The Oru Project

2022

During the first global Covid lockdown, a solitary psychogeographical expedition through Viljandi, Estonia, led to the discovery of a property at Oru 13. The project grew from that encounter: a recovery of the memories and ghosts of that house and the valley.

Working across photography, painting, collage, text, film, and audio, the work explores collective memory and the relationship between space and place. Hauntology, psychogeography, and the aura of objects inform the work as both research and practice.

The project was exhibited at Falmouth School of Art, UK, as part of a group show in July 2022, and as a full project at the Spitsbergen Artists Center, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, on 10 August 2022. Elements of the work were also shown at the Museum of New Art, Pärnu, Estonia, in 2023.

The Oru Project is created by the Kotzebue Kollective, a deliberately anonymous collective whose membership, authorship, and ownership remain unstated.