Open Lectures

Online roundtable

Since February 2022, many Russian Imperial and Soviet statues and symbols have been removed from public space, accompanied by heated discussions in the local (social) media. The nature of the actions varies, but in several countries political rather than expert decisions have been the guiding force, with an immediate effect on the actual monuments of art, architecture and other cultural artefacts.

The international audience, at the same time, even in the neighbouring regions, has access to very few of those local debates – each country in Eastern and Central Europe has been handling similar kinds of issues on their own. To analyse these developments in more depth, a comparative approach and a longer historical perspective is needed. The situation is changing quickly, and new monuments are lost almost daily. Rather than the monuments themselves, this round table, firstly, seeks to document the local-level discussions, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the current situation as well as its broader contexts. Secondly, we want to learn from each other by gathering successful examples of artistic and other transdisciplinary interventions to safeguard or reinterpret those monuments.

The speakers include Linda Kaljundi, Riin Alatalu and Kristina Jõekalda (all Estonian Academy of Arts), Sofia Dyak, Iryna Sklokina (both Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv) and Mykola Homanyuk (Kherson State University, Ukraine), Maija Rudovska (independent scholar/curator, Latvia), Oxana Gourinovitch (Belarus/RWTH Aachen University), Olga Juutistenaho (Finland/Technical University of Berlin), Stephanie Herold (Technical University of Berlin, Germany), Dragan Damjanović, Patricia Počanić and Sanja Delić (all University of Zagreb, Croatia), Nini Palavandishvili (independent scholar/curator, Georgia), Małgorzata Łukianow (University of Warsaw, Poland), Linara Dovydaitytė (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania) and Ivo Mijnssen (independent scholar/journalist, Austria).

The online roundtable can be followed via live video stream on the Facebook page of the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, Estonian Academy of Arts on Tuesday, 16th May 2023, from 14.00 to ca. 19.00 (Tallinn time, EEST).

If you wish to get involved as a discussant and receive a Zoom link, please let us know here by 15th May.

More information: Kristina Jõekalda (kristina.joekalda@artun.ee), Linda Kaljundi (linda.kaljundi@artun.ee).

GD Lecture Series is organized by EKA graphic design department, where various graphic designers are invited to speak about their life and practice.

Graphic designer and DJ Eleonora Šljanda will be visiting on April 4.

Eleonora has studied at both the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

The lecture will start at 5 p.m. at Estonian Academy of Arts in room C304.

Histories and memories of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Baltic States with its different colonialisms are entangled with the uneasy relations between the past and present. How can we acknowledge this history as layered and nuanced? And which methods could help us to address its blind spots and silences as well as solidarities?

In this presentation, Margaret Tali will introduce the transdisciplinary project “Communicating Difficult Pasts” (2019-2024) and focus on its different ways of engaging artists to answer these questions. At the heart of this collaborative project has been creating synergies between humanities scholarship, artistic research and curation in order to learn from each others’ methods and approaches in order to sharpen and enrich our perspectives to history writing. The exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” co-curated with Ieva Astahovska in its framework at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2022) and in the Latvian National Museum of Art (2020) presented its results to a broader public. During the lecture, Margaret Tali will introduce some of the works included by Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev, Jaana Kokko, and Quinsy Gario & Jörgen Gario.

Margaret Tali is an art historian and curator, who works as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Institute of Art History and Visual Culture. Her research interests include exhibition histories, curating difficult heritage, relationships of visual art and handicraft, and histories of the art museum. She holds a PhD from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Absence and Difficult Knowledge in Contemporary Art Museums (2018) and co-editor, with Ieva Astahovska, of the Memory Studies special issue Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories (2/2022). Together with Astahovska she has initiated the project Communicating Difficult Pasts, and as a part of which she co-curated the exhibition Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds in the Latvian National Museum of Art (2019) and Lithuanian National Gallery of Art (2022).
margarettali.net

A series of open architectural lectures will be held this 2023 spring under the title “Triggers of Architecture”. The theme brings architects and theoreticians to Tallinn, who analyze the root causes of architecture and the means of making it.

On April 13, 6 pm, Pascal Bronner will take the main hall stage with a lecture “57 Milligrams of Graphite”.

In this lecture he will take us to the journey through his work to date and provide an overview of his research into the ‘Droame’ – a composite realm that connects the physicality of drawing to the different forms of cerebral musings that the process uncovers. “In an effort to construct real spaces made entirely of graphite on paper, I investigate the seductiveness of this metaphysical world alongside its physical manifestation – both of which exist in a borderland between the miniaturised space on the drawing board and in the mind. I have begun to survey and capture these graphite landscapes in microscopic detail through the construction and assembly of various devices.” – Bronner describes his working process.

Pascal Bronner is a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Greenwich. He was born in Malaysia, grew up in Germany and moved to the UK in 2000 where he still lives and works today. In London, he studied fine art at Central St. Martins, and architecture at the Bartlett, UCL. Pascal was awarded the RIBA Bronze Medal Commendation and the Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing at Part 2. He was also a recipient of the Fitzroy Robinson Drawing Prize and the Banister Fletcher Medal. Pascal is a co-founder of FleaFollyArchitects, and is currently undertaking a PHD at RMIT, where he examines and dissects his perpetual drawing practice.

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge.

The lecture series is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curated by Andres Ojari

www.avatudloengud.ee

Additional information:

Tiina Tammet

E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

Tel. +372 642 0071

On April 1, the EKA Pop-Up Shop selling modern design and new art will open on the shopping street of Telliskivi Creative City, 

The original designs and works of art of the students of the Estonian Academy of Arts on sale in the EKA Pop-Up Shop.

