Open Lectures
16.04.2025
Open Lecture: Pablo Hermansen “Counter Designing”
Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri – Visiting Lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts
Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri is a designer with a PhD in Architecture and Urban Studies. He teaches and conducts research at the School of Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His work focuses on co-design, interaction design, socio-natural ecosystems, photo-ethnography, performative politics in public space, more-than-human prototyping, and public services as public space.
He will be visiting the Estonian Academy of Arts from April 14–16 and will give a public lecture, “Counter Designing: Animals and Algorithms as Creative Agents,” on April 16 at 18:00 in room A501.
In January, EKA Interaction Design students visited his university in Chile to develop collaborative projects and academic exchange.
Open Lecture: Pablo Hermansen “Counter Designing”
Wednesday 16 April, 2025
Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri – Visiting Lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts
Pablo Ignacio Hermansen Ulibarri is a designer with a PhD in Architecture and Urban Studies. He teaches and conducts research at the School of Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His work focuses on co-design, interaction design, socio-natural ecosystems, photo-ethnography, performative politics in public space, more-than-human prototyping, and public services as public space.
He will be visiting the Estonian Academy of Arts from April 14–16 and will give a public lecture, “Counter Designing: Animals and Algorithms as Creative Agents,” on April 16 at 18:00 in room A501.
In January, EKA Interaction Design students visited his university in Chile to develop collaborative projects and academic exchange.
07.04.2025 — 11.04.2025
CTC – Climate Truth Crisis Project
We look forward to seeing you at the opening of the CTC – Climate Truth Crisis exhibition on 11.04, at 14:00, in the open area in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7).
The CTC – Climate Truth Crisis project deals with the spread of misinformation and understanding the climate crisis. The project involves educating young designers in these areas, creating a website that gathers information about the topic, publishing a podcast series, a dictionary and a collection of articles. In addition, students are visualizing the topic in various media. More information on the project website: https://www.climatetruthcrisis.eu/
The first workshop of the project will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts on 7-11 April, during which students will write down concepts related to the topic, visualize them and on Friday, 11 April, open an exhibition in a public space in front of the EKA to introduce the topic to a wider audience.
The workshop is held in cooperation with the EKA Graphic Design Department and the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu. The students will be supervised by semioticians, conspiracy theory and disinformation researchers Mari-Liis Madisson and Daniel Tamm, Laura Vilbiks from the Estonian Foundation for Nature (ELF), and graphic designers Laura Merendi, Ott Kagovere and Kert Viiart. In addition to the supervisors, there will be students and lecturers from Bosnia, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Iceland and Lithuania.
In addition to the workshop, there will also be lectures open to the wider audience:
09.04, 16:00, A502 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Artist Kristina Õllek with a presentation Absorbing Hypoxic Water
10.04, 16:00, A300 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Graphic designer Maria Muuk with a presentation Graphic Design as a Degrowth Practice
The project will last for three years, 2025-2028, and workshops will be held at various partner universities:
Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo,
Iceland University of the Arts,
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague,
University of the Arts London,
CTC – Climate Truth Crisis Project
Monday 07 April, 2025 — Friday 11 April, 2025
We look forward to seeing you at the opening of the CTC – Climate Truth Crisis exhibition on 11.04, at 14:00, in the open area in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7).
The CTC – Climate Truth Crisis project deals with the spread of misinformation and understanding the climate crisis. The project involves educating young designers in these areas, creating a website that gathers information about the topic, publishing a podcast series, a dictionary and a collection of articles. In addition, students are visualizing the topic in various media. More information on the project website: https://www.climatetruthcrisis.eu/
The first workshop of the project will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts on 7-11 April, during which students will write down concepts related to the topic, visualize them and on Friday, 11 April, open an exhibition in a public space in front of the EKA to introduce the topic to a wider audience.
The workshop is held in cooperation with the EKA Graphic Design Department and the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu. The students will be supervised by semioticians, conspiracy theory and disinformation researchers Mari-Liis Madisson and Daniel Tamm, Laura Vilbiks from the Estonian Foundation for Nature (ELF), and graphic designers Laura Merendi, Ott Kagovere and Kert Viiart. In addition to the supervisors, there will be students and lecturers from Bosnia, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Iceland and Lithuania.
