Baltic Encounters

Tartu, City Center, August 2016

My bachelor project was on soldiers, the young woman who works at my Tallinn hotel says. A visual project, she adds. Can I see it? She shows me her photographs on the hotel computer and elaborates: There are twelve ways human beings react to problems and show emotions. They might respond with, say, curiosity, sorrow or confidence. So I modelled ceramic figures expressing these twelve different emotions. Then I took photographs of the small figures and enlarged them. These large size pictures I plan to hang on a museum wall. And, I will place the small ceramic figures next to the photographs. I want to make it clear that the photographs are not the reality but that the ceramic figures are.

Brilliant, I say and she beams with pleasure but why do you call it soldiers? Because the media condition us to behave like soldiers.

Tartu, City Center, August 2016

Going by bus is terrible in Estonia, no space not even to stand, says a German student in a coffee shop in Tartu. You haven't been to Istanbul, smiles her Turkish colleague.

My own bus rides were pleasent but I was told that they definitely will be different once school starts.

Tartu, City Center, August 2016

She never felt at ease when on a plane, says my fellow passenger on my flight from Riga to Zurich, but then she decided to go parachuting. She jumped together with her instructor. She wouldn't do it again, she says, but since then she is not any more afraid of flying ...