Birdman

5th. Nordic and Baltic Architecture Triennale in Tallinn Art Hall

Tallinn, Estonia
Autumn 2002
Coauthor: Mihkel Tüür

On a sweltering summer day, Mihkel, my ex-wife Hilkka, and I embarked on an unusual artistic endeavour along the rugged Paldiski coastline. We climbed beneath the cliffs to a peculiar rock jutting out of the sea—a strange, wind-swept pedestal just waiting for something mythic. Armed with 10 litres of potato starch paste, 7 or 8 old feather pillows, and a dab of orange gouache, we began our transformation ritual.
Mihkel stood bravely as we covered him head to toe in paste and feathers. Hilkka darted in and out of frame, adding paste here, fixing a bare patch there, launching handfuls of feathers like snow. From the beach, the occasional passerby watched in baffled silence. We must have looked entirely unhinged.
I crawled through the surf with my camera, carefully protecting the borrowed lens from any contact with the salty water, trying to capture the moment Mihkel ceased to be a man and started becoming something… stranger.
Birdman landed on a remote island in the middle of the sea. He laid a cluster of eggs and then took human form after a careful wash. Since then, we’ve been best friends and work together as architects.
The photos are what’s left of that transformation. Proof, perhaps, that the line between bird and man—between myth and summer heat—isn’t so clear after all.