Events

On Thursday, 5 December, Tallinners will be invited to take part in TRAMWARM, a theatrical performance staged in Tallinn trams by Estonian Academy of Arts scenography students.

On Saturday, 7 December, EKA will host EXHUMATION, a play during which all audience members will be able to participate in an excavation. Both performances are free.

TRAMWARM
On Thursday, 5 December at 16.00, the performance will take place on trams running on line no. 1 and at the following stops: Põhja puiestee (15.30–16.00 and 17.02–17.22), Kadriorg (at 16.19–16.42) and Kopli (at 17.42–17.59).

TRAMWARM is inspired by the location of the new EKA building near the central train station and the tramway. Tram line no. 1 connects various districts, as well as three public universities. According to Aleksandra Ianchenko, who directed the play, the piece focuses on the topic of public space, privacy, home and cosiness, in addition to public transport. “Moving along the tram line, artists create a temporary home for themselves. They play gently but consciously, invisibly but at the same time traceably. Their strange behaviour, which still falls within the boundaries of the normal, invites us to look at the border between personal and public space, hospitality and hostility, and the ordinary and the special,” Ianchenko says, in describing the theme of the play.

EKA’s 1 st year scenography students: Milla Mona Andres, Linda Mai Kari, Anita Kremm, Liisamari Viik, Kristel Zimmer. The performers also include tram passengers, city dwellers and others.
Director: Aleksandra Ianchenko, junior researcher in PUTSPACE (a research project „Public Transport as Public Space in European Cities“, www.putspace.eu)
Stage manager / initiator: Erki Kasemets (Polygon Theatre)

EXHUMATION
On Saturday, 7 December at 16.00 at the third-floor public area (A300) at EKA, Põhja pst 7.

EXHUMATION is primarily about time and the preservation, prolongation and re-conceptualisation of material time stamps, including works of art, and everything that is directly touched upon by
conservators and restorers in their work. During the play, a mysterious dark plastic garbage bag is opened and its contents are explored following strict rules of procedure. Beforehand, it is only known that the bag contains remains of artefacts commemorating historic dates. In the course of delving into the bag, new and deeper layers of issues open up. From the realm of technical work, the journey continues to the philosophical vanishing point and finally finds its way back on the ground. The show ends with an inevitable decision – what will happen to the remnants that have come to light? What will become of them and how? All those present have the opportunity to actively participate in the excavation process.

Coordinator: prof. Hilkka Hiiop (Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, EKA)
Organising manager: Taavi Tiidor (Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, EKA)
Stage manager / initiator: Erki Kasemets (Polygon Theatre)

Polygon Theatre is a so-called environmental theatre that is open to immediate action; everything, including unplanned events, can become part of the performance. Polygon Theatre often mixes the roles of audience members and actors so that the viewer can become a performer and vice versa.

Maris Mändel PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Cultural Heritage and Conservation will defend her thesis “Bricks, blocks and panels commonly used in 20th century Estonian architecture. The story of their use and value” on the 18th of December 2019 at 14.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

Supervisors: dr Mart Kalm (Estonian Academy of Arts) and dr Lembi-Merike Raado (Tallinn University of Technology)

Pre-reviewers: dr Karl Õiger (Tallinn University of Technology, School of Engineering) and dr Kurmo Konsa (University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology)

Opponent: dr Karl Õiger

This research focuses on issues in restoration regarding man-made building materials commonly used in 20th century Estonia. These are building materials that in contemporary restoration processes tend to be regarded as having less value and because they are commonplace are often overlooked. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to find solutions to the issues of value and appreciation that arise in the restoration of such materials – to determine when these commonly used materials should be preserved as a valuable original material and when and what kind of a replacement material should be used.

This thorough study of concrete blocks, silicate bricks, large silicalcite blocks and large reinforced concrete panels provides a good overview of Estonian building practices and its step-by-step development from handcrafted techniques and building methods to fully industrialised construction.

This research has clear practical applications. Its outcomes will make it possible for architecture historians, heritage protection specialists, construction engineers, homeowners and others, to make considered decisions about restoration in regard to the materials covered in this study. It will also assist in the informed preservation of Estonian cultural heritage.

Please find the PhD thesis here

Vent Space, student-run project space, announces its new team and Open Call for the Second Season, running from January to October 2020.
The focus of the new season is on the potentiality of unexpected encounters, seeking to expand conventional practices by encouraging experimentation and open-mindedness through cross-disciplinary collaborations.

You can apply here!
Deadline for applications is on the
30th of December 2019.

The next European Society for Aesthetics Conference will take place in Tallinn on June 10-12 2020, hosted by the Estonian Academy of Arts.
This year’s keynote speakers are:
· Professor David Davies (McGill University)
· Professor Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp)
· Professor Virve Sarapik (Estonian Academy of Arts)

More information along with the CFP at the ESA homepage.

On December 13th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts is hosting a seminar in honour of professor emeritus Jaak Kangilaski. The seminar will focus on the history of Estonian art history, with four presentations by Jaak Kangilaski’s former students (prof Krista Kodres, prof Virve Sarapik, dr Epi Tohvri and Eero Epner), followed by speeches and a reception.

On Tuesday November 12 Ulvi Haagensen will open her solo exhibition “Distracting the workers” in the EKA Trepigalerii (Showcase gallery at Linnahall’s side of Estonian Academy of Arts’s building) at 5pm. The exhibition will be open until 27 November and being a window exhibition it is viewable 24/7. 

“I am working on the line between art and everyday life. With a particular emphasis on the practices of art-making and domestic cleaning, I focus on the places where art and life meet to try to find out what the dividing lines, overlaps and resulting ambiguities look and feel like. Helping me with my work I have three imaginary assistants – an artist-cleaner, an artist-researcher and an artist-bricoleuse. Together we make, clean, think and write. This installation is a view into our working and thinking space,” says the artist Ulvi Haagensen. 

The title of the show is in part a response to the German art critic Julius Meier-Graefe’s concern about art that is decorative, accusing it of being like a “gentle little housewife” merely amusing “tired people after a hard day’s work”. 

Ulvi Haagensen, originally from Australia, has been living and working in Estonia for many years and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Design.

Thanks to Kaido Kruusamets, Mart Vainre, Aksel Haagensen, Michael Haagensen, Risto Tali, Fiona Davies

Join us for the opening of the solo exhibition and performance on Thursday, November 5 at 8 PM. The exhibition will remain open until November 30.

Vaarik’s sixth solo exhibition is a continuation of her solo exhibition “Possessed” (2017). The expressive, provocative, daring and heartfelt show is about being a woman, a mother, about saving the world, raising children and cuddling. The artist is observing her close relationships and is seeking for conclusions to save the world.

“Skin is our contact with the world. Scroll up to your sleeves and stroke your arm with your hand. This is a feeling. We feel and learn to feel our bodies through strokes, pamper and cuddles. Sometimes there’s no need to overthink! Weird feelings create weird thoughts. But if you know it’s only that–a feeling–and you stop forcing yourself to collaborate with your brain, you can only feel without attributing linguistic meaning. Things are simply as they are. If we start to over-explain something we can mess it up.
We can try to save the world, but if we grow our children to be empathetic, they are doing it naturally. All humans grow inside their moms! I am lucky I was held tight.” – Marta Vaarik

Marta Vaarik (b. 1986) is an artist, photographer and self-proclaimed blond trickster based in Tallinn, Estonia. She holds a BFA degree in painting from the Estonian Academy of Arts and is currently studying Contemporary Art in the same university. She did an exchange program in UDK studying under professor Josephine Pryde. The current solo show at EKA Gallery is her sixth and she has participated in group shows in Berlin and Estonia. She works in the mediums of painting, photography, performance, and video.

Thanks: Sandra Mäesepp, Rebecca Künnis, Ülle Vaarik, Aadam Taaksalu, Andrus Vaarik, Kelly Turk, Margit Lõhmus, Sveta Grigorjeva, Piret Karro, Rasmus Neljand, Krislin Ots, Big Boy, Gunnar Laal, Taavi Lepp, Pire Sova, Johannes Luik, Kersti Heile

Exhibition title: Sveta Grigorjeva

Graphic design: Kersti Heile

The exhibition is supported by A. Le Coq.

Date: September 9-12 / 5 pm–8 pm

Venue: Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A301

Lecturer: Ewa Domanska

This series of seminars is based on the assumption that today art can offer the historian (as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, literary scholar, etc.) theoretical inspiration, and even an epistemological paradigm and a research program of knowledge building. Interesting cognitive models, research categories, and representations of reality can be derived from the analysis of works of art. Following Susan Sontag’s statement that “each work of art gives us a form or paradigm or model of knowing something, an epistemology,” I would claim that analysis of various types of art objects, performances and activities might help us to build an inclusive knowledge of the past.  Such knowledge would be more appropriate for the planetary condition than offered, for example, by history understood as a specific approach to the past that emerged within the Greco-Judeo-Christian tradition and carries a stigma as a colonial enterprise. Thus art participates in the struggle for the epistemic justice, commenting on the problem of “epistemological dependency” of non-western scholars, and criticizing Western cognitive (artistic) imperialism. It is an important force in the development of an emergent paradigm that is post-anthropocentric, post-Western, post-secular and post-global (planetary/ cosmic).

Contemporary art is a great laboratory for the testing of various kinds of future. If indeed there is a need for realistic, responsible (local or micro) utopias in the world today, they might be developed with the help of various ways of knowing (the world). This would include not only humanities, social sciences as well as life sciences and Earth Sciences (“radical interdisciplinarity”) – which is to say, Western type of knowledge, but also include indigenous ways of knowing. The question arises as to whether the historian and the artist can offer a more positive (affirmative) scenario of the future?

Registration

The seminar is open to PhD students.

Registration is open until 01.09.2019. Max group size is 15.

Registration form

Readings (readings will be sent after registration)

• Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns. New Orientations in the Study of Culture, trans. Adam Blauhut, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
• Bruno Latour and Timothy M. Lenton, “Extending the Domain of Freedom, or Why Gaia Is So Hard to Understand.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 3, Spring 2019: 659-680.
• Ariella Azoulay, “Potential History: Thinking through Violence”.Critical Inquiry, vol. 39, no. 3, Spring 2013.
• Rosi Braidotti Rosi, “Powers of Affirmation: Response to Lisa Baraitser, Patrick Hanafin and Clare Hemmings.” Subjectivity, vol. 3, no 2, 2010: 140–148.
• Ewa Domańska, “Affirmative Humanities”. Dějiny – teorie – kritika [Czech Republic], no. 1, 2018: 9-26.
• Ruth Lipschitz, Skin/ned Politics: Species Discourse and the Limits of “The Human” in Nandipha Mntambo’s Art. Hypatia, vol. 27, no. 3, August 2012: 546–566.
• Ann-Marie Tully, Becoming Animal: Liminal Rhetorical Strategies in Contemporary South African Art. Image & Text, vol. 17, 2011: 64-84.
• Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. Sage, 2006.

Program

 Monday, September 9

1. Paradigm shift in the contemporary humanities and social sciences

Tuesday, September 10

2. Prefigurative Art/Humanities

 Wednesday, September 11

3. Contemporary Art and the Future of History

Thursday, September 12

4. How to build a theory? [workshop]