by SKATKA Selected by Konstanet for Official Office State of Cloud is ... ... a state that regained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing ... a state that now brands itself as an e-country ... a state of e-elections, mobile parking & ID cards ... a state with free flowing wi-fi everywhere ... a state hosting the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Exellence ... a state with a secret IT army of guys with ponytails ... a state in which everyone tells the mythical stories of how Skype was invented there ... a state in which a Minister resigns because of his Facebook status ... a state whose President addresses a nation and then takes another selfie ... a state whose President @IlvesToomas has a Twitter feud with the economist Paul Krugman, which then gets written into an opera ... a state whose President @IlvesToomas angrily takes on the Guardian after they feature Estonia in their New East segment exploring the former Eastern Europe ... a state in which the events of 1991 – the Singing Revolution – are considered one of the pillars of Estonian national identity ... a state whose people pride themselves in being a ‘singing nation’ ... a state in which the local version of Your Face Sounds Familiar attracts over 300 000 viewers (around a quarter of the country’s population) and features blackface and local celebrities in drag ... a state in which little over a half of the population was against recognising gender neutral cohabitation, which would also recognise same sex unions ... a state in which Estonian emigrés were only recently labelled ‘refugees of comfort’ by a former Minister of Education and Culture ... a state like any other state ... a state like any other state of mind ... a state like any other state of cloud SKATKA is Rainar Aasrand and Mikk Madisson (Estonia).

State of Cloud / SKATKA (with Mikk Madisson)

2014 / HD video, installation

State of Cloud was the first solo exhibition by SKATKA collective in Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia. On one hand the exhibition examined if and how it is still possible to define national sovereignty and selfhood with the implementation of participatory democracy through the means of e-governance. Is the Estonian post-soviet society satisfied with such a system, given that one could question whether the true outcome of elections and casting votes might be simply reduced to one’s right to elect the next winner of Sing Your Face Off? 

On the other hand, the work looked at what it means to live in the cloud in its multiple forms and probed the threats of an age where the system administrator reigns supreme behind the computer. Can the creation of national cloud computational identity, within the framework of e-government and e-democracy, still be the voice of people even if it is simultaneously reinforcing neoliberal economic and political structures of inclusion and exclusion? And finally, how can one be protected in that cloud, which is marketed as having no physical representation, but is still making its users feel vulnerable. 

State of Cloud video has been exhibited as part of Official Office program in digital and physical spaces at Recess, New York; STORE, Berlin and Konstanet, Tallinn.