Mara Ravins

 FATHER/LAND

Performed by Mara Ravins at the Great Hall, 1087 Queen St. West, February 28, 1986 and at the Boston Latvian Community Centre.

FATHER/LAND is a performance exploring my ethnic roots. The soundtrack incorporates industrial sounds, water sounds and distorted Latvian folk music and text.

Two thousand pounds of sand sits in the centre of a space, shaped in a heart. The sand is filled with pink painted, rusted barbed wire, pieces of train tracks and half buried ethnic Latvian personal childhood objects, such as a doll in national costume, amber jewelry etc, a Latvian ABC’s book.

To backward choir music, a woman dressed in a long white tunic enters. She carries a candle. She lights the candles all around the heart shape. She removes her dress revealing a torn, black lace slip with barbed wire wrapped tightly around her torso and legs. She washes her dress in muddy water. As the dress dries on the line, a text appears “How easy to remember, how easy to forget”. In the Boston performance the text read “Rugti noslepumi/ Taisniba” which translates into “Bitter secrets/Justice”. She proceeds to do a distorted dance evading a spotlight that tries to pin her down. She walks through the sand, barbed wire cutting her bare legs. She picks up objects and carefully wraps them in a bundle using the dress she has taken down from the line. She buries the bundle creating a great mound of sand. She takes off her barbed wire and lays it on top of the mound. She exits.