Author: Ott Kattel

Becca Green is a performance artist from Los Angeles, based in Tallinn. A graduate of Estonian Music and Theatre Academy’s CPPM (Contemporary Physical Performance Making) master’s program, she works at the intersection of dance, physical theatre, and performance art currently researching verbatim text, photography, and whether intimacy can be mechanically reproduced.

Kirte Jõesaar is an Estonian performer and choreographer who met Becca during their shared studies at CPPM. Rooted in dance and contemporary performance, she collaborates with Becca on research-led work that exchanges personal histories between bodies and voices. 

Daria Luchinina is a sound artist whose sonic landscapes thread through the project. 

The following interview was conducted with Becca and Kirte during their residency in April 2026.

What are the themes you’re currently researching?

Obsession, infatuation, love, and the feminine nature of those altered states. What happens in your body when you’re in love, or when you have a crush? How does that relate to femininity and to communing with other women? The work draws on personal journals and explores what happens when very intimate, private texts are transferred onto another body or another voice.

How does that exchange work in practice and how does it feel to have someone else speak something that was only ever meant for you?

We brought our own private journals, writings from teenage years, never intended to be shared and began reading them aloud, to each other and as each other. What struck us was hearing something and thinking: I wrote almost the exact same sentence. There is a physical intensity to it; the fear of someone else speaking your most intimate words out loud, but also a kind of pleasure, even relief. Something so deeply personal turns out to be universal. Can you falsify intimacy in a way that it becomes real? That is the question we keep returning to.

We also collected photos from people. Images with an ex-partner that still hold something, a feeling or a memory. We then recreate those photos as precisely as possible: same angle, same expression, same composition. The process itself is very mechanical. Holding a pose, laborious and deliberate, yet the result carries a surprisingly similar emotional charge to the original. You look at the photo and begin imagining what they were saying, what they were thinking. You see a spark in their eyes and try to find that same spark in yourself. Can a reproduction hold the same emotional quality as the original, or does it create something else entirely, something uncanny? We don’t know yet. That is exactly where the research lives.

How does sound fit into the work?

We’ve been collecting songs from people. Breakup songs, the album someone played when falling in love, a mixtape made for an ex. Objects that hold memory inside them. Daria is working with these materials to build a soundscape that responds to the same ideas. On the 30th it will all come together: movement, text, and sound.

What has this residency offered you?

Time. In daily life there is always pressure to produce, to progress. Here, a concept gets space to breathe and grow on its own without urgency. We’ve been swimming in the topic: talking, gossiping, making connections, slowly discovering which specific directions we actually want to follow. Time is the biggest gift you can give a creative process. And it’s not so different from a relationship, really. Time is what everything needs.

On April 30th at, starting 20.00, we celebrate the opening of the summer season at Copper Leg.

Artists Becca Green, Kirte Jõesaar and Daria Luchinina will perform pieces created during their residency.

We will also be joined by our former resident and acclaimed sound artist Lauri Lest. Lauri’s primary tools are found objects, vibration speakers, lights, and audio and video processing software. His work is characterised by melancholy, states of being, and experimentalism.

And in true Walpurgis Night spirit – we’re lighting a bonfire! 

Millie Player is an artist living and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her practice drawsher to leftovers, sometimes food, but also whatsapp archives, sentiments, or what other people write down. The act of disappearing interests her, or perhaps making things last.Their work tends to sit in between spaces of drawing, photography and installation.They think a lot about phones, light and types of paper.

She has participated in numerous group exhibitions across the UK and was a memberof the 2023-24 Collective Studio co-hort at the Newbridge Project. Upon graduating,their work was purchased by Edinburgh University’s Centre for Research Collectionsand she was awarded a study scholarship by the Universität der Künste.

 

Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.
I was born in London and moved to Edinburgh to study at an art school, where I’ve livedfor about 8 years now. I run a space called Embassy Gallery – an artist-run organisationthat’s been going for over 20 years. We put on exhibitions, events, and workshops tosupport early career artists. Everyone who works there is an artist themselves, whichmakes it quite a unique place. It has a lot of DIY roots, but it’s grown into somethingmore established over the years. Alongside that, I have my own practice, workingmainly with photography, drawing, and film.

