Kalevala. research

Igor Starkov & Daria Andreeva

December 6 2013 — January 12, 2014
Triumph gallery

History is written in books. It can be rewritten, the paper can handle it. But the rhythm of a nation’s life is set not by history, but by cultural myth.

The greatest danger for an ethnic group is the loss of a common myth, when the voices of their ancestors cease to resound in everyone’s soul. In the 1930s, the Finnish philologist Elias Lennroth compiled a collection of Karelo-Finnish epic songs from remote villages and called it "Kalevala." The country of the hero Kalev, the progenitor of epic heroes, is mentioned in the text only once. but this country was Lennroth’s poem itself, which laid the foundation for Finnish identity. In the same area where Elias Lennroth collected material for the poem, the entire material of the Stark cycle was shot: in the village of Kalevala in the Kalevala National District of the Republic of Karelia.

From the series "Kalevala"
2013
Pigment printing
60 × 50 cm

The greatest danger for an ethnic group is the loss of a common myth, when the voices of their ancestors cease to resound in everyone’s soul. In the 1930s, the Finnish philologist Elias Lennroth compiled a collection of Karelo-Finnish epic songs from remote villages and called it "Kalevala." The country of the hero Kalev, the progenitor of epic heroes, is mentioned in the text only once. but this country was Lennroth’s poem itself, which laid the foundation for Finnish identity. In the same area where Elias Lennroth collected material for the poem, the entire material of the Stark cycle was shot: in the village of Kalevala in the Kalevala National District of the Republic of Karelia.

Almost 100 photographs from the Kalevala series are not documentary. They are not specific: everything private lives within the limits of time, but time itself is based on a myth. For the mythological consciousness, the snow that falls every year is the same. The elements have no age, and the epic conflict has no beginning and no end, the drama of the epic is played endlessly as long as the last bearer of the myth is alive. The epic is realized in everything, its body is snow, forest, sky. And people who always reproduce a single cosmogonic plot. Igor Starkov’s photographs and Daria Andreeva’s film still represent the living source of the world-famous epic. The instinct of Starkov and Andreeva allows them to see the imprints of the history of ancient times behind the current life of the Karelian village. Behind the heroes of Stark’s portraits are the heroes of "Kalevala", their whole life in rune photographs is set by the rhythm of the primordial myth.

In Finland, Lenin is revered as the first statesman to recognize Finnish independence. The silver statue of Lenin in the Russian Kalevala also avoided iconoclasm. Sprinkled with snow, like an ancient idol overgrown with moss, Lenin points into the distance, in the direction where Vainamainen sailed away on his canoe. Cultural heroes don’t die. they go beyond the blue sea, to the land of eternal dreams, the shaky edge of which passes through the soul of every representative of his people. The "Kalevala" by Starkov and Andreeva testifies that the epic continues to live in every moment of today. The runes that Lennroth did not sing are being sung right now.