More than forty students bring out their best, latest, most sustainable design and art. Among the many EKA artists, the pop-up shop also features the works of already recognized authors. Among others, fashion student Cärol Ott, laureate of the 2021 Wiiralt scholarship, ceramicist and jewelry artist Elize Hiiop, accessory designer Sandra Luks, performance artist and Master’s student in EKA ceramics, and Keithy Kuuspu will present their creations in the store.

During April workshops and master classes for city residents, tourists, people from abroad will be held. One can find creations varying from graphics, drawings, paintings and photographs to clothing design, accessories, jewellery, ceramics and blacksmithing.

Designs and art works by the following authors will be present:

Markus Vernik
Kaisa Uik
Oliver Udeküll
Keithy Kuuspu
Helen Griffiths
Visa Eino
Triin Türnpuu
Sergei Saprykin
Evridiki Papaiakovou
Daria Dementeva
Kaileen Palmsaar
Natalia Mirzoian
Alp Eren Özalp
Helena Pass
Helen Tiits
Mirjam Aun
Riina Lii Parve
Elisa Margot Winters
Sirje Järv
Mia Felic
Anna Ovtšinnikova
Piibe Tomp
Erle Nemvalts
Cristopher Siniväli
Maria Elise Remme
Valeria Poljakova
Cärol Ott
Anu Kadri Uustalu
Samuel Eff Markkus Savimägi
Elize Hiiop
Villu Mustkivi
Liis Tisler
Zoe Koerbunner
Rita Volkov
Sandra Luks
Heli Haav
Rita Lenore
Valdek Laur
Gontsugova
Morris Motel
Elis Liivo
Kärt Heinvere

The EKA Pop-Up Shop opens on April 1 at 11:00 a.m. and will remain open until the end of the month. 

Opening hours: Mon–Fri 11–19 and Sat, Sun 11–17

Follow the information on the EKA Pop-Up Shop Facebook page

www.artun.ee; EKA üld FB; EKA Pop-Up Poe FB

Info: 

Piibe Tomp

piibe.tomp@artun.ee

Tel 5241780 

Kasia Fudakowski does an artist talk in which she talks about artist talks which she has done in the past, thereby dissecting and examining both her work, and her approach to speaking about her work, while commenting on the unwritten contract between performer and audience. At least, that is very much her intention.

Kasia Fudakowski (b. 1985, London, UK) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, graduating in 2006 before moving to Berlin. Her diverse and playful practice, which includes sculpture, film, performance, and writing, explores social riddles through material encounters, surreal logic and comic theory. Her ever-expanding, life-long sculpture Continuouslessness, (2017–ongoing), employs a fixed modular system of connecting panels to allow for complete sculptural freedom within its rigid framework, and is intended to reach completion only in the event of the artist’s death. Often referring to the allure and danger of binary categorization and the subsequent absurdity that it unfolds in our political and social climate, her work reveals the discrepancies amongst cultural norms.

Her interest in the limitations of language is explored through her ongoing film series Word Count, (2016–ongoing) which takes as its premise a globally limiting law on the amount of permitted spoken words. Where she employs comic mechanisms, the tragic is never far behind, so that her work often hovers between the horrific and the comic. Frequently the target of her own attacks, she explores her own role as an artist and the stereotype thereof with both a seriousness and irreverence typical of her approach. Her long-term infatuation with failure, and redefining success, has resulted in a number of tragi-comic performances and pieces of writing.
kasiakasia.com

The talk will be in English. Kasia Fudakowski is in EKA to give a workshop to the Contemporary Art MA students and have tutorials with students from Graphic Design MA.

On Tuesday, March 14 at 17.30, Amsterdam-based artist Riet Wijnen will speak about her current research into the life and practice of painter and sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017), one of the first abstract artists in Lebanon.

Choucair’s interests included genetic science, the infinite, the Arabic poetry form Qasida and Sufi philosophy. According to her, the Islamic rejection of the pictorial image led to the essential search for what one wanted to express, and was for her a fundamental way to understand Arabic intellectual thinking which she translated a.o. into abstract sculptures and paintings.

Wijnen visited the estate in Choucair’s last apartment in the Qatari neighbourhood in Beirut. There she was confronted by a large amount of works, photos and documents in French and Arabic, languages she does not speak, write nor read. This visit led to her development of non-linguistic research methods, an inquiry into how one might “speak nearby”* and position themselves in the work. Wijnen will share works and tools currently in development: a publication, sculptural dinnerware and a series of fermentation pots. These works will also feed into a fictional conversation with Choucair, which is part of a long term cycle, since 2015, titled Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction.
*Trinh T. Minh–ha

Riet Wijnen (b. 1988, Venray, NL, lives in Amsterdam) is an artist whose practice involves sculpture, photograms, text, woodcuts and more recently type design. She is interested in incomplete histories of abstraction, what and who are already registered in history, along with the known and unknown ways of making history. To do this, she looks to elders, and in her work hosts practitioners from the past and present who have been active in the field of art during early modernism, or in science, philosophy, education and activism. She brings the practitioners together in fictional conversations and sculptures to reconsider histories and better understand what comes next. Wijnen uses perception, language and organisational structures.

This research comes together in the cycle Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction (2015) and publications related to language and biographies of female identifying modernists that provide sources for Wijnen’s practice while functioning independently. Publications include: Saloua Raouda Choucair