In addition to the workshop, there will also be lectures open to the wider audience:
09.04, 16:00, A502 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Artist Kristina Õllek with a presentation Absorbing Hypoxic Water
10.04, 16:00, A300 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Graphic designer Maria Muuk with a presentation Graphic Design as a Degrowth Practice
The project will last for three years, 2025-2028, and workshops will be held at various partner universities:
Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo,
Iceland University of the Arts,
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague,
University of the Arts London,
24.04.2025
Open architecture lecture: Taktyk
The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature.
The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.
On April 24 at 6 pm, Penfornis will take the stage in the EKA auditorium to introduce the 20-year practice of the landscape architecture office Taktyk, share the outcomes of he enquiries through design, point at critical future directions.
From Rotterdam to Barcelona, from Paris to Brussels and more lately Zurich, the practice Taktyk has since 2005, been envisaged as an evolving entity, adaptive and responsive to new heterogeneous and complex challenges. For the last 20 years Taktyk acts as a conductor, curator, and mediator of transformation processes using tacit knowledge of gardening, bricolage and painting. The lecture will highlight the emergence and evolution of our voice in the field and how we envision its future.
Taktyk is a landscape architecture office based in Paris and Brussels that experiments with introducing lush plant communities into existing spatial situations. The contrast between the natural and the built environment becomes very visible in their works, because special attention is given to creating new spatial quality that arises from the overlap between the two. New environments are always born from coworking with future users.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape:
April 3. Ingo Kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik
April 24. Taktyk
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
www.avatudloengud.ee
Open architecture lecture: Taktyk
Thursday 24 April, 2025
The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature.
The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.
On April 24 at 6 pm, Penfornis will take the stage in the EKA auditorium to introduce the 20-year practice of the landscape architecture office Taktyk, share the outcomes of he enquiries through design, point at critical future directions.
From Rotterdam to Barcelona, from Paris to Brussels and more lately Zurich, the practice Taktyk has since 2005, been envisaged as an evolving entity, adaptive and responsive to new heterogeneous and complex challenges. For the last 20 years Taktyk acts as a conductor, curator, and mediator of transformation processes using tacit knowledge of gardening, bricolage and painting. The lecture will highlight the emergence and evolution of our voice in the field and how we envision its future.
Taktyk is a landscape architecture office based in Paris and Brussels that experiments with introducing lush plant communities into existing spatial situations. The contrast between the natural and the built environment becomes very visible in their works, because special attention is given to creating new spatial quality that arises from the overlap between the two. New environments are always born from coworking with future users.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape:
April 3. Ingo Kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik
April 24. Taktyk
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
www.avatudloengud.ee
15.04.2025
Contemporary Art and Context: Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
→ Lecture performance: [UN]FINISHED
→ Screening: Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One, 2024
→ Book presentation: [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments (Jam Sam Books, 2023)
The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.
The full story of Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One is included as one of the chapters in the book [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published in 2023 by Jap Sam Books.
Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs: [theatro] (Onomatopee, 2015) and the camera (Dolce Publications, 2019).
Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.
Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot have worked together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded cross section archive in Athens, a space for art and architecture, exploring urban phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming, and directing them. They curate an annual thematic program of research and exhibitions, inviting artists, architects and thinkers to collectively investigate and expand the theme at stake, and publish the zine Document.
Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.
The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!
Contemporary Art and Context: Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
Tuesday 15 April, 2025
Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
→ Lecture performance: [UN]FINISHED
→ Screening: Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One, 2024
→ Book presentation: [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments (Jam Sam Books, 2023)
The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.
The full story of Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One is included as one of the chapters in the book [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published in 2023 by Jap Sam Books.
Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs: [theatro] (Onomatopee, 2015) and the camera (Dolce Publications, 2019).
Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.
Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot have worked together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded cross section archive in Athens, a space for art and architecture, exploring urban phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming, and directing them. They curate an annual thematic program of research and exhibitions, inviting artists, architects and thinkers to collectively investigate and expand the theme at stake, and publish the zine Document.
Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.
The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!
