Published on 23.05.2025
Laura Martens is a graphic designer from Belgium currently based in Tallinn, where she is following the MA programme in Graphic Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has an MA in Graphic Design from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent (KASK) and an MA in Urbanism and Spatial Planning from Ghent University. Currently, her work focuses on the potential lasting effects of ephemeral publishing, and ways to understand and move through urban spaces.
There are two maps that strongly impacted and affected my initial movement through and impressions of Tallinn; its public transportation map, and the map that was made for its contemporary art biennial, Tallinn Photomonth, in 2019. The first map is on view in every bus stop in Tallinn. The other map covers the middle spread of the programmation leaflet that was published in the weeks before the biennial began.
Although my first encounters with these maps date back to September 2019, they came into focus again during two conversations last year. In May 2024, I met with Kristi Rummel-Kottisse, who is part of the Tallinn based graphic design studio Disainiosakond that is responsible for the visual identity of the Tallinn Public Transport Network. An analysis of the transportation map became the framework for our conversation. Similarly, the centrefold map of the programmation leaflet for Tallinn Photomonth 2019 functioned as an outline for a conversation with one of its designers Ott Kagovere in September 2024 at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
In addition, the reality of not having an accompanying map for the 9th Artishok Biennial, was the starting point for a meeting in March with Brigit Arop, one of its curators.
City maps, whether connected to a provided public service or a temporary event, have a specific focus and are designed accordingly. I tend to use these kinds of maps in an interchangeable manner, and this text is written in a similar way. It serves as a platform where conversations and thoughts on three different maps, of which one is non-existent, are laid on top of one another. Assuming that regardless of their difference in focus and form, they can overlap in a telling way.
1
Encounter
1.1
Laura – More often than not, a graphic designer gets thrown into a project that, content wise, lies outside their field of expertise. Consequently, a graphic designer has to dive into unfamiliar content each time they start working on a new project. How was this dive for you? How did you make sense of the Public Transport Network of Tallinn as the graphic designer involved in the project?
Kristi – For me, this dive started in a course in my third bachelor year [in the graphic design department at the Estonian Academy of Arts]. The assignment was to find something in the public space that needed fixing, and to offer possible solutions. In a group of four, we focused on public transport. Back then, the public transport system was still very cluttered and fragmented. There was a huge mixture of identities that was very complex for the user to understand. But somehow, we saw the potential. First, we thought about the signage inside the vehicles, because that was the place where the people encountered this cluttering of visual identities the most. We analysed the language that was used, and discovered it needed ‘humanification’. We then also took on the challenge of removing the visual clutter.1
What initially started as a student project, eventually evolved into the current visual identity of Tallinn’s Public Transport Network. As a visual layer it transfers onto different structures; from a website and an online route planner, to the bus stops and the vehicles themselves. The trams and buses might vary in shape, the added band of colour coded stripes makes them become part of a visual whole that drifts through the city – a network that ties places, people and destinations together.
When I first came to Tallinn in 2019, a tram took me from the airport to the city centre. On that tram, I gained my initial impressions of the city. Later, I started to use the tramlines as an orientation tool and, gradually, they turned into a guide that directed my movement through the city. From the beginning, I thought of Tallinn’s tramlines as having an octopus-like shape when viewed on a map. The lines drape themself around the old town and, as tentacles, they stretch outward, encouraging me to travel in every direction that they reach.
1.2
Laura – As someone who had just arrived in Tallinn, I was lucky that its contemporary art biennial, Tallinn Photomonth 2019, was spread out across the city. The accompanying leaflet with the map as a centrefold became my city guide. I noticed how in each main location a new leaflet could be collected. Each time, it was one centimetre wider than its predecessor, and began with the page number where the other had left off. So, in the end I could place the leaflets as unbound signatures on top of each other and they formed a whole. What was the main reasoning behind this? And, in general, how did the visual identity of Tallinn Photomonth 2019 come about?
Ott – I would first like to come back to something you said earlier on. About this leaflet becoming a guide to the city. I think this is an interesting thought. It connects somehow to the Situationists, and their alternative city maps. If you just look at these dots (points on the map in the centrefold of the leaflet), and forget about the city-layer, then they actually provide you with a route that you would otherwise not take.2
The Situationists considered walking the city to be “a dialogue, a discourse, or a form of speech,” in which the “streets are meant to be read, and to drift is to study.”3 In a dérive, translated literally as drifting, “chance is a less important factor [...] than one might think.”4 Instead the Situationists’ advice was to allow yourself to “be drawn by the attractions of the terrain.”5
In hindsight, I might have considered the dots on the Tallinn Photomonth map to be ‘attractions’, more than destinations or exhibition locations. They invited me to move around the city and allowed me to wander along the way.
1.3
Laura – The 9th Artishok Biennial lands in different locations in Tallinn, but doesn’t provide an accompanying map. It does have a siesta, and a spreading of artwork openings as new elements. How did these concepts fall into place?
Brigit – For this year’s Artishok Biennial, we [Brigit Arop and Margit Säde] have been trying to critically rethink the format that was given to us. The only thing that we had to keep was the ten-times-ten-format. So, ten artists, ten writers, ten openings, a hundred texts. However, looking back at the history of Artishok, and also considering the current situation, it is absurd to curate something with ten new artworks, and to have twenty people involved as creatives, and to also have a complete team, and multiple openings. It doesn’t make sense resource wise; not just in terms of funding, but also in terms of energy and time – having no institutional support it is hard to meet such demands and also have enough mental and emotional capacity to support everyone according to their needs. So, our approach from the beginning was to adapt the format to our own needs. Since there is so much new production involved, we decided to work with only locally based artists and writers, or ones who come here often. We were also trying to be mindful of the other resources we had, and that is partly the reason why we don’t have a map. By the time we got to the question “should we have a map?”, we realised that this biennial was aimed at a local audience. So it was more important to have a clearly communicated schedule than to provide an accompanying map.
Laura – And when did you and Margit decide to organise this year’s Artishok Biennial in different locations?
Brigit – Artishok gives you the opportunity to work in a context where you normally don’t exhibit. From the beginning, we wanted to work with the urban and public space. So, we decided to not have a central location, and instead give the artists some free will in choosing a location themselves. Artishok is anyway a strange format. It is mostly known by the art community. And people outside this community might not know about it at all. But when the biennial appears all over the city, there is a chance that a new audience can stumble upon it.6
By choosing the city as a platform, it simultaneously chooses the people that move through it as its audience. With this, a communication diagram by Ursula K. Le Guin comes to mind. In the essay Telling Is Listening she visualises printed public writing, like magazines or newspapers, as “a box A shooting information out into a putative spacetime that may or may not contain many box Bs to receive it – maybe nobody – possibly an Audience of Millions”.7
To some extent, the artworks in the 9th Artishok Biennial can be considered as box As. The stumbling audience, box Bs, is mostly undefined, and the uncontrolled exposure of the artworks carries the risk of being misunderstood, ignored, or not noticed at all. At the same time, it holds the possibility of talking to an audience that otherwise might not be reached. It is a talking-as-a-leap-in-the-dark way of communicating; the transmission “is one-way; its mutuality is merely virtual or hopeful”.8
2
Use
2.1
Kristi – Since the transport map that is being used right now is rather overwhelming, we [the studio members of Disainiosakond] have initiated and developed a Tallinn Transit Schematic map ourselves. Tallinn has a lot of public transportation routes. Or at least, in comparison to its square metres. This makes it complicated to develop a map that is legible. Until today, the not so very readable geographical maps are put on view in the bus stops. But now we also have this prototype project of the schematic map. It is still in its testing phase. And if it turns out that it works, we could also continue to develop something in between; a hybrid version. A schematic map that somehow translates and keeps the feeling of physical surroundings as well.9
The Tallinn Transit Schematic map makes me mournful and excited at the same time. Mournful, because the geographical map I have grown so fond of has lost its eternal aura. Excited, because the schematic map looks a lot like an abstract visualisation of a roundabout – similar to how I mentally already perceive my movement through Tallinn.
Historically, the London Underground map was “the first underground transport diagram to abandon geographic accuracy in favour of legibility.”10 In 1931, a series of graphic rules entered the visualisation of the London Underground lines; the central line had to be the horizontal axis on which the other lines were anchored in either 90-degree or 45-degree angles, and – maybe even more striking – the distances between stops became deformed, while the system of connections was preserved.11 Through this deformation, something else was visualised that is ignored on geographical maps: ‘positionality’.
The image of a wormhole, as described by Eric Sheppard, is useful when imagining the effect that (public) transport lines can have. “When two relatively isolated places become closely connected, meaning that their positionality becomes closely interrelated, then a wormhole opens between them.”12 This wormhole represents a discontinuity in “wrapped space/time”, a portal “through which it is possible to travel.”13 And although the metaphor of a wormhole might be an exaggeration for the workings of public transport lines, they somehow do feel like portals, connecting otherwise distant places. And, in turn, they also widen the distance between places that the lines don’t reach.
2.2
Ott – The design [of Tallinn Photomonth 2019] is actually not that poetic. It emerged out of practical considerations. First of all, there was no money to make a huge catalogue. And also, the texts were not ready at the same time. So, basically, we [Jaan Evart and Ott Kagovere] made the first leaflet for the beginning of the Tallinn Photomonth, and the subsequent leaflet right before the exhibition in that location would start, and so on. All of the leaflets were published at a different time, and we also wanted to make them look different because the exhibitions were very different as well. But, of course, there had to be some kind of connection. The format and also the running page numbering system brought them all together. So that if there were people like you who would collect them, a kind of catalogue could be compiled.14
The Tallinn Photomonth leaflets are examples of what artist and critical theorist Joseph Grigely defines as ‘exhibition prosthetics’. This term covers the wide range of ephemera that are being produced in the context of an exhibition. These ephemera are to an exhibition, what a prosthetic is to a body. “A prosthesis remediates – it fills, it extends, it supplements. But it does not do this without also becoming a part of, not apart from, the body that it fills, extends, and supplements.”15 In order to grasp the possible afterlife of these exhibition prosthetics, Grigely turns to the etymology of the word ephemera. “The word derives from the Greek ephemeron meaning that which lasts very briefly. One could argue that ephemera consists of the incarnation of the ephemeral – it is the sort of unexceptional everyday stuff that typically gets thrown away. Yet, while exhibitions themselves are temporal […] it is the ephemera that outlive and outlast the exhibition.”16
Since the Tallinn Photomonth leaflets were designed as announcements, exhibition guides and catalogue-signatures all at once, they somehow cover the whole range of possible ephemera afterlives. From the kind of ephemera that typically gets thrown away, to, on the other hand, the kind of ephemera that outlives and outlasts. The Tallinn Photomonth 2019 catalogue on my bookshelf belongs to the latter.
2.3
Laura – Even though there is no map, the act of navigating became unavoidably intertwined with this year’s Artishok Biennial; one has to move towards or visit the different locations in order to see all the artworks. Eventually, one might start to draw a mental map of the biennial along the way. And start to use other existing maps and navigation tools, like Google Maps, to get around.
Brigit – Yes, exactly. When I am abroad and I need to get around, I am always using Google Maps. Even locals use Google Maps all the time. Unfortunately, we have become so dependent on Google Maps that basic navigating becomes dependent on something, which wasn’t a thing before.17
Apparently, a non-existent map is needed to direct my attention to the map that I am using the most. Google Maps was my guiding companion when going to some of the artwork openings of the Artishok Biennial. And even some artists themselves, like Ulvi Haagensen, used an annotated Google Maps visual to announce her artwork opening.
The absence of an accompanying exhibition map might have stirred the use of an already existing map. Still, even when an accompanying map is provided, other maps seep in anyway. As a public transport user, I use Google Maps all the time. And as a visitor to the Tallinn Photomonth 2019, I used Google Maps in the same way as I did during the 9th Artishok Biennial. It assisted me in getting around, and guided my movement through the city. So, what is it that maps that accompany events or services might provide in addition to or differently than the already existing maps? Are they, apart from offering a customised legibility and focus, worthy of my fascination?
3
Afterlife
3.1
Laura – What about the idea of considering a public transport vehicle as a place for gathering. To see it not solely as something that takes you places, but is a place in itself as well. Do you sometimes consciously use public transport as a place?
Kristi – I sometimes use the public transport to tour around with my kids, because it helps them to sense the city better. It is a way to get to know new areas and, afterwards, recognise them as well.18
Journalist and writer Guinevere Claeys once shared in a newspaper column how she somehow had ended up working and living in a way that she had to be ‘on the way’ almost constantly. Fortunately, being ‘on the way’ is her favourite place to be.19 Considering going to places as a place in itself, is a pleasant accompanying thought when being in transit, and consuming the view – pretending it is the landscape that is moving, and it is not the vehicle passing through.
The public transport lines on the Tallinn Transportation map remind me of the areas I cross daily, and of the places I am able to access with ease. The lines provide a reading of the city I have been moving through. And since my first days in Tallinn, they have remained the framework on which I base my understanding of the city’s structure.
3.2
Laura – Do you think that a graphic designer has a responsibility to guide when designing for an event like Tallinn Photomonth? More specifically, the responsibility to guide a visitor that is new to the city, or to guide a local person who hasn’t been to certain locations before.
