Jaan Toomik’s video installation Father and Son (1998) starts with a long shot showing the frozen Baltic Sea. The viewer’s standpoint is on the ice, in the middle of this frozen wasteland. Way in the distance, on the horizon, one sees the wooden coastline. From this direction, a single human figure slowly comes closer. It is Toomik himself, who is skating naked towards the viewer. When he is practically in the foreground, he skates a few circles, struggling against the cold, and then disappears again in the distance. The sequence is under laid with a pure, clear voice singing a medieval French hymn. It seems, only the voice breaks through and transcends the earthly world. It appears to come directly from heaven, thus combining heaven and earth.
The title Father and Son can be interpreted in many ways. The father can be seen as a metaphor for a transcendent, godly dimension, while the son, then, is the artist himself. It gains further complexity if we know that it is Toomik’s own son who sings the medieval hymn.
