T + П, 2019

This project was her thesis work at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2019. The project consists of two movies: “Т” and “П”, with Liina Siib as the supervisor. This work speaks on the topic of the body and how people interact with it. Emilia started this work after a conversation with her ballet teacher, who said that in her opinion, people nowadays often behave and live their lives almost separately from their bodies. She was fascinated by it, so I decided to survey this by interviewing people closest to her. She recorded three interviews in which the topic of bodies, the perception of bodies, the relationship between the body and the consciousness were discussed. She ended up turning two of these interviews into movies by cropping the recorded interview in 6-minute dialogues and using that as the sound. On the visual side, in both movies she acts as the interviewees, using two of my characters to portray these people. “Т” character is Eric Okayanny, while “П” has Danko Okayanny. Both of these characters have an attitude of their own, which mixes interestingly with the words of the interviewees, sometimes even disagreeing with them. The titles of the movies come from the first letters of interviewees’ names since they wished to remain anonymous. An important aspect of the movies is that they were made with the help of the interviewees themselves (camerawork). These movies were also studies of our relationships: it appears in the gentle arguing tones in the interview and the constant collaboration during the filming and editing processes. It was a playful examination of how we perceive others and ourselves.