Events

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]

his year’s Graduation Ceremonies will be held on June 20th in the EKA hall (room A101, Põhja puiestee 7, Tallinn).

12.00 o’clock – graduates of Faculties of Design and Art Culture

3 o’clock pm – graduates of Doctoral School and the faculties of Architecture and Fine Art

NB! Dear graduate, please come to the EKA gallery 15 minutes earlier, so we can lead you to your place.

Exhibition „iTouch Store” Darja Popolitova

Vault Room of A-Gallery, Hobusepea 2, Tallinn

The exhibition can be visited from 31 Mayto 1 July 2019.
The opening will take place on 7 June at 6 p.m.

Darja Popolitova’s exhibition examines touch as a part of digital culture: the tactility of digitally transmitted jewellery images, given the excessive focus on the phone and the screen.

The audience can also see the works in their representations —in the form of a video ad where the author attempts to find answers to the following questions: can the digital representation of the jewellery have tactile features?, how does the digital representation of jewellery affect real jewellery on a tactile level? and, how does the use of digital media change the relationship between jewellery and tactility?.

The jewellery and objects at the exhibition are meant to solve the potential problems of the digital age. The titles of the work speak for themselves: “Hot Not Only Online Phone Case”, “Silicon Nail for Touching Screen”, “Digital Detox Brush”, etc.

The exhibition is laid out as a shop and this is not accidental. Media critic Erkki Huhtamo brings a parallel between a museum and a shop, the tradition of which is related to “tactiloclasms” — tactile rules and prohibitions in public places. Similarly to the old days where you could have access to the product in a shop only with the help of a shop assistant, in the exhibition room touching the jewellery is not permitted due to security requirements. Namita Gupta Wiggers, the jewellery historian, spoke of the fact that jewellery perception in the museum is limited to the vision, while the potential destination of the jewellery is the body.

Replacing the sense of touch with the vision continues in the Internet age. Darja Popolitova notes that she has been inspired by AliExpress e-shop ads. “Reviewing products —even without buying them —offers me certain pleasure,” commented the artist. “As I read a book by the media theorist Laura U. Marks, I went deeper into the meaning of the term “tactile visuality offered by Laura U. Marks. At one moment everything came together in my head: I treat the images of the products with a certain plasticity — my eyes do not see, but “touch” these images.That is why I decided to explore the tactile properties of the images of jewellery with my exhibition.”

Darja Popolitova was born in 1989 in Sillamäe and lives and works in Tallinn. She is currently doing a PhD at Estonian Academy of Arts. Darja designs jewellery using innovative technologies and mixed media. Recently, Darja Popolitova has participated in exhibitions at the Art and Design Museum in New York (2019), the Kunstnerforbundet gallery in Oslo (2018) and the fourth biennial of contemporary jewellery, METALLOphone in Vilnius (2018). Darja Popolitova is represented by the following galleries: Marzee in Nijmegen, Beyond in Antwerp, and Door in Mariaheide. Her work is included in the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design and also in private collections. The work of Darja Popolitova was awarded the scholarships of the Ministry of Culture and Adamson-Eric in 2018. She also received the scholarship of Young Jewellery in 2015.

__

Video: Ando Naulainen

Sound Design: Andres Nõlvak

Graphic Design: Johanna Ruukholm

Artist’s gratitude goes to 3DKoda OÜ, A-Gallery, Adamson-Eric Museum,
Anastassia Dratšova, Benjamin Lignel, Daniil Popov, Doctoral School of Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Kadri Mälk, Keiu Krikmann,
MakerLab Tallinn, Martina Gofman, Olesja Kulikova, Orbital Vox Stuudiod, Pire Sova,
Raivo Kelomees, Sarah Elizabeth Johnston, Shapeways Inc., Varvara Guljajeva, Vladimir Ljadov

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Join us for a performance evening “You’re not alone” on 30th of April, 6 PM at EKA Gallery.
Performances are made during an EKA course “You are not alone” mentored by Henri Hütt and Evelyn Raudsepp.

Artists: Andre Joosep Arming, Helena Lepik, Irmeli Terras, Heleliis Hõim, Ryan Galer, Angela Elizabeth Ramírez Fellowes, Mari-Liis Sõrg, Katrin Enni, Aksel Haagensen, Marianne Siilbaum, Sarah Johnston, Jose Aldemar Muñoz Ñustes