“Kanada.” That’s how they spell it, in Estonia — and that’s where, 19-26 October, an AGO Youth Council delegation helped carry the banner for our country.

The occasion? Eksperimenta! — an international youth contemporary art triennial festival that was first held in Tallinn in 2011, back for its second edition in 2014 with teams from 10 countries. This year’s theme: Art and Science. “We applied to take part, went through a juried competition here in Canada, and were accepted, “ says a proud Syrus Ware, the AGO’s Coordinator of Youth Programs.

As their main project, the team would install UGLY 2.0, a video-game version of the UGLY exhibit (Unified Geniuses Living Young) displayed at the AGO in late 2013. They would also print and mount a whole wall of silk-screened project badges, and take part in a two-day art-education workshop called IDEAlaboratory.

So off they went, L to R above: Mary Tremonte and Echo Railton, the UGLY lead artists; Peter Rahul, the “tech-savvy genius” (says Youth Council member Margaryta Golovchenko) behind the reinvention of UGLY as a video game; Youth Council member Alannah Dymond; coordinator Syrus Ware; and Margaryta.

Eksperimenta! was held in two venues: St. Margaret’s, the city’s oldest church, and Hopner House, once the home of a medieval merchant.

A 15th-c. church is an exciting place to work, but it also presents a few technical challenges. “We short-circuited the building twice!” says Margaryta, remembering how the 10 teams scrambled to get ready in just two days.

Above, a glimpse — through still-dangling wires — of some final preparations: the German installation on the left, featuring an enormous jellyfish, and the Russian project on the right.

UGLY 2.0 was set up so visitors could play the game and “visit” both the AGO and UGLY, even after our delegation had left Estonia.

The sign gives how-to directions; the screenshot depicts the final area of the game — the campfire with a tent for each Youth Council member.

The Youth Council’s other project, the wall of silk-screened UGLY badges, involved on-the-spot silk screen printing.

The set-up crew — Echo (holding the screen used for the printing), Syrus, Alannah, a passing-through friend of Alannah’s named Rachel, and Margaryta — printed a good number of cloths before opening day, so they’d be able to cut out badges for visitors as souvenirs.

Our group mingled with the other young artists — one of the trip’s major objectives, says Syrus — and studied their projects. One of their favourites: the Slovene installation that explored the emotional impact of art by inviting visitors to use stethoscopes to measure their heartbeat as they read the poetry on display.

Alannah, Mary and Syrus made the Youth Council’s presentation, “AGO Youth Programs: Intergenerational Mentorship and Social Change,” at the art-education workshop. Later the team discovered that one workshop visitor had listened carefully to all the presentations, and drawn her impression of the idea clusters in each one.

Here’s how she interpreted ours:

But the trip wasn’t all work. The team found time to play tourist a bit, and visit the city.

“We climbed on top of a church tower and walked around the edge,” remembers Margaryta.

“It gave us a good view of the old city, which we were in, and the new city around it.”

And then what do you do, when you’ve been playing tourist and find yourself a bit foot-sore and craving a little something?

Why, you visit a café. In this case, Maiasmokk Café, with its interior virtually unchanged from the decor created for its 1864 grand opening in that location.

Yes, that’s a ferris wheel in the window. with tea cups spinning ‘round the tea spoons nestled in the middle. “Different people ordered different drinks — cappuccino, espresso, tea — but pretty well everyone had a pastry!” says Margaryta.

Just days back in Toronto, still a bit jet-lagged but glowing with the memories, Syrus sums up his early reactions to the trip. “I saw this as an opportunity for the kids to meet youth outside Canada, get a sense of the international art community, and see the value of their own work in that larger context. I feel we achieved that.”

photo credits: Syrus Ware, Alannah Dymond, Margaryta Golovchenko, Mary Tremonte.