Made by hand is a video work that is shown on two vertically positioned screens, placed beside each other. Together, they fashion an almost abstract painting. On the screens, a bricked-up stonewall can be seen. The wall is clearly old and it has become overgrown with moss and algae. Moving upwards, the camera follows the stonewall’s course, in a slow and soundless, gliding movement. Along the way, we see the filming individual’s shadow.
What we are looking at is a close-up of a lock on the Kovzha River, which conjoins Lake Onega and the White Sea in Russia. The lock is a part of what is, all in all, a 227 kilometer long canal system, which Stalin, in November 1931, ordered thousands of forced laborers from the Gulag camps, to get built in only 20 months time. It was all made by manual labor, as a propaganda showcase for the Soviet state’s know-how. It has been estimated that as many as 50,000 people died during the process of construction.
The camera has been standing on the ship’s deck and has been filming the lock’s wall as the ship rose. Subsequently, the recording has been dispersed across two screens in such a way that no one of the constellations is ever repeated. The stonework, the lock, has been “made by hand”. The rustic beauty that is held in focus seems to be an aesthetically contemplative image. But behind the beauty, there’s a story about human suffering that is concealed.
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Photo: Torben Petersen -
Photo: Morten Jacobsen