kuker/site is an installation made from old 1990s/2000s–TV-fresnel-lenses which are arranged into a somewhat screen-based media installation. kuker/site functions without the common technologies and energy transmissions, rather, it’s a relict of them.

The lenses, through two- and three-channel setups, distort their immediate surroundings in a way that might appear digital to us, disturbed like pixels with a glitch. When approached, they idiosyncratically augment a non-human sphere behind. The work is informed by (field) research, into the mining industry and kukersite oil shale industry and the geological history of Estonia. Displaced behind some of the lenses are deep geological layers from Estonia’s unique klint formations on the coastline: kukersite oil shale stones from the Ordovician age, originating from a mine in the north and artificial appearing blue clay from the Cambrian age, one of the oldest Earth layers (~540–420 Ma) – and also mined for various products. The displaced kukersite stones contain a dialogue between visible fossils and heat engravings from the artist created with sunlight focused through the lenses.

kuker/site augments Estonian geographies and its deep geologies to explore interlocal relations and the creeping of changing socio-ecologies: the seemingly untouched, ‹sublime› nature in the south of Estonia (Maajaam/Neeruti) where kuker/site is exhibited, is set in tension to mining sites in the north. kuker/site explores augmented layers between the human and non-human, playing with the boundaries between the artificial and non-artificial, between flora, fauna, human body and technology.

The installation was developed at Maajaam within the framework of Wild Bits which is in the main programme of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024. Co-Curated by Timo Toots, Mari-Liis Rebane, Taavi Suisalu, Kadri Lind, Marie Valgre.