Ott – Yes, I think so. But I never thought of the responsibility of guiding someone through the city when designing the visual identity of the Tallinn Photomonth. But, this is maybe because I take the city for granted. Apart from that, we could say that some of the graphic design decisions we made are editorial choices. As graphic designers we don’t take form for granted. We tell stories with form. Even the smallest things can become a cue for understanding an exhibition. Or, for understanding if you are actually interested in the exhibition. And, you know, if designers don’t do this, I feel that they are taking form for granted. And that is always a mistake. If you don’t make form speak for you or for itself, then form will not just be silent or step back. Form will just start saying things that you maybe didn’t want form to say, because it might not be true or what you actually meant. The unmade design decisions are still design decisions that become a veil or a lens between the viewer and object.20
Briefly used as a navigation tool, I now hold onto the centrefold map of Tallinn Photomonth 2019 as an overview, or indicative visualisation of my initial travels through Tallinn. The leaflet’s cover, I assume, depicts a red fog, slowly covering the whole spread – like how, for a brief moment, the art spread across the city, and by the time the fog had cleared, new perceptions of the city had been made. Artist and writer the late Etel Adnan thought of fog like, “an element of love […] It liberates space, lets freshness cross it.”21
3.3
Brigit – It is hard to predict what kind of an impact Artishok will leave. It can just be like a ghost going through the city. It might not affect the open rental spaces that we are using at all, like for example the spaces used for Artjom Astrov’s or Lieven Lahaye’s work. Actually, it is just a matter of highlighting these places for a short period of time. And maybe – hopefully – the people who work in the city, and the people who we have been in contact with, can take something away from this; to be open to having art in spaces that are usually just empty.22
Additionally, in the curatorial text, Brigit Arop and Margit Säde, write about the desire “to reflect on how to retain space for temporary gestures in our living environment.”23 They end on the hope “that the 9th Artishok Biennial Siesta will shift the thinking patterns and trajectories of daily life – and give a conspiratory wink to fellow travellers in our dreary, car-dominated capital”.24
The 9th Artishok Biennial made me visit locations and neighbourhoods I hadn’t been to or passed through before. Within the awareness that I will soon leave Tallinn, and unsure about when I will visit again, I have saved the artwork locations as dots in my Google Maps app. In an attempt to map the traces of what might become a ghost, and to hold onto this ghost-like trajectory as a guide during future movements in Tallinn.
References
- Kristi Rummel-Kottisse, Personal interview with the author, 2 May 2024.
- Ott Kagovere, Personal interview with the author, 19 September 2024.
- Experimental Jetset, Superstructures: Notes on Experimental Jetset / Volume 2 (Amsterdam: Roma Publications, 2021), p. 18.
- Guy Debord, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, Internationale Situationniste, no. 2 (1985).
- Ibid.
- Brigit Arop, Personal interview with the author, 20 March 2025.
- Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Telling Is Listening’, in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 2004), p. 192.
- Ibid.
- Kristi Rummel-Kottisse, Personal interview with the author, 2 May 2024.
- Christoph Lueder, ‘London Underground Diagram, UK (Harry Beck, 1931)’, in Iconic Designs: 50 Stories About 50 Things, ed. by Grace Lees-Maffei (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), p. 35.
- Ibid.
- Eric Sheppard, ‘The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks, and Positionality’, Economic Geography 78, no. 3 (2002), p. 323.
- Ibid.
- Ott Kagovere, Personal interview with the author, 19 September 2024.
- Joseph Grigely, ‘Some Stories Various Questions’, in Exhibition Prosthetics by Joseph Grigely: Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Zak Kyes, ed. by Zak Kyles and Melinda Braathen (London: Bedford Press, 2009), pp. 8–9.
- Ibid, 15.
- Brigit Arop, Personal interview with the author, 20 March 2025.
- Kristi Rummel-Kottisse, Personal interview with the author, 2 May 2024.
- Guinevere Claeys, ‘Onderweg’, De Standaard, August 15 (2019), p. 3.
- Ott Kagovere, Personal interview with the author, 19 September 2024.
- Etel Adnan, The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay (Ostfilern: Hatje Cantz, 2011), p. 9.
- Brigit Arop, Personal interview with the author, 20 March 2025.
- “Curatorial Text,” Artishok Biennial, <https://artishokbiennale.com> [accessed 2 April 2025]
- Ibid.