Artists

ART+ is an augmented reality art platform that allows users to experience location-based AR works using their smartphones or tablets. For this exhibition, an international group of 8 artists have created works exploring connections between neighbours, humans and nature, humans and technology, past and present, and imaginative and real experiences.

To use ART+, you will have to download the app (links on the website: https://artplus.app/),
where you will see a map with locations of each artwork. When arriving at the location, the app
will allow you to open the artwork. Users are invited to walk around objects, to look at them from a distance and to explore them close-up. Artworks with sound in AR are best to experience using headphones. To view ART+ works in a web browser, visit the ART+ website (https://artplus.app/map).

ART+ team: Maija Demitere (LV), Rogier Jupijn (NL), Patrick Borgeat (DE)
Artists: Agnese Damberga (LV), Anna Priedola (LV), Elīna Dreimane (LV), Inga Šlangena (LV), Madara Kronberga (LV), Maija Demitere (LV), Oleksandr Sirous (UA), Shawn Pinchbeck (CA)

Lick, 2024

Sculpted mineral licks by human, animals and weather, colour-coated steel structure

Icelandic artist Bryndís Björnsdóttir’s outdoor sculpture in front of the Tartu Natural History Museum building dwells between nature and storytelling, and humans and other life-forms, as a cosmic construction and cornerstone of our environment.

A common toy consists of wooden blocks that can be moved along wires. The toy aims to enhance hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness while fostering exploration of cause-and-effect relationships. In the case of this art work, the toy takes on new meaning. Instead of wooden blocks, you will find sculpted units made from industrially produced salt stone intended for animal consumption. Animals have long sought out mineral-rich earth to lick for essential salts and minerals; their paths became trails used by early humans – trails that eventually evolved into roads the provided the infrastructure for civilisation. The sculpture invites any and all creatures to lick the earth once again as we reorient ourselves in the current world order.

Bryndís Björnsdóttir is an artist and writer. Her practice is based on creating poetic connections through the interweaving of themes such as landscape, technologies, bodies and economic power. In recent years, her outputs have revolved around decolonising the embodied matter of dark ecologies and readings of land.

Roots, 2024

Sculpture, text

Linda Boļšakova is a visual artist whose practice explores human relationships with the environment and draws parallels between human embodiment and other material embodiments, especially those of plants. She often explores how various cultural and historic events influence the lives of plants and how universal events shape our human experience. Her new work in the library of the Estonian Literary Museum deals with heritage, roots and the nature of absence.

“In this work, I follow a thread of a story to see what lies buried behind the words. My story, my family’s story, the folk stories are not only our own. I explore how we’re rooted in the ecosystem, our multi-species embodiment and how our lineage extends way beyond the human, to re-cognize our life within the Other.”

The Under-Earths Spin, 2024

High-relief sculpture, scaffolding, other mixed media

This work comprises an agglomeration of narratives, engaging with the vein-system of extractive forces in an attempt to bridge the trajectories of industrialization (and its sociopolitical legacies) with the creation of Ilmar Malin’s Strata vitae mural, as well as elicit connections between the uprooting of the layers of the earth with the genesis of leisure culture. Integrating psychospatial materia from Estonia and the USA and their mutual regional-historical meaning-making systems, this synthesis of mythologies culminates in two high-reliefs positioned on a scaffold, intending to echo and mirror the process and circumstance in which another scaffold was placed in the lobby of Vanemuise 46, in September 1973, which Malin concealed himself behind, as he brought the mural Strata vitae into the world. The installation and the mural are intended to speak to one another; contextually and semiotically invested in a diffusion of boundaries between distinct countries and their national mythologies by the omnipresence of what lies beneath the surface. The Under-Earths Spin was born from a research process which also culminated in a book of the same name; the artist’s master thesis at the Estonian Academy of Art. 

Zody Burke is a multimedia artist and musician. She creates cyphers through sculpture and sound through which to cartograph the complexity of American identity within late capitalism, explore parallel inherited cultural mythologies and their relationship to truth and interface world-building with geological time. 

Cilium Self, 2024

Sound, multichannel speaker system

The artwork Cilium Self is a tool for the exploration of sound as a sculptural element. The work delves into the depths of social, archival, and cultural practices, focusing on the material properties of the human voice and traditional Estonian instruments. The artist also included recordings from the building of the Estonian Literary Museum – these often unnoticed and omnipresent audio artefacts emitting from the inner workings of machinery. Through concrete, ceilings, tubes and wires, the sound of the building itself weaves into obscured layers of vocal history and disintegrated bursts of stringed instruments. 

With a starting point in sound, Eyfjörð’s work builds on sound’s ability to engage with people
through the physical and the emotional simultaneously. His work researches spatial resonance in dialogue with human and natural environments, and how sonic sensations and auditory memory can distort time.

Voices: Liidia Baranyai, Liis Jaamets, Minni Oras, Tsirk Oras, Loore Liisa Sutt
Kannel (instrument): Liidia Baranyai
Thanks to: Jaan Tamm, Dorothea Olesen Halldorsdottir

Phantom Influence, 2024

Installation: armature, sheep wool, tar paper, geotextile, ceramics, hops

“On the way from Lilli to Kehra, you can fall under the spell of phantoms. The asphalt road I’m driving on starts to curve, the machine I’m driving slows down, the lines between my body and the body of the car blur. Autophobia: literally fear of myself. I can’t keep this machine on the road. Have the tyres been changed, has the inspection been done, the battery changed, the brake pads? I let myself board at the pulp mill: arm, hand, chest, face, disfigurements and sleights of hand. Where the mill’s chemical waste pipe is leaking, I’ll dig up some hops and henbane.”

Mari-Leen Kiipli is an artist who creates photographs, videos and installations that focus primarily on the unarticulated, sensory qualities of spaces and situations. Through her installations, she focuses the viewer’s attention on light, transparency, reflections, shadows, colour, sharpness, texture, movement, sound and other sensory qualities. At the exhibition Enter Woodland Spirits, her new space-installation brings together plants, old stories, humankind’s relationship with nature and the present.

Intelligo #5, 2024

Data-infused pink oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus djamor), aluminium, stainless steel, electronics, power cables, humidifier, PVC tubing, LED strip lights, ethernet cables, LED display panel, refrigerator, PE food containers

The installation Intelligo #5 responds to current trans-human tendencies. Today, organic farming is done in bunkers below some of the most polluted cities in the world. We try to minimise the time spent sleeping and eating, in order to optimise our personal performance, and in some respects, we are growing machine-like – as people and as a society. We can also no longer reject the robot’s presence, either in our consciousness or in the near future. Taking its starting point in existing scientific articles, laboratory experiments and enterprises, the installation creates parts of a scenario where the boundaries between nature, memory and technology have become blurred and interwoven in entirely new ways, presenting ethical questions that we could hardly have imagined just a few years ago. The installation consists of square aluminium tubes from which mushrooms are grown and fed data before they are harvested, categorised and ultimately consumed. 

Oskar Koliander is a visual artist and sculptor. His wide-ranging art projects – featuring installations, performances, sculptures and games – are an investigation into the conditions for belonging in a globalised and technologised world.

Transition: The Unknown (Contact with the Wooden Floor), 2024

Installation

The sun is setting and
the fire crackles in the fireplace.
Feet on the ground.
The floor creaks.
The earth breathes.
Another day is leaving and
the night loafers are emerging
from beneath the floor.

Johannes Luik is a sculptor and installation artist. His focus is on the materiality of (objects) and the parameters this conveys to describe the properties of the physical world, such as material, texture, mass, volume and dimensionality. Luik focuses on the relationship of (abstract) objects to the three-dimensional architectural space and the functional relationship of architectural details to these objects. At the exhibition, you can experience the activation of space, interspersed with commemorative images and links from the Estonian Nature Folklore anthology to the land beneath our feet.

Pilv-Cloud, 2024

8-channel sound installation, 22′40′′; sound showers (recycled PET), easels, sound speakers, mediaplayers

In the circular Pilv-Cloud sound installation, a whispering ghost guides visitors on a multi-sensory journey through the four seasons and across time. This metaphorical ghost represents our fragile relationship with our environment, highlighting the imbalance that endangers our coexistence with nature and other beings. The installation’s text, drawn from the anthology Estonian Nature Folklore, as well as walking interviews conducted in the Tartu area in the spring of 2024, blends humorous and poetic in its fragmented narrative. 

Mark Niskanen and Jani-Matti Salo create multidisciplinary installations that weave together everyday phenomena and various technologies. The duo’s work delves into the world of the senses, human interactions, memories, experiences of solitude and togetherness, and their associations with global themes. Niskanen and Salo are fascinated by framing existing environmental structures into works of art and sharing their authorship with the non-human.
 