 

What kind of ideas do you explore in your work?
A big topic for me is memory and how we preserve traces of a person. A lot of my workcenters around my grandmother. She lives far away, so our relationship is mostly builtthrough distance. She texts me constantly and sends photos through WhatsApp, whichautomatically saves images on my phone. At first, I thought it was strange to have allthese images I didn’t take and had no context for, but they became really important tome because they are so her – and honestly, they’re often very funny. There’s somethingtouching about watching an older person navigate technology in their own way. So Itake those images and reproduce them. Sometimes through contact printing, where Iliterally lay the phone face-down on photopaper and let it leave a mark or trace. Othertimes I make drawings from them, picking out the parts that feel meaningful.Photography feels very instant, but drawing takes time, so it becomes a way of reallysitting with an image rather than just scrolling past it. I also have negatives and printsmade by her late brother, who passed away when I was young and who was just gettinginto photography. Some only exist as negatives and some only as prints. I’ve beenthinking about what it means to reprint and preserve those – trying to piece togetherwho he was and what mattered to him through what he chose to photograph.

 

Have your surroundings here influenced your work?
It’s hard to ignore where you are when you’re making work. I found a handwritingpractice sheet under a cracked frame in the main room, which immediately caught myattention. I’ve always been fascinated by how the structure of language gets embeddedin you as a child. It shapes how you think and communicate for the rest of your life. I’vebeen experimenting with printing those letters onto Post-it notes and leaving them out inthe sun. Cheap Post-it paper has poor ink quality, so the color gradually bleeds awayover time, which works in a similar way to how photographs fade. I also foundenvelopes full of old folk riddles, some dating back to the 18th or 19th century. Readingthrough them and seeing how completely stumped my friends were by them made methink about how much knowledge and humour is tied to a specific culture and time.Something that was once common sense becomes a mystery from the outside. Andthen there was a soviet agriculture magazine filled with black-and-white photographs ofcows that are oddly surreal.

 

What will you be showing at the end of your residency?
A mix of photographs, drawings, and some installation-based work that respondsdirectly to the space itself and the materials I’ve found and worked with since beinghere. It’s been a very research-driven time, and I hope the exhibition reflects that.

Exhibition photos by Ott Kattel

In the beginning of February, Ukrainian land-art artists Marharyta Zhurunova and Bohdan Lokatyr arrived in Copper Leg residency, taking part in the project for Ukrainian creative professionals. Project is organised by LOORE network and funded by Nordic Culture Point.

Their work will be presented on March 21^st together with Ruta and Ruslan Trochynskyi’s concert and fine Ukrainian cuisine.

Could you briefly introduce yourselves and explain what you do together? 

I’m Marharyta Zhurunova and my partner is Bohdan Lokatyr. We are from Ukraine and we create land‑art and site-specific installations that interact with the environment. 

How did you start working together? 

I grew up in Vinnytsia city, where every winter a land-art festival called MITHOGENESIS took place. I used to be there as a viewer or a volunteer. Bohdan and I studied together at the Academy of Printing, in the same course. During our second year, over winter holidays, I invited him to try participating in MITHOGENESIS as an artist. We liked it, everyone liked our work, and that experience launched our collaboration in 2015. 

When you create a piece together, do you have fixed roles, or do you just do what’s needed? 

Usually, we talk a lot and discuss ideas. Our conversations eventually spark concepts, so it’s hard to say who originated a particular idea. It’s nice that we are partners, because our ideas often start with simple chats. 

Also, I usually document the process with photos and video, while Bohdan handles most of the engineering, which he has a talent for, and together we create the works. 

Does the landscape of a new location inspire you? 

Yes. We rarely plan a project in advance. The  terrain, weather, and light usually decide what will happen. New site is especially exciting because it opens up many new possibilities for us. 

Does your home country influence your work? 

Absolutely. Since the full-scale invasion, almost all of our projects relate in some way to what we have experienced in Ukraine and how it affects both the landscape and ourselves. Even when we try to step away from it, Ukrainian identity is always present and continues to shape our practice 

How has the war affected the art scene in Ukraine? 

Despite enormous difficulties, the Ukrainian art community remains active and resilient. New art spaces, events, and programs keep emerging across the country, and Ukrainian artists are increasingly active both abroad and at home. It feels like our responsibility. The pressure of war has, in many ways, intensified our creative drive – Ukrainian art is still growing. 

What are your future plans, both artistically and personally? 

We live in very precarious times, so plans tend to be fragmented. We have an upcoming residency at Indiana University in the United States and hope to realize a large installation in Kempele, Finland, this August. Bohdan is also completing his PhD this year. After that – well, we’ll see what comes next. 

Is there anything you’d like to add to conclude our interview? 

The light here is extraordinary – very different from anywhere we’ve worked before. We’re excited to create installations that respond to this quality, especially in dialogue with the snow. We hope people enjoy the work and the unique atmosphere of this place. 

Interview and photos by Ott Kattel

See you in Copper Leg!