URBAN PARASITES:
IIRIS TOOM
selected through the open call
installation programme
URBAN PARASITES / August 18-21
10 installations / different locations
This year Urban Festival UIT is turning its focus on parasitic architecture. We’ve asked both local and foreign artists to view the city from a parasite’s perspective and encouraged them to find new ways of life either the deficit or excess of space. Urban parasites have found their master organisms in narrow spaces between buildings, in abandoned factories, overgrown ponds and forgotten cinemas. Installations are scattered all over Tartu, go and find them!
IIRIS TOOM (EE) “The Leech”
August 18-21, 12:00–20:00
Tähe 48a
“The Leech” explores parasitic growth in both its form and material, bringing a temporary biodegradable organism out from the riverbed and into the city. Willow from the river and roadsides is woven into the corner of Tähe and Õnne street, providing shelter and food for thought. On the eve of the Estonian electric grid’s centenary, the Leech draws its lifeblood from Tartu’s oldest sub-station, celebrating the growing role of coppicing biofuel in the transition to a cleaner power grid.
Supported by: City of Tartu, Estonian Ministry of Culture
Iiris Toom (1996) is an Estonian-born designer based in the United Kingdom. Reading for an MPhil in Architecture at the University of Cambridge, her work fuses local community, climate, and culture to give contemporary form to vernacular practices.
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Iiris's project was selected through the open call.