10.04.2025
Open Architecture Lecture: Jan van Schaik
The 2025 spring semester session of the Open Lectures “City as Novel Ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture, specifically the interaction of the city, people and nature. In connection with the EKA doctoral school conference taking place on April 10, the lecture series will include a lecture by one of the seminar’s keynote speakers on the meaning of research methods.
On April 10 at 6 pm, Dr. Jan van Schaik will give an open lecture “The work is the Knowledge” in the EKA main auditorium.
Jan van Schaik will discuss the productive conflict inherent in reflective practice research – namely that there are both benefits and detriments to halting the flow-state of creating to critically observe that same act of creating. And he will discuss how reflective practice research is bound to a networked community of practice, and how defining and owning this binding is critical to a practitioner making a case for the existence of an original contribution to knowledge in their own work.
Dr Jan van Schaik is an artist and architect based in Melbourne. He is the director of MvS Architects, a researcher and PhD supervisor at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, founder of +Concepts creative practice presentation and performance series, author of the Lost Tablets artwork series, and the design director of creative sector strategy and advocacy consultancy Future Tense. Making art about architecture, and vice versa, Jan is engaged in the governance and communities of both.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk
April 3. Ingo Kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik
April 24. Taktyk
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Lecture by Dr. Jan van Schaik will be held in cooperation with the Estonian Doctoral School for Engineering and Technology. Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.
Open Architecture Lecture: Jan van Schaik
Thursday 10 April, 2025
The 2025 spring semester session of the Open Lectures “City as Novel Ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture, specifically the interaction of the city, people and nature. In connection with the EKA doctoral school conference taking place on April 10, the lecture series will include a lecture by one of the seminar’s keynote speakers on the meaning of research methods.
On April 10 at 6 pm, Dr. Jan van Schaik will give an open lecture “The work is the Knowledge” in the EKA main auditorium.
Jan van Schaik will discuss the productive conflict inherent in reflective practice research – namely that there are both benefits and detriments to halting the flow-state of creating to critically observe that same act of creating. And he will discuss how reflective practice research is bound to a networked community of practice, and how defining and owning this binding is critical to a practitioner making a case for the existence of an original contribution to knowledge in their own work.
Dr Jan van Schaik is an artist and architect based in Melbourne. He is the director of MvS Architects, a researcher and PhD supervisor at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, founder of +Concepts creative practice presentation and performance series, author of the Lost Tablets artwork series, and the design director of creative sector strategy and advocacy consultancy Future Tense. Making art about architecture, and vice versa, Jan is engaged in the governance and communities of both.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk
April 3. Ingo Kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik
April 24. Taktyk
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Lecture by Dr. Jan van Schaik will be held in cooperation with the Estonian Doctoral School for Engineering and Technology. Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.
28.04.2025
Contemporary Art and Context: Ingel Vaikla
Ingel Vaikla: You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’
Artist and filmmaker Ingel Vaikla talks about her PhD research in Arts You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’ that investigates modernist architectural environments, their role in fostering strong communities, and the representational strategy which conveys the existential dimension of a place. Drawing from literary translation theory, this research employs cross-disciplinary translation to transfer the formal, sensorial, historical, and conceptual characteristics of built environments into moving image practice. This approach encourages an understanding of space not merely as a subject but as an active metaphor for sociopolitical dynamics, where architecture represents past ideologies and community embodies contemporary values.
Ingel Vaikla (1992, Tallinn) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Brussels, working primarily with video, 16mm film, and found footage. Her artistic practice explores the representation of architecture through its relationship with communities, seeking a visual language that goes beyond observing architecture as a sculptural form. Instead, she aims to convey the existential, conceptual, and ideological qualities that spaces embody. Ingel is a former resident of the HISK postgraduate program (2018–2019) and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (2021) and is currently in the end phase of pursuing her PhD at PXL-MAD/UHasselt. Her audiovisual works, including The House Guard, Roosenberg, Double Exposure, Papagalo, What’s the Time?, EUR42 and Moi aussi, je regarde have been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions such as IDFA in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Wien, EKKM in Tallinn, Beursschouwburg and Bozar in Brussels, Manifesta 13 in Marseille, Videonale in Bonn, Tramway in Glasgow, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, and the Busan International Video Art Festival, among others.
Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.
The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!
Contemporary Art and Context: Ingel Vaikla
Monday 28 April, 2025
Ingel Vaikla: You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’
Artist and filmmaker Ingel Vaikla talks about her PhD research in Arts You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’ that investigates modernist architectural environments, their role in fostering strong communities, and the representational strategy which conveys the existential dimension of a place. Drawing from literary translation theory, this research employs cross-disciplinary translation to transfer the formal, sensorial, historical, and conceptual characteristics of built environments into moving image practice. This approach encourages an understanding of space not merely as a subject but as an active metaphor for sociopolitical dynamics, where architecture represents past ideologies and community embodies contemporary values.
Ingel Vaikla (1992, Tallinn) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Brussels, working primarily with video, 16mm film, and found footage. Her artistic practice explores the representation of architecture through its relationship with communities, seeking a visual language that goes beyond observing architecture as a sculptural form. Instead, she aims to convey the existential, conceptual, and ideological qualities that spaces embody. Ingel is a former resident of the HISK postgraduate program (2018–2019) and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (2021) and is currently in the end phase of pursuing her PhD at PXL-MAD/UHasselt. Her audiovisual works, including The House Guard, Roosenberg, Double Exposure, Papagalo, What’s the Time?, EUR42 and Moi aussi, je regarde have been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions such as IDFA in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Wien, EKKM in Tallinn, Beursschouwburg and Bozar in Brussels, Manifesta 13 in Marseille, Videonale in Bonn, Tramway in Glasgow, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, and the Busan International Video Art Festival, among others.
Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.
The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!
10.04.2025
KVI Open Lecture: “Life in Spite of Everything: Decolonial Approaches to Writing and Research”
In this public talk, Victoria Donovan will introduce how decolonial thinking has informed her research and projects, as well as her new book Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025). Life in Spite of Everything is a cultural portrait of Ukraine’s east before it was devastated by Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is a history on foot through the beautiful Donbas region, a celebration of its past and present, and its people’s tenacity, creativity and independence. Victoria will discuss the book in conversation with the historian and curator Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts).
Victoria Donovan is a Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and the Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms at the University of St Andrews. She works at the intersection of heritage studies, urban history, visual anthropology, and the public humanities. She is the co-producer of academic research, literature, exhibitions, archives, community workshops, and artistic practice exploring the industrial history and heritage of eastern Ukraine and the UK. She is the author of Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia (2019); Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas (2022); and Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025).
Lecture will be held in cooperation of Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and Estonian Doctoral School for Humanities and Arts Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.
KVI Open Lecture: “Life in Spite of Everything: Decolonial Approaches to Writing and Research”
Thursday 10 April, 2025
In this public talk, Victoria Donovan will introduce how decolonial thinking has informed her research and projects, as well as her new book Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025). Life in Spite of Everything is a cultural portrait of Ukraine’s east before it was devastated by Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is a history on foot through the beautiful Donbas region, a celebration of its past and present, and its people’s tenacity, creativity and independence. Victoria will discuss the book in conversation with the historian and curator Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts).
Victoria Donovan is a Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and the Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms at the University of St Andrews. She works at the intersection of heritage studies, urban history, visual anthropology, and the public humanities. She is the co-producer of academic research, literature, exhibitions, archives, community workshops, and artistic practice exploring the industrial history and heritage of eastern Ukraine and the UK. She is the author of Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia (2019); Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas (2022); and Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025).
Lecture will be held in cooperation of Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and Estonian Doctoral School for Humanities and Arts Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.
03.04.2025
Open Architecture Lecture: Ingo Kowarik
The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature.
The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.
Next week, on April 3rd at 6:00 PM, Ingo Kowarik will give the next open lecture of the spring semester, “Wild Urban Nature: Challenge or Opportunity?”.
