Field of Blood

”Field of Blood” sheds light on the culture of silence in the spirit of reconciliation. The performance ”Field of Blood” was held in Kouvola, in the exact area where the famous Finnish Civil War massacres took place in the spring of 1918. First, the executioners were the socialist Red Guard, killing more than one hundred conservative ”whites” on the ”blood fields” of Kouvola. Next, dozens of Reds Guards were executed and put in the same graves. Kouvola is considered one the centres of the most severe Red terror during the Finnish Civil War. The performance ”Field of Blood” is based on the documentations of the historical events in Kouvola as well as on memories and folklore of the local people. The performance belongs to a larger continuum of Salmi’s art works on the Finnish Civil War and is based on her doctoral dissertation on artistic research (Fellman’s Field, 2013). It is also a story of the family of Kari Harju, one of the 300 participants of the performance. He wanted to dig a grave on the clay field to reconciliation the trauma in his family.