PhD Thesis Defence of Ulvi Haagensen

On 4 November at 15:00 Ulvi Haagensen will defend her thesis “In the In-Between: Explorations into the Line Between Art and Everyday Life as Seen Through the Eyes of a Practising Visual Artist” (“Vahepealsuses. Uurimusi kunsti ja igapäevaelu vahelisest joonest visuaalkunstniku silmade läbi”).

The public defence will be held in EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A501. The defence is in English.

Supervisors: Dr. Liina Unt (University of Tartu), Dr. Jan Guy (University of Sydney)

External reviewers: Prof. Mika Elo (University of the Arts Helsinki), Dr. Rolf Hughes (EIT Culture & Creativity)

Opponent: Prof. Mika Elo

The field of contemporary art with its avant-garde legacy often meets, overlaps and clashes with ordinary everyday life, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. For an artist working within this field the relationship between art and life can be particularly intriguing; sometimes it’s puzzling, and at other times it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other, to know when something is or isn’t art, and is or isn’t life.

In the In-Between: Explorations into the Line Between Art and Everyday Life as Seen Through the Eyes of a Practising Visual Artist asks what new approaches, methods, techniques it can reveal and what alternative ways of thinking and looking it can contribute to help make sense of the enigmatic relationship between art and life.

The thesis speaks from within an art practice and in close proximity to artistic processes. It incorporates embodied and multisensory experiences, as well as humour and a playful approach that includes informal conversations between three imaginary friends – Thea Koristaja, Olive Puuvill and Artist Researcher. Their contributions allow for shifts in perspective and reveal the various ways that art and everyday life meet and collide as an artist prepares for, makes and installs and then reflects upon the three main exhibitions that form the basis of the thesis, and also in connection to cleaning performances (undertaken mainly by Thea Koristaja), other exhibitions and everyday life.

One of the aims, unfolding through the course of the research, is to reconcile art, art-making, the everyday, and research. The three imaginary friends play a key role in helping to achieve this, as do the ‘tactics of in-betweenness’ and the notion of the bricoleuse, someone who invents, improvises and makes do. Together they help reveal the ideas of ‘blurring’, ‘making strange’, ‘equalising’ and ‘destabilising’, together with ‘object-generated thinking’ as new approaches, methods and concepts that can transform, make sense of and reconcile art with everyday life.

The thesis is available HERE.

Defence Committee: Dr. Jaana Päeva, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Kirke Kangro, Dr. Kristi Kuusk, Prof. Indrek Ibrus, Dr. Varvara Guljajeva