Cities have long been wrested from the wilderness, and traditional urban design often contrasts sharply with nature. Yet even highly urbanised areas can become places of wild nature, as seen in an unintended experiment in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. After 1945, many areas lay fallow, and in West Berlin, redevelopment progressed much more slowly than elsewhere. The study of urban revegetation — and its potential for quality of life and biodiversity conservation — made Berlin a cradle of modern urban ecology. The “Berlin School of Urban Ecology” uniquely integrates ecology, planning, and design. This approach, together with community-based activities, has enabled vast areas of urban wilderness to be woven into the city’s green system, despite growing land competition. The fusion of wilderness, design, and management has created distinctive green spaces that connect people with nature while supporting climate adaptation.
Ingo Kowarik studied landscape planning at TU Berlin and led the Department of Ecosystem Science/Plant Ecology for over 20 years. As Berlin’s honorary State Commissioner for Nature Conservation and Land Management, he was also involved in numerous green projects.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk https://toposcape.pl/
April 3. Ingo Kowarik https://www.tu.berlin/en/oekosys/about/team/ingo-kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik https://www.janvanschaik.com/
April 24. Taktyk https://taktyk.net/
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Open Architecture Lecture: Ingo Kowarik
Thursday 03 April, 2025
The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature.
The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.
Next week, on April 3rd at 6:00 PM, Ingo Kowarik will give the next open lecture of the spring semester, “Wild Urban Nature: Challenge or Opportunity?”.
Cities have long been wrested from the wilderness, and traditional urban design often contrasts sharply with nature. Yet even highly urbanised areas can become places of wild nature, as seen in an unintended experiment in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. After 1945, many areas lay fallow, and in West Berlin, redevelopment progressed much more slowly than elsewhere. The study of urban revegetation — and its potential for quality of life and biodiversity conservation — made Berlin a cradle of modern urban ecology. The “Berlin School of Urban Ecology” uniquely integrates ecology, planning, and design. This approach, together with community-based activities, has enabled vast areas of urban wilderness to be woven into the city’s green system, despite growing land competition. The fusion of wilderness, design, and management has created distinctive green spaces that connect people with nature while supporting climate adaptation.
Ingo Kowarik studied landscape planning at TU Berlin and led the Department of Ecosystem Science/Plant Ecology for over 20 years. As Berlin’s honorary State Commissioner for Nature Conservation and Land Management, he was also involved in numerous green projects.
The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.
All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.
Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:
March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk https://toposcape.pl/
April 3. Ingo Kowarik https://www.tu.berlin/en/oekosys/about/team/ingo-kowarik
April 10. Jan van Schaik https://www.janvanschaik.com/
April 24. Taktyk https://taktyk.net/
Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.
The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
27.03.2025
Textiles 110: Open Lecture by an Artist Duo EJTECH “Being Metamaterial”
On March 27 at 4:30 p.m in room A501
Formed by Judit Eszter Kárpáti and Esteban de la Torre, EJTECH [ˈeɪtɛk’] is an polydisciplinary artist duo working with hyperphysical interfaces, programmable matter, and augmented textiles as media to investigate sensorial and conceptual relationships between subject and object, aiming to rediscover networks of emerging structures and immanent causality within realist metamaterialism.
Sound, space, light and time as material building blocks are paramount elements in their practice, analyzing the process of unfolding patterns between technology and the human body. Driven by material research, resulting in performative installations, multichannel sonic sculptures and dynamic surfaces. Influenced by the philosophy of New Materialism, Holonic Theory and Somaesthetics, EJTECH aims to provide tools for exploring liminality, thirdspace, and the elusive state of now.
Their work has been presented in galleries, festivals and exhibitions such as Japan Media Arts Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Sensorium Festival, Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Design Museum Holon, Ludwig Museum, Budapest Kunsthalle, LRRH Gallery, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Trafo House of Contemporary Arts, HayArt Center in Yerevan, Eastopics Gallery, Horizont Gallery, LOM Art Space, iii Instrument Inventors Initiative, Rewire among others.
EJTECH has created commissioned art pieces for cultural institutions and commercial brands such as DIOR, Blade Runner 2049, Dune: part two, Material ConneXion.
They regularly hold workshops and lectures on new media art and creative technology internationally. Founded the Soft Interfaces Lab in 2020 for further research in soft technology and material ecologies at MOME.
The artist duo currently works and lives in Budapest, Hungary.
