📯Masha Pryven returned to Narva with her second collaborative project with local young people. Over a month, young participants engaged in a series of intensive exchanges, leading up to a final participatory action where they engaged passers-by at the EU border in dialogue.
📯During this period, participants discussed and reflected on the institutional violence ingrained in passports that define individuals and assign identities. They thought about things that are, so to speak, “forbidden” to think about. The government has already decided who you are and confirmed that in a passport. To question this, the participants created their own passports.
📯At the NART residency, we established a lab-like environment where over 20 unique passports were produced. More than 20 people contributed to this project, including a core group of 7 dedicated participants: Veronika Kolobušina, Alisa Lisienko, Charlotte Barch, Reinhold Oster, Faina Golubtsova, Polina Kogut, and Gleb Papko.
📯Throughout this intense period, participants not only created their own passports but also planned a participatory action at the Estonian-Russian border. They engaged in dialogue with people crossing the border to or from Russia, asking them: “Would you agree that a human being is an individual who must think, reflect, and challenge injustice?” As a gift, respondents received a “Passport of a Human.”
📯This project was realized in cooperation with the Goethe Institute and the Narva Art Residency.
Photos: Jelizaveta Gross
