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"HEAT: A Sci-Fi Spa Story" is a pop-up show opening that presents the process and outcomes of the DATAS Residency by artist Jelena Visković, offering a glimpse into the making of her upcoming film. The event will take place on 20 November 2025 at 17:00 in front of the Lasnamäe Pavilion, Tallinn, in our new pop-up showcase.The residency’s final work — a film — will premiere in June 2026 at Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague. You are warmly invited to join us for this one-night gathering and enjoy drinks while exploring the world of "HEAT: A Sci-Fi Spa Story." The pop-up show will remain open until 23 November.
The film continues Visković’s long-term interest in the shaping of perception, emotion, and social tension along the outer edges of Europe today. It expands on her previous works that use surrealist narratives to explore the relationship between bodies, technology, and ideology in post-socialist contexts. Inspired by feminist reinterpretations of the spa novel, including Dubravka Ugrešić’s "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg" and Olga Tokarczuk’s "Empusium," the film reimagines the Eastern European resort as a space for introspection, healing, and unfolding social tension.
Set in a Baltic spa, "HEAT" follows a group of aging women navigating leisure time amidst rejuvenation therapies, ecological collapse, and digital enclosures disguised as wellness regimes. The work explores conflict, extraction, restoration, and unexpected forms of resistance — reflecting on who gets to age in contemporary and future societies, and by what means.
Developed during the DATAS Residency at Tallinn Art Hall, in collaboration with Galerie Rudolfinum and Goethe Institut-Estland, "HEAT" was created with the support of performers, artists, and technicians across Tallinn, London, Budapest, and beyond. It was filmed across several sites in Tallinn — Klondaik Sauna & Spa, Klorofüll Café, ARS Art Factory, P113 Health Centre, and Sakala Theatre — each representing a distinct layer of the city’s complex identity.
Writer and Director – Jelena Visković
Producer – Emel Elizabeth Tuulik
Project Manager – Madli Ljutjuk
Cinematographer – Lee Kelomees
Lighting – Daniel Angarita, Assistant – Mariia Sidorenko
Performers – Krista Köster, Nazila Aliyeva, Irina Prokopkina
Movement Director – Keity Pook
Scenography & Costumes – Epp Salulaid
Audio – Tamas Marquetant
Makeup – Brit Marie Ojamaa
Jelena Visković is an artist born in 1989 in Zagreb, raised between Belgrade and Budapest, currently living and working in London. She works with recreation, situation, disobedience, and play to explore how bodies — social, political, and technological — are shaped by systems of power. Her films, games, and sculptural works incorporate playful, animated, talking objects that make their way into technologically deterministic systems. Borrowing from a carnivalesque logic, they become rebellious yet approachable, attempting to resist the enclosures of borders, institutions, archives, and databases. Her recent film "Motonation" explores body-politics and performance in former Yugoslavia and the multifaceted meaning of movement in the region today.
For more see → https://jelenaviskovic.net/
🌐 "DATAS: The Data and the Sovereign" is a collaborative European cultural programme that examines how computation, automation, and digital infrastructures reshape personal and state sovereignties. It uses art to challenge the normalization of surveillance, data extraction, and digital control, creating space for questioning, resistance, and reimagining complex realities.
Co-funded by the European Union as part of the Creative Europe framework and Goethe Institut-Estland.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Jaan Koorti 24, 13623 Tallinn, Estonia, Jaan Koorti 24, Lasnamäe, Tallinn, 13623 Harju Maakond, Eesti, Estonia
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