Textile 110 is a series of events celebrating the 110th anniversary of EKA’s textile design education, as part of which a series of open lectures focusing on textiles will be held, a series of publications will be published, and a selection of works from the EKA Museum’s textile collection can be seen throughout the year.
The lecture series opens up the spectrum of diverse opportunities in the field of textiles, both in design, industry, and creative practices, bringing out different roles and methods of creation in the field through various invited guests.
Supported by the Research Fund of EKA and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia
Textiles 110: Open Lecture by an Artist Duo EJTECH “Being Metamaterial”
Thursday 27 March, 2025
On March 27 at 4:30 p.m in room A501
Formed by Judit Eszter Kárpáti and Esteban de la Torre, EJTECH [ˈeɪtɛk’] is an polydisciplinary artist duo working with hyperphysical interfaces, programmable matter, and augmented textiles as media to investigate sensorial and conceptual relationships between subject and object, aiming to rediscover networks of emerging structures and immanent causality within realist metamaterialism.
Sound, space, light and time as material building blocks are paramount elements in their practice, analyzing the process of unfolding patterns between technology and the human body. Driven by material research, resulting in performative installations, multichannel sonic sculptures and dynamic surfaces. Influenced by the philosophy of New Materialism, Holonic Theory and Somaesthetics, EJTECH aims to provide tools for exploring liminality, thirdspace, and the elusive state of now.
Their work has been presented in galleries, festivals and exhibitions such as Japan Media Arts Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Sensorium Festival, Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Design Museum Holon, Ludwig Museum, Budapest Kunsthalle, LRRH Gallery, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Trafo House of Contemporary Arts, HayArt Center in Yerevan, Eastopics Gallery, Horizont Gallery, LOM Art Space, iii Instrument Inventors Initiative, Rewire among others.
EJTECH has created commissioned art pieces for cultural institutions and commercial brands such as DIOR, Blade Runner 2049, Dune: part two, Material ConneXion.
They regularly hold workshops and lectures on new media art and creative technology internationally. Founded the Soft Interfaces Lab in 2020 for further research in soft technology and material ecologies at MOME.
The artist duo currently works and lives in Budapest, Hungary.
Textile 110 is a series of events celebrating the 110th anniversary of EKA’s textile design education, as part of which a series of open lectures focusing on textiles will be held, a series of publications will be published, and a selection of works from the EKA Museum’s textile collection can be seen throughout the year.
The lecture series opens up the spectrum of diverse opportunities in the field of textiles, both in design, industry, and creative practices, bringing out different roles and methods of creation in the field through various invited guests.
Supported by the Research Fund of EKA and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia
24.03.2025
Artist talk by Tris Vonna-Michell
Artist talk by Tris Vonna-Michell at 17:30 on March 4th in EKA, A-501
The artist is visiting EKA to run a workshop in the department of photography on March 24-26, 2025 together with Henrik Follesø Egeland.
Tris Vonna-Michell (1982) is an artist, publisher and guest professor in Expanded Performance and Installation at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm.
Recent works can be found in public collections such as Serralves Museum, Porto, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Tate Modern, London, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
Vonna-Michell has exhibited widely, most recently at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe.
Vonna-Michell’s work utilises a plethora of technical devices, modes of presentation and installational approaches, encompassing performance, audio recordings, slide projections, poetry, sound poetry, printed matter, photography and film. Since 2010 he has been co-running the publishing space and analogue studio Mount Analogue.
Artist talk by Tris Vonna-Michell
Monday 24 March, 2025
Artist talk by Tris Vonna-Michell at 17:30 on March 4th in EKA, A-501
The artist is visiting EKA to run a workshop in the department of photography on March 24-26, 2025 together with Henrik Follesø Egeland.
Tris Vonna-Michell (1982) is an artist, publisher and guest professor in Expanded Performance and Installation at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm.
Recent works can be found in public collections such as Serralves Museum, Porto, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Tate Modern, London, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
Vonna-Michell has exhibited widely, most recently at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe.
Vonna-Michell’s work utilises a plethora of technical devices, modes of presentation and installational approaches, encompassing performance, audio recordings, slide projections, poetry, sound poetry, printed matter, photography and film. Since 2010 he has been co-running the publishing space and analogue studio Mount Analogue.