A three-channel video installation entitled “Stork, a sacred bird” (2022) is a video recording of my observations of the white stork population at the Getliņi landfill site. Located just outside Riga, it is the largest mixed landfill site in the entire Baltic region. It was here that I first saw storks feeding on food waste brought in by countless trucks. My encounter with storks at the Getlini landfill site has been my closest encounter with these birds so far, and the first time I was able to watch them up close and in such large numbers. The film is something between a nature documentary and a speculative theory, in which I quite freely reinterpret scientific facts. To me, the sight of a stork on a landfill site is a great pretext for deconstructing, decolonizing, and critically reassessing the cultural entanglement and representations of the stork. Most of all, I see this as an opportunity to demythologize the stork as a bird inseparably entwined with the idealized view of nature. In order to understand and accept the sight of storks on landfill sites, we must first consider the nature that surrounds us. This is what real, unretouched nature actually looks like – it is ambiguous, toxic, altered, and complex.

Project was made as a part of the program Island Of Kindship (https://islandsofkinship.org/) in colaboration with Latvian Center For Contemporary Art LCCA

Installation view „Hay, Straw, Dump”,Václav Špála Gallery, organized by Jindřich Chalupecký Society  , Prague, March 2023, photo: Jan Kolsky, https://islandsofkinship.org/hay-straw-dump/

  preview, screenshot from the video”Stork, a sacred bird” 2022