On the Hate Speech Draft Legislation

A public intervention in Tallinn’s urban space: approximately 20 signed and titled product-photo-like posters of Molotov cocktails installed across different locations in the city. The posters emphasized the bill’s unnecessary, dangerous, and ineffective character in addressing crimes of this kind. The work received media attention and entered public debate. The brands and the placement of the posters were strategic: Kaarli Church and Geranium Pour Monsieur; Kopli Lines and Katyusha; the psychiatric clinic and Carl Jung; the Foreign Intelligence Service and Martini; the “Keenia” bus stop and Tõmmu Hiid; etc. I took into account differences in districts, demographics, and local political attitudes.

Core concerns: the act of hate speech and its juridical representation; the registers of hate speech (speech, language, image); intervening in the hate speech bill by taking over its own language, content, and form.

I mapped the conditions through which a normative text begins to operate publicly as a standard of legibility and validity: what becomes nameable, provable, and politically actionable.