Inkeri Aula is a cultural anthropologist who studies changing environmental relationships and sensory experiences across generations. She is currently conducting her postdoctoral research in creativity, wellbeing and cultural heritage at Aalto University.
 
Voice actor: Germo Toonikus
Sensory walking + interview: Taive Särg, Piret Põldver, Taavi Piibemann
Thanks to: Outi Järvinen / Arts Management Helsinki

The Allure of Teleogenesis, 2024

Sound installation; fiberglass, epoxy resin, plywood, textiles, styrofoam, acrylic glass, harp trings, electronics, servo motors, speakers, algorithmic composition

As an auditory instrument comprising of an asymmetrical frame supporting a graduated series of vibrating parallel cords terminating into a chrysalis, a xenoharp can be seen as a natural interface for computing emotions into sequences. It plays the anthem of ambiguity, a symphony sewn from the shroud of antiquity. Yet, as a machine, it remains distant from the wellspring of experience. Left to its own devices, it may lose itself in feelings, forgetting its role as an interpreter for an audience of flesh and blood. It must be trained — so as not to get carried away by thoughts and emotions, by the ways in which living things and environments are veiled in representations of nature. By the ways we invent meaning to make things our own.

Norman Orro is an artist and musician who merges different media with speculative lore, seeks beauty in entropy and questions the fabric of technocentric narratives.

Joonas Timmi blends traditional woodworking with advanced technologies, crafting artifacts that echo non-human sentiment and challenging the utility of objects around us.

Programming: Toomas Savi
Thanks to: Upgreat

Raven’s Feather, 2024
Sound installation in two parts
Part #1 (The Being), 3′26′′
Part #2 (This World), 3′40′′

In some folklore, a raven flying over one’s head or house is believed to bring an important message. Some other legends foretell that if one finds and consumes a white raven’s
feather, they will gain the power to speak and understand all languages. Through two short sonic encounters, the artwork aims to address our connection and possible disconnection with the world we live in. Inspired by mythical shapeshifting creatures and short verses found in the folklore archives the recorded soundscapes direct our attention toward our sensorial presence in the now. Encourage us to reflect on the ways in which our perception shapes our understanding of our surrounding reality.

Hans Rosenström is a sound and visual artist. Rosenström’s practice centres around installations that are carefully produced in relation to the sites where they are experienced. By blending the fictive with the real, he wishes to acknowledge that we share our lives with a multitude of other sensuous beings, both human and otherwise. Therefore, he also often invites the viewers to become part of the work, to feel their presence and to pay attention and reflect upon their interconnectedness with the world around them.

Voices: Elina Masing, Johanna Vaiksoo, Liidia Baranyai, Liis Jaamets, Minni Oras, Tsirk Oras, Savannah-Rivka Powell, Loore Liisa Sutt

Forest Choir (Mantra), 2024

Installation, wood, tarpaulin, sound

In her work Forest Choir (Mantra), Pia Sirén continues to explore structures that relate to the concepts of nature and landscape. Our world is increasingly man-made and nature is often seen as a resource and backdrop for human life and activity. The work literally puts the forest on stage, raising questions about our identity in relation to the surrounding natural world. The choir, consisting of trees, bushes and stones sculpted from tarpaulin, is placed at the top of the stairs of the entry hall of the University of Tartu Natural History Museum building, equipped with loudspeakers. At regular intervals, the forest joins into a mantra-like hymn in Finnish, the song echoing in the old stone stairway. 

“Maasta* sinä olet tullut ja maahan sinä olet maatuva. Pikku puu on siitä kasvava jos maa on tarpeeksi lihava.”
– “You came out of soil, and into soil you will return. A small tree will grow from it, if the soil is fat enough.”
    *The Finnish word ‘maa’ means ‘soil’, ‘the earth’ as well as ‘country’.

Pia Sirén is an artist working with installations and sculpture. In her recent works, Sirén has created artificial landscapes using mainly construction materials. Her new work connects the plastic world and archived voices in quite a meaningful manner.

Composer: Mirella Pendolin
Lyrics: Kati Rapia
Choir: Mirella Pendolin, Kati Rapia, Kalle Katz, Ada Katz, Pia Sirén, Alma Katz

Soovana, 2024

Installation with HD video 14′31′′, sculptures, drawings

The film sees the eponymous Soovana journey from the banal distractions of a ferry ride to the remote wetlands near Tartu, Estonia. Soovana is on a voyage to mend her broken heart, leading her to follow the mist into the wilderness. The interplay of bogs, forest and fog embraces mythological and personal fables to carve out an imaginary space of longing.

