Events

“festival…showcase” 5.—10.04 at EKA Gallery
Saara Liis Jõerand, Gregor Kulla, Riin Maide, Nele Tiidelepp, Henri Särekanno, Mattias Veller
The exhibition is open on 6.—9. April at 3—7 pm.
Opening: 5. April at 6 pm

In the course of six days, there will be actions, performances and presentations. This is a festival.
Six young authors share a platform to create and experiment. Tis is a showcase.

“festival…showcase” is an exhibition and a cluster of performances that takes place on 5—10 April in EKA Gallery. The cycle begins with a performative opening night on the 5th of April and ends with a Sunday afternoon presentation on the 10th of April. The days in between will be filled with ever-changing performances, including video screenings, sound works, and duration and short performances for both body and voice.

“festival…showcase” is an integration project of mediums with a focus on collaboration. Artists from different creative disciplines juxtapose their artistic tools with those of others, borrowing resources from them. The works flow across the borders of conventional media, using the fragility and uncertainty of the situation as an input. The subject of the works seen in the gallery originates from the moments spent together, it analyzes the mutual relations and draws on each other’s skills.

Outside of creative manifestations, the exhibition is an installation environment that reflects the preparation and the leftover. The spatial situation constantly alternates between festal and adjuratory, installation and performance. The space is shared with material and props of previous and subsequent works that will come to life in EKA Gallery.

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

TUESDAY, 5.04

18:00
Exhibition opening ceremony

Overalls
Mattias Veller
Performance for six figures
40′

WEDNESDAY, 6.04

15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open

I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space

juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm

My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition

15:00
PRINT I: relief 
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
30’

16:00
My words II 
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’

17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’

18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative survey where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’

19:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’

THURSDAY, 7.04

15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open

I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space

juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm

My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition

15:00
PRINT II: intaglio (sort of) 
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
150’

16:00
My words II 
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’

17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’

18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’

20:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’

FRIDAY, 8.04

15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open

I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space

juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm

My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition

15:00
PRINT III: silk
Performance; mostly printing
20’

16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’

17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’

18:00
Phone calls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’

19:00
What to do to feel good
Nele Tiidelepp
A performance for six performers with myself and others, about talking over, along with and behind someone’s back
60’

SATURDAY, 9.04

15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open

I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space

juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm

My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition

15:00
PRINT IV: continuations/summaries
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
40’

16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’

17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’

18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’

19:00
Showcase…festival inside the “festival…showcase”
open platform / togetherness / party / festival / showcase

Evening in open form, where you can take part in or miss out on different acts and performances. Works in every medium from uncountable performers, including the “festival…showcase” team and unknown others, that can last anywhere from one second to 10 minutes.

EKA baar is open at the event!

SUNDAY, 10.04
15:00
Exhibition finissage

Print presentation
Riin Maide
Publication presentation, printed during performances PRINT I, PRINT II, PRINT III and PRINT IV
60’

Short bios:

Saara Liis Jõerand (1999) studies general linguistics at the University of Tartu. She is interested in the area between thought and its expression. Jõerand has a bachelor’s degree in semiotics and culture theory, has published literary and theatre criticism and has been engaged in several theatre and art projects.

Gregor Kulla (2000) is a composer, writer and critic who studies composition with professor Tõnu Kõrvits and Helena Tulve in the Estonian Music and Theatre Academy. Previously, he has finished H. Eller Tartu Music College in oboe and composition and studied sustainable art in the Novi Sad EU School of Participation 2021. For his work in the cultural field of Tartu, Kulla has been named the Young Culture Carrier of the year 2020. Last year he earned the title of laureate of cultural magazine Sirp and he currently holds the Erkki-Sven Tüür scholarship.

Riin Maide (1997) is an artist and scenographer who has graduated from the graphic arts department of the Estonian Academy of Arts and educated herself in scenography and alternative theatre in DAMU Prague. Maide’s art focuses on noticing and playfully deconstructing spatial situations both on- and off-stage. She has organised and taken part in group exhibitions and different theatre projects in Tallinn, Tartu, Prague and Brussels. In 2020 she was awarded the Young Artist prize and the Edmund Valtman scholarship for young graphic artists.

Nele Tiidelepp (1998) is a freelance artist and a 2020 graduate of the installation and sculpture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts whose practice draws inspiration from spontaneous reactions to the environment and materials. She often expresses spontaneous and chaotic flow of thought in mediums like text, video, sound, installation and performance. Tiidelepp has won the Young Tartu competition in 2021, the Young Artist award in 2020, SIIL Prize and Millenium Prize in 2019, and has participated in art events in Estonia, Basel, Rovaniemi, Riga, Brussels, Stuttgart, Venice and Moscow.

Henri Särekanno (1999) is a freelance art worker and cinephile. He has studied art history and philosophy. In his creative practice he works with audiovisual media and is mainly interested in the border between documentary and fiction. Särekanno is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays guitar and violin.

Mattias Veller (1998) studies in the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts but consistently cheats on painting with all other possible creative practices. In his interdisciplinary activity, he has touched upon the themes of physical labour and the relation between humans and material and has worked on paintings and objects with absurd and excessive precision. Veller is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays the guitar and sings.

festival showcase INSTAGRAM

Screening #9 / “Heat Singers”, Nadia Parfan 

On Monday, 21.03 at 20:00 (EET) we warmly invite you for the ninth online screening of the documentary “Heat Singers” by Ukrainian filmmaker Nadia Parfan. All the raised funds are transferred directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine. 

For many years, Ivan Vasyliovych has been the trade union leader at Ivano-Frankivsk TeploKomunEnergo, a municipal heating company in western Ukraine. His magnum opus is the trade union choir for mechanics, repairmen, dispatchers, book-keepers and other employees. Ivan Vasyliovych is very proud of their creative achievements, but is also keen to point out that “the heating comes first – and only then do we sing!”. The rehearsal schedule must be organised around the “heating season”. As the collective is trying to fix the old pipelines, customers are bombarding the hot-line service. Is it possible to warm up their cold radiators with the power of Ukrainian folk song?

Nadia Parfan was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Western Ukraine. She graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv and the Central European University in Budapest. She is a curator and co-founder of “86” Festival of Film and Urbanism. She is also a producer of the independent documentary “Love Me” (2014) by Jonathon Narducci. In 2014-2015, she studied documentary directing at the Andrzej Wajda School. “Heat Singers” is a director’s debut and was world-premiered at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel.

Tickets (put your own price, min 5 EUR; all of the funds will be redirected directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine): https://fienta.com/parfan

Link for a Facebook-event – https://www.facebook.com/events/3062516497324364

Collaborative exhibition of EKA and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna “Where is the body?” is the first part opens in Vienna on Thursday, March 24, at 4 pm, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor).

This is a collaborative exhibition between Daniel Richter and Nazim Ünal Yilmaz, students of the Chair of Painting at EKA and the instructors of the extended painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The curators of the exhibition are Lilian Hiob from Estonia and Julius Pristauz from Austria. 

Artists: Eero Alev, Ina Ebenberger, Daniel Silva Flandez, Yigit Gönlügür, Loora Kaubi, Jakob Kolb, Olev Kuma, Lisette Lepik, Sigrid Mau, Amar Priganica, Brenda Purtsak, Ramsko, Alfred Rottensteiner, Denisa Stefanigova, Magdalena Schwaiger, Mattias Veller Curated Lilian Hiob ja Julius Pristauz

The group exhibition Where is the body? arises from a collaboration between the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Estonian Academy of Arts, bringing together a variety of emerging artists, currently studying in the painting departments of the two academies.

Where is the body? gathers assumptions, statements and questions regarding different forms of (self-)embodiment. Questions as to how the body is currently situated in terms of its representation in the students’ practices are central to the curatorial concept of the exhibition. The exhibition presents different depictions and notions of the body in an ever quickly spinning world, opening up space for discussions surrounding it.

Depictions of fantastical bodies fuse into questions about hierarchies between different species. Loosening up borders, tissues, and deadlocked positions, we find a variety of expressions ranging from more playful approaches to very serious and intense dissections towards the topic.

Sketches for possible skeletons of the medium of painting and thoughts about material manifestations of bodily gestures within it go alongside introspections and reflections on the anatomy of the self. The artists comment on bodies in use, their capabilities and boundaries, extreme situations and the body as a tool for manipulation and power play.

The works negotiate body politics and within those relationships of gender, identity and representation.

Themes such as deconstruction and decay, performance, dependency and co-dependency can be found as opposed to abstract and hybrid images with transformational potential.

From traditional depiction to the changing stance of the body over time the works can help to position and define how and where the body finds a home in young contemporary artists’ practice.

The display and architecture of the exhibition expand on these ideas further, with its rhizomatic structure making for a spatial experience with different stations.
Examining matters connected to belonging, visibility, and desire, Where is the body? helps us to map various narratives that are socially, historically and culturally interwoven and take bodies, in a broader sense, as their starting point.

The exhibition takes place in two chapters.

Chapter One in Vienna:
24.03 – 15.04
Academy of Fine Arts, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor)

The second part of the exhibition will open on May 6 at the Narva Art Residency (NART) Gallery.
07-28.05
Art Residency, Joala 18, Narva

Curators: Lilian Hiob and Julius Pristauz

Guided tours at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Department of Accessory Design “Perspectives” in the gallery of Põhjala Factory with Stella Runnel.

22.03 Tuesday 5.30–7 pm
24.03 Thursday 4.30–6 pm
25.03 Friday 5 –7 pm
30.03 Wednesday 6–7 pm
31.03 Thursday 5–7 pm

Please register first

Online discussion “Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine” 

On 16 March at 18:00—20:00 EEST

The discussion will be live streamed on Facebook.

Join us for an online discussion, where artists, curators and researchers from Ukraine will talk about their works dealing with the entanglements of past and present, memory and cultural decolonization.

Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev, Nikolay Karabinovich, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Kateryna Botanova.

Moderators: Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi

Since 24 February, the world has desparately followed the war started by Russian president Putin in Ukraine justifying his aggressive invasion of the neighboring country with the need to “defend itself”, “denazify” Ukraine and “protect people who have been subject to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv”. In his hour-long televised speech announcing the attack, Putin manipulated notions of 20th century and especially WWII history, denied that Ukraine has ever had “real statehood,” and stated that the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” The falsification of history used to invade an independent state, assert power, and justify his imperial megalomania, has suddenly transformed war in Europe from a thing of the past into an urgent catastrophe of unprecedented scale for millions of people in the 21st century.

The war in Ukraine began in 2014 with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine. Already at that time, cultural resistance played an essential role alongside political protests. “What the artists did next to the barricades, sandwiches, hospitals, and Molotov cocktails was also a form of survival art, careful and scrupulous, often anonymous documentation of day-to-day activities. It was the art of action, of intervention in the physical and political reality to affect the symbolic one,” writes Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer Kateryna Botanova. “Artistic practices engaged and laid the ground for a different kind of society based on a common fight and, at the same time, care and solidarity.”

After the Maidan Uprising (2013), many contemporary Ukrainian artists continued to work with difficult, debated and traumatic issues, among them searches for identity, memory wars, changing geopolitical affiliations, “documenting and empowering the voices of the other, telling the stories of those unseen and disempowered, articulating history not as a politically curated linear narrative serving the purpose of nation-building but as a layered and conflicting array of forgotten stories.” Collecting, accumulating, and articulating these issues of society’s blind spots, these artists have been building a critical mass of knowledge that are essential in building “a political nation capable of embracing multiple identities, on the foundations of traumatic experiences of the Soviet collectivity and post-Soviet aggressive individuality, colonial recasting of identities and post-colonial national take-over, Soviet totalitarianism and post-Soviet authoritarianism,” as Kateryna Botanova sums up.

The discussion is part of the project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Postcolonialism in the Baltics”, which analyses the imprints of post-socialism and post-colonialism in the region. The programme is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum, and it is curated by Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi.

The event is supported by the Nep4Dissent Research Network, an EU COST Action Association.

 ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS

Olia Mykhailiuk, “rememberMINT”

“rememberMINT” is a subjective multidimensional collage of poetic lines, documentary interviews, and photo/video essays from Donechchyna and Luhanshchyna, and performance. It is an attempt to explore the mechanisms of memory. When there are no more words, movements remain. When movements stop — smell remains. When people die — grass sprouts.

Many people find it difficult to forget times of hardship. But my memory, with no effort made, does not return me to where it was scary. In August 2014, I happened to be in the occupied Alchevsk for a while. There grew a lot of mint in the yard. When the world narrowed down to one backyard… we brewed mint tea. Sometimes a sunbeam fell through the window in the ceiling into the glass cup. Mint helps some to calm down and reconcile with their own memories, while it helps others, those who tend to forget, to recall. But I do not aim to cure everyone. Everyone has his own grass.

Olia Mykhailiuk lives and works in Kyiv. In 2007, teamed up with other like-minded people and founded ArtPole Agency in order to unite artists working in various areas—painters, musicians, performers, writers. Developed the concepts and initiated several notable multidisciplinary projects, both Ukrainian and international. She continues to work on the development of interaction between various art disciplines, particularly performance, music, literature and video art. In performance, she often tries to study the primal senses of words by referring to her own system of emotional signs and symbols.

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev

Cultural decolonisation in our practice

In our practice, we have been consistently working on establishing a discursive space that would enable the recontextualisation of cultural and historical processes in the context of the decolonisation of Ukrainian culture from the dominant external imperial narrative. We will show several examples of our works that use these optics while looking at the Ukrainian past and present.

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev are artists from Ukraine, currently based in Poznań, Poland.

Lia is also cultural anthropologist and essayist. The primary areas of her research are trauma, post-memory and agency of vulnerable groups. She works in a wide range of media, including photography, installations and textile sculptures, and has exhibited her works in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.

Andrii is also photography researcher and curator. He has degrees in IT and Graphic Design. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma and identity—both personal and collective. He works in various media and has exhibited his works in Ukraine, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

Lada Nakonechna,
“Disciplined Vision”

“Disciplined Vision” is the title of an exhibition of Lada Nakonechna in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU). Looking at artifacts of the Socialist Realist tradition from the NAMU’s archives, library, and collection as testimony, it proposes examining the role of art in shaping judgments about history. For they are the shared aspect of culture that determines the present.
The paradox of the visual culture of the Soviet Union lies in the implicit violence in the affirmative, positive images that spring from general humanist values (emancipation, mutual respect, love for one’s native land, etc.). Expositions of Ukrainian Museums mainly continue chronological unfolding of the history of art that played a role in constructing unyielding logic of history. Disciplined Vision examines how the representation of Ukraine in Socialist Realist tradition still forms the consciousness of people.

Lada Nakonechna is an artist and researcher. In addition to her personal practice, she is involved in a number of group projects and collectives. She is a member of the R.E.P. group (since 2005), part of the curatorial and activist union Hudrada (since 2008), cofounder of Method Fund (2015) and co-curator of its educational and research programs. In 2016 she also joined the new editorial board of the Internet journal of art, literature and politics Prostory.net.ua. Nakonechna’s artworks, which often take the form of installations incorporating drawing, photographs and text, call attention to methods of recognition and reveal the internal aspects of visual and verbal structures. Her latest artistic investigations are based on artistic and archival materials related to the art of Socialist Realism—understood as a “method” and institutional and educational system. In 2014 she received the Kazimir Malevich Art Award.

Nikolay Karabinovych, “In the beginning there was the rhythm”

Brief history of Ukraine 1991–2021.

A few stories, few videos and 3 artworks.

Nikolay Karabinovych lives and works in Kyiv and Brussels. The artist works in a variety of media, including video, sound, text, and performance. In 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Special Prize. From 2019 he is studying at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2017, Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odessa Biennale. His work has been shown at M HKA, Antwerp, PinchukArtCentre Kyiv, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, Odessa.

Svitlana Biedarieva

Viewing postcolonial entanglements in Ukraine through Latin American lens: Beyond “At the Front Line”

My presentation will focus on linking points between Ukrainian and Mexican art scenes. It will explore the notions of ambiguity and hybridity in the two regional contexts and will take on two different models of colonial and decolonial processes. I will compare the questions of (post)memory, memory wars, violence, and historical trauma in the discussion of art projects.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator with an interest in Eastern European and Latin American art. Her edited books include “Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021” (ibidem Press 2021), “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020, co-edited with Hanna Deikun). Biedarieva’s papers have been published by, among other outlets, Space and Culture (SAGE), Art Margins Online (MIT Press), and Revue Critique d’Art (University of Rennes 2). She obtained her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 2020.

Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and is an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival. She was a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art, in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on art and culture.

The upcoming Friday at 18hs, in an  online event, Yulia Zhiglova and Claudia Diaz Reyes will present “Vibmory: Touching Memories” 

Time travel is possible! We do it every day by recollecting past experiences in our minds. Can we also relive those moments and create new forms in the now to represent the past?

It is the outcome of the start.ee arts & science residency, organized by the HCI group at Tallinn University in collaboration with starts.eu.

On Facebook

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Between 28.02–6.3 an international master class “Expedition to Narva” will take place under the leadership of Ene-Liis Semper, Professor of Scenography at EKA, which will end with a pop-up exhibition on March 4.

The workshop will take place in cooperation with the good partners of EKA: Paris ENSAD, Helsinki Uniarts and Vilnius Academy of Arts. In addition to Ene-Liis Semper, the course will be supervised by Patrick Laffont de Lojo from ENSAD, in addition, the workshop will also be assisted by Maria Hansar, PhD students at EKA and Madlen Hirtentreu.

Ene-Liis Semper has commented the upcoming workshop as follows: “Narva is a town with a strange time shift. We are going to Narva, we are researching local conditions, we are working on site-specific installations or videos, we are making summaries and a pop-up exhibition at the Narva Estonian House.

On Tuesday, February 22, at 6 pm, Adrià Carbonell will give a public lecture “Contra Naturam: The Emergence of Modern Urbanism in Barcelona” in the hall of EKA (A-101)

Adrià Carbonell is an architect and urbanist. He is a lecturer in architecture at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and has previously lectured at KU Leuven, Tallinn University of Technology, Umeå Universitet, and the American University of Sharjah. He is co-founder of the research collaborative Aside, where he writes on the interplay between architecture, territory, politics and the environment. He has co-edited the book Infrastructural Love: Caring for Our Architectural Support Systems (Birkhäuser, 2022). His writings have been published in PLAN, ACE: Architecture, City and Environment, ZARCH Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, San Rocco, MONU, Cartha, among others. His current research addresses two guiding questions in innovative urbanism: how to reframe cosmopolitical spatial practices and how to challenge existing urban inequalities through processes of territorial redistribution.

Lecture is in English and open to the public.

The lecture will also be broadcast on EKA TV

The lecture is organized by the Faculty of Architecture of EKA together with the Estonian Association of Architects.

The lecture is supported by European Regional Development Fund.

EKA Research Cafe:

What do urbanists do? From urban research to practice

Urban Studies have been taught at the Estonian Academy of Arts for sixteen years, 48 students have altogether received a master’s degree. Urbanists educated in Estonia work in research, in public and private sectors, here and all over the world. We invite you to take part in an evening of discussions where we will explore expressions of this interdisciplinary speciality situated at the border of theory and practice and talk about what do urbanists do.

We ask, what are the most relevant research directions on the field today, is there anything specific about Estonian Urbanism and what is the role of the urban studies curriculum in understanding and developing the field.

The head of the curriculum, Prof. Maroš Krivý will talk about his own research, including Marie Skłodowska-Curie early stage researcher grant for contemporary urban history. Lecturers Keiti Kljavin and Kaija-Luisa Kurik will give an insight into their practices as educators and urbanists. Additionally, Mattias Malk and Sean Tyler, both PhD students of urban studies, will join the discussion.

We offer coffee and snacks!

The event is in English.

The event is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.