A long weekend in Tallinn - it all starts at the airport - it's like an advert for the air travel itself - people sitting eating in bright clean area's, talking in pools of gentle light, water with a named glacial provenance, people playing table tennis - just pleasant. Tallinn is a fascinating place, walking within the walls of the old city you feel like time has been forgotten or at least halted. Part of the visit was to see Bob Bicknell Knight's latest show and work - it included a huge multi-part 3D printed building/monument/sculpture/model that has smoke emitting from a outlet at the top with sound effects of piledriving from the Sizewell C site. The work is a monumental thing of brutal beauty. In Tallinn the art spaces are always worth a visit, with the main spectacular gallery - Kumu always holds fantastic, well curated exhibitions inside its stunning building. A show of artists and activists connected to the Sami people - mainly presenting how a place and way of life is being systematically eradicated by, yes your guessed it capitalism. Indigenous Futurism an idea embedded within the work is something to research. Other spaces visited include the supremely odd puppet museum, the labyrinthine contemporary art space showing important work by Palestinian artists, the photography gallery which had 4 revealing shows focusing on women's experiences of the world. Think James Bond villain architecture Linnahall in Tallinn is a monumental Soviet-era building where Tenet was filmed. Completed in 1980 for the Moscow Olympics, everything is unessesarily excessive and gloriously brutal with massive concrete staircases and an overbearingly huge concert hall. Madness.In the Maritime museum you can have the claustrophobic experience of descending into a submarine and wander unchecked around a wooden, steam powered boat in the docks. Finally the experience of the open, unsupervised coat racks in every public space is a visible symbol of a beautifully civilised culture.
