A trip to Tartu

This morning I got picked up by John to drive into the city of Tartu. John is American, from up state New York & Austin, Texas but was a bit of a rambling man through eastern Europe finally settling down here in the backwoods of Estonia. We talked about how cities change when progress takes over & how he can barely navigate his way to his own parents house in Austin because of all the new highways that have popped up. The inspiration for MoKS was to create an alternative to the more stratified art world that exists here in Estonia. Apparently many of the art schools have tenured teachers locked in from the soviet times that have not bothered to catch themselves up to more contemporary art practices- New genres would mean nothing to them, accept for maybe advertising. Apparently the state sponsors many of the Estonian artists & galleries and they are also the ones investing in the Estonian art market, so it all seems a little inbred & rather limited for the new generation of artists that are growing more & more frustrated with the gap that lies between them and their "creative" predecessors. We also talked about the idea of isolation and how it was relative. John & Evelyn just got back from doing an artist residency in Portugal in an even more remote setting than MoKS, in a village that didn't even have a community store. And I could not help but to think of Marcel, my brother, & his six months in L.O.P (loss of privileges) or solitary confinement shortly after he arrived in prison. I think if I find this situation isolating, spending but a month at moKS with the possibility to take long walks in the countryside & to hop on the local bus to Tartu- then what endurance and strong will it would take to spend six months in a 7ft x 11ft cell with no windows?

In Tartu I gathered all of the materials that I needed. I went to the open market by the river & took advantage of the opportunity to buy fresh fruits and vegetables- including rhubarb! I went on a wild goose chase to find a new camera battery charger-, which was doomed obsolete, as my camera was from the last season of digi cams. In the end they said they could order me one and it would get here by Friday. So soon I will be able to post pictures that actually correspond with my blog. Warning: don't forget while traveling in Europe that their electric sockets have twice the voltage! (That is how I killed my "universal charger"- which I guess referred to the variety of batteries it could charge and not to where you could plug it in.

I got to visit the art store, the fabric store, the home "improvement" store- (which I guess is a new & popular addition, as people are gung-ho to fix up their soviet block houses- which were often made of lower quality materials) as well as a large shopping center, which was wallmartesque in its "we carry it all" format. I used a shopping cart to pile up on 40 bars of soviet soap- some carving utensils, and some bags of whole grains (which I was told by Evelyn & John were brands that were very nostalgic of the soviet era) We all kind of chuckled at the ridiculousness of my shopping cart & laughed about how next time I would have to stock up on sugar and matches. I guess when times were tough those were the things that people would buy lots of, because they would last- soap, sugar, matches.... what more do you need?

It was a busy day. I also got to go to the Y gallery, where I will be having an exhibition from May 27 through June 7. The gallery is connected to the university of Tartu, and is situated in the basement. It has windows though and vaulted ceilings. The floors are white brick, which are also associated with the soviet times. The gallery has five rooms for me to occupy with my work- so I had best get busy- or put those Mooste students to work!
Estonian word of the day: "Tanan" meaning Thankyou.