ÖÖPOEET (2009, Tartu)

I'm always fascinated by how much information we take for granted and don't notice in our everyday life. On the other hand I'm fascinated about power and attractiveness of even small amoout of light in darkness. The street-art installation ÖÖPOEET (Night Poet) deal with both.

The installation took place in the beginning of March when night are still quite long. I made 600 independent lights (LED lamp+battery+magnet) that I attached to metal plates with street names in the center of Tartu. In the daytime pedestrians could see the original name of the street with no problem. At night instead of the street name they saw different words. Words were selected to work together well and make some sense in any pair. So in the night people would see words and put them together depending on which route they choose, always making different pieces of poetry for themselves, just from wall of building that a always there. The words made were: mina – veab – nii – noor – oled – siin – kevad – kohe – on – tuul – kasvab (me – lucky – so – young – are – here – spring – now – is – wind – grows).

Since each lamp has separate battery and magnet, the lamps and thus words could be rearranged by pedestrians or simply taken away to decorate their fidges – making piece some sort of interactive and always unexpected and poetic.

Download press-release (in Estonian)

Press:
Tartu Postimees, 12.03.2009, Raimu Hanson."Kunstnik õhutab sõnu kokku lugema"

Thanks:
ART IST KUKU NUUT

Photos:
Sveta Bogomolova
Madis Katz