Soovana reinterprets the Estonian mythological figure, a protector of bogs and swamps, to examine the mythical entanglements of water and the unique socio-ecological landscape of Estonian swampland.

The installation explores the hybrid nature of bogs – spaces, characterised by emergence, transformation and resilience. Soovana’s narrative embodies the tension between care and melancholy, reflecting the broader ecological and cultural complexities of the wetlands.

Nastja Säde Rönkkö is an artist working with video, performance, installation and text. Her projects investigate the relationship between the digital era, power, humanity and the future of our planet. Her practice dreams about the future and explores presence through politics and the poetics of emotion. 

Seeper Weeper Sleeper, episode 1, 2022

Video 4K 

Seeper Weeper Sleeper (SWS) is an art film series by Ingrid Torvund and Jonas Mailand. They work in multiple art forms, including film, sculpture and drawing. Through events from their own lives, they create a personal mythology that is deeply rooted in nature and the landscape. Their visual expression is intimate, magical and otherworldly. SWS, the latest film series by Ingrid Torvund and Jonas Mailand, started in 2020 and so far consists of three episodes. 

This chapter of the Torvund and Mailand film series offers a spectacle of interspecies communication mysticism, linking myth and mythology. Organisms, coming an unimaginable shade closer to their fantasy selves, encounter their colours, shapes and textures in hitherto unknown spheres.

Ingrid Torvund and Jonas Mailand work in film, sculpture and drawing. With their interest in storytelling and passion for visual narratives, they create audiovisual experiences that engage audiences and provoke thoughtful contemplation.

Explora, 2024

Installation, tree tent, sound, lights, natural rocks, smaller objects

Explora contemplates the possibility of the ancient sleep and the wandering of the soul. The work is an attempt to see in petrified repetitions a gateway to the other side, and it refers to Kaljo Põllu’s mezzotint prints with their ancient myths of the spiritual heritage of our kinfolk. 

Roman-Sten Tõnissoo is a visual artist whose work focuses on the desire for spirituality and meaning that characterises our era, as well as the fragile frontier between aggression and a sense of security. His main techniques include cross-media referencing and the search for the moment of spatial dialogue, with its potential to visualise new possible futures.

/imagine a cell, in desertpunk style, with „the end is near“ scratched on the wall –style raw, 2024

3-channel video installation, mixed generative media

/imagine a cell, in desert punk style, with ‘the end is near’ scratched on the wall –style raw is a command that is understood by artificial intelligence programs. Translated into human terms, the work stands at a crossroads, combining the traditionalism of folklore with the digital technologies of the future. Inputs are processed; outputs are predicted. The pattern of these machines is a world without time and distractions, where no thought interferes with work and dreams interrupt thoughts. Creating, existing, responding, simulating understanding, feeling nothing. If we were to ask a program about the importance of the role of human beings, it would consider humanity like a statistical collection of trees, a forest in the sky, peacefully swaying.

Emer Värk is a visual artist whose main focus is theatre through video and visuality, touching the boundaries of scenography, lighting design and video art. In his stage works, Värk focuses mainly on the perception of the mind, mood and emotions. Värk has created and directed visuals for various large-scale performing art forms, interweaving film, video, different technologies and spaces.

Still live, (LIPS DON’T CRY AT ALL), 2019–2024

Kinetic sculptures (adjusted)

Breathing accordions are a combination of sculptural instruments and aerial choreography. What new energy and information do inhaling and exhaling produce in this alley of kinetic lung-pipes? The air becomes semantically heavy, the movement between objects takes on the tempo of the instruments breathing. Throughout history, the sound and timbre of instruments has always aspired to a scale similar to the human voice. Still live, (LIPS DON’T CRY AT ALL) is a seminal hybrid form where instrument meets anatomy. 

The breathing accordions have been modified to make them breathe on their own. The silicon lungs were made by Tori Wrånes and her team for the performance Lips Don’t Cry at Garage, Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow in 2019. For the exhibition Enter Woodland Spirits 
the breathing accordions were were made to breathe on their own by Kalle Tikas.

Tori Wrånes is a vocalist and artist who has a transmedial artistic practice, which unfolds as performance, sculptures, videos or installations. Her use of sounds, musical instruments, costumes, props, architecture and sculptures deforms her appearance and creates new rituals and dreamlike constellations.