Maakaari

Maakaari (“Land Arc”, the Finnish name for a law governing land ownership dating back to the 14th century) is a performative video work in which a male figure throws a sledgehammer in fields and forests.

As part of my exhibition Cats and Empire, I reflect on fairness and comparability. How can we define and measure what is fair to each? While exploring the history of land ownership, I came across the concept of hamarjako (hammarskifte), which has sometimes been interpreted as a method of measuring land based on how far one could throw a hammer or an axe. The historical validity of this interpretation is uncertain, and it probably owes more to a national-romantic reading of history than to actual historical practice. Nevertheless, I found the idea fascinating.

So I ended up throwing a sledgehammer into my neighbour’s field. But this way of deciding how much living space each of us should have seems unfair: our abilities and strengths vary. Then again, my neighbour owns several hundred times as much land as I do. Perhaps he wouldn’t be quite that much better at throwing.