Timeshift. The initiation ceremonies of the Udmurt 1993/2017 | Eesti rahva muuseum
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HomeExhibitionRändnäitusedTimeshift. The initiation ceremonies of the Udmurt 1993/2017

Timeshift. The initiation ceremonies of the Udmurt 1993/2017

Time flies, all changes… But how quickly are the world, our customs and habits actually changing around us?

This exhibition gives us the opportunity to move through time thanks to the camera lens, which recorded the initiation rituals of Udmurt boys and girls. This kind of ritual is not often found in Europe, and it has been preserved only in one place even by the Udmurt, in Tatarstan, in the Udmurt village of Varkled Bodya (Agryz district). This tradition has been uninterrupted remaining intact even during the Soviet period, and it is very much alive today. This exhibition presents some moments of these initiation rituals recorded in April 1993 and 2017. The authors of both photos and videos are two research groups working independently, using the recording technique of the period: a film camera in 1993, and a digital camera in 2017. Made by different authors, approximately one quarter of a century separates photographs and video recordings. Nevertheless, we find in them many recurring themes. It is interesting to observe that in the two rituals, the camera has recorded two generations, with the children of those initiated in 1993 participating in 2017.
 
Curators: Nikolai Anisimov (Estonian Literary Museum), Svetlana Karm, Arp Karm (Estonian National Museum), Eva Toulouze (University of Tartu/INALCO, Paris)
Design: Jane Liiv (Estonian National Museum)
Photos: Arp Karm 1993; Eva Toulouze, Nikolai Anisimov 2017
Video: Aado Lintrop 1993 (the Literary Museum’s Estonian Folklore Archives), Nikolai Anisimov 2017
Editing: Nikolai Anisimov, Svetlana Karm, Maido Selgmäe 2017 (Estonian National Museum)
Idea and project: Svetlana Karm
 
The exhibition has been achieved in cooperation between the Estonian National Museum and the Udmurt Kuzebai Gerd National Museum (Izhevsk, Russia), using Estonian National museum (1993 video) and Udmurt National Museum (1993 photo) materials and private collections (2017 photo and video).
With the support of the Estonian Education and research ministry’s Kindred Peoples Programme