PLAYFUL CITY:
heidundgriess (DE)
installation programme
PLAYFUL CITY / August 13-17
8 installations / locations on map
With the theme "Playful City", the 2025 festival invites you to discover the playful side of the urban environment. Play isn’t only for children – it’s a vital part of adult life too, nourishing our bodies, minds, and human relationships. Play in urban space brings freshness to routine, encourages spontaneous encounters, and sparks creativity. Eight artists and collectives from Estonia and beyond will create installations inspired by the theme "Playful City", spread throughout the town.
photo: private collection
heidundgriess (DE)
POOL II
Emajõgi (between Kroonuaia and Vabadussild bridges)
August 13, 15.00-20.00
August 14-17, 12.00-20.00
​
The installation Pool II consists of an 8 x 4 meter floating frame that formally refers to the image of a swimming pool. The work playfully explores the perception and interpretation of public space and addresses the human need for clear, comprehensible structures. At the same time, it points to the fact that our ideas of space and its boundaries are shaped and defined by social and cultural concepts.
Pool II invites you to observe, reflect and imagine from the shore, but if you are a confident swimmer, also to swim, dive, balance and climb up, down, on, through and away from the boundaries of the pool.
​
Attention! Swimming is at your own risk.
Please make sure of your swimming ability, take into account the strength of the river's current and possible debris on the riverbed. If you decide to go into the water, we recommend using the pier located right next to the installation.
–––
heidundgriess are an artist duo from Hamburg created by Alexandra Griess (b. 1977) and Jorel Heid (b. 1982) that has been working primarily interdisciplinarily in the field of installation art. With diverse professional backgrounds in art, architecture, and design, they create large-scale and mostly site-specific installations.
Their works often reflect on the various impacts of hyper-urbanization on nature and society.
Through emotionally and aesthetically accessible works, they aim to draw attention to these profound transformations and foster public discourse.
​
heidundgriess portfolio
Supporters: City of Tartu, Eesti Kultuurkapital, Goethe Institute in Tallinn and Raitwood
​Special thanks: Lodjakoda​
​