory- creative and research residencies at Viljandi Koidu Seltsimaja, Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava. For the past year she has been in a collaborative research process that evolved into performance Artefakturism: farces and ruins. Also in the past year she’s been in TantsuRUUM residency (Estonia) focusing on creating parallels between eco- anxiety and movement research, finding tools to connect body and physicality with her performance idea. In recent years, Valeria has collaborated with performance artists as choreographer, dancer, director, artist and dramaturg.

...................... s an Estonian, UK-based dance artist, choreographer, performer, producer, and dance filmmaker. Her work explores the individual’s experience in a contemporary world context, juxtaposed with natural and sociopolitical environments, often represented through a post-internet aesthetic. Keity draws inspiration from her Estonian heritage, folklore, nature, and the aesthetic of cuteness, as well as contemporary club music. In 2020, she co-founded 'inklingroom,' an art platform and record label hosting interdisciplinary performance events that merge contemporary dance, performance art, fashion, music, and visual arts in London, Bristol, and Tallinn.

....................is a choreographer and performance artist based in Berlin and Tallinn. Her work has been characterized as socio-critical, melancholic, absurd and entertaining. She has done her performances from theaters and clubs to galleries and even on a rooftop and in the limestone quarry. Besides doing solo works she recently started to create together with other choreographers, visual artists and composers.

.................. (she/her) engages with performing arts (mostly dance) in various ways: at times as a dramaturg, at times as a critic, at times simply as a part of the audience. She has an academic background in Theatre Research (MA, 2022, Tartu University), in Culture Theory (BA, 2015, Tallinn University), and in Reviewing-Editing (BA, 2011, Tallinn University). Her work so far can be characterized by her focus on bodily sensations seen as inherently political. Currently she is interested in ruins (both literally and figuratively) as not only the traces of something now absent, but also as fertile grounds for new directions. Alongside theatre projects she is working as an editor of study materials for civic and health education in schools. Kerli lives in Tallinn.

Artefactourists are not only alternative archivists who map the historical and emotional narratives of a place, but they are also tour guides offering site-responsive performative tours through urban spaces, tailoring its content to the area’s history, its current socio-political issues and imagined futures. These tours explore the power of narratives and read urban spaces as both repositories and catalysts for individual and collective identities. The tour guides welcome the participants to a poetic, yet socially conscious journey that stimulates all of their senses.

The exact content of the tour will be informed by the specifics of the location. The process of creating the tour involves gathering information about the place from sources as diverse as from tourism brochures to conversations with the local people, from wandering around the area to freewriting sessions.

Our project is largely centered on defining a co-creative method that aligns with our understanding of rooting – that is not something singular but rhizomatic. Creating a method based on listening, vulnerability, and continuity is prevalent in our co-creative approach between each other as well as in relation to our site-responsive practice. The research is situated in rhizomatic thinking, spreading one research into five paths.

The aim is to explore our paths together in one space, examining how crossings transform, modify, or mutate the individual material, while observing the macro-ecology that these unique pathways create. By doing so, we will be developing a performance methodology that constructs a universe situated in movement practices of adapting, layering and remembering, nurtured by a co-creative process that unfolds intra-active relationships between the individual and the group.

individual practices:

photos of the tour in Hellerau:

Photos: Peter Fiebig

In the performance “Artefactourism: rumours and ruins” Valeria Januškevitš, Sigrid Savi, Kadri Sirel and Keity Pook are interested in the capacity of memory to create identities and communities, and the power, ambiguity and deceitfulness of this mechanism. In what ways are people caught up in the mechanisms of memory, how are they pushed out, which loose ends remain diverged?

Choreographers travel as tourists along the patchy memories, dancing on the ruins and building bridges between the past, present and future.

The production carries the echoes of three different residencies. The Estonian Open Air Museum, the Kreenholm Manufactory and Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (Independent Dance Stage) are symbols that highlight the community’s way of living, working and dreaming in different eras, introducing the question of work that needs to be put into remembering.

Artefactourism: rumours and ruins

Imagine yourself in a summery farmyard. The sun, the heat, the bees buzzing under the thatched roof. A village swing creaks in the distance. Multilingual instructions are attached to the swing, but the tourists don’t really know how to use it, they bend their knees awkwardly and laugh. New image: an empty, ghostly echoing factory building. You know that the room was once filled with deafening noise and that many people have left their health here, but that many have also perceived it as a source of pride. The air is strangely heavy, though the wind rattles the broken windows; somewhere a door slams. Third image: a white theater hall, empty, without decorations. The floor is a little cold. The premiere is still a long time away, but that’s also why more e-mails need to be exchanged with the team; the best time for the next meeting happens to fall on a Saturday.

⇢ 2022: dance performance...................................................................(Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava, Tallinn)

⇢ 2023–2024 participating in .................................................................... at Vaba Lava (Narva, Estonia), Kunstwerkplaats Vonk (Hasselt, Belgium) and HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts (Dresden, Germany)

Choreographers and performers: Valeria Januškevitš, Keity Pook, Sigrid Savi and Kadri Sirel
Dramaturge: Kerli Ever
Sound designer: Sander Saarmets
Set design: Laura Põld
Light design: Karolin Tamm

Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
We thank the Estonian Open Air Museum and the Kreenholm Manufacturing Company.

Premiere: November 8th, 2022 at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava.