Jaanus Kaasik "The Happiness Machine"

As part of the Urban Festival UIT, MIGA opened its first exhibition in August 2023. The exhibition seeks to analyze, reconstruct, and extravagantly mystify one such forgotten garage and the materials it contains. Semiotician and freelance graphic designer Jaanus Kaasik has examined the found objects left behind by the garage’s previous owner and transformed them into "The Happiness Machine."  According to the artist, the debris in the abandoned garage units reflects decades of people’s lives and their many quests, now revealed to gallery visitors in the form of the machine.

"There remains a suspicion that, along with previous generations, many important skills, fascinating stories and secret knowledge have been lost," Jaanus Kaasik explains, sharing the results of his analysis, which the audience experiences on exhibition evenings as the artist presents his mystically inclined research findings.

Jaanus Kaasik is a semiotician and freelance graphic designer. He has run a cinema, worked as a teacher and experience consultant, and directed at Tartu Uus Teater. Currently, he works at the studio shop and gallery Karud ja Pojad.

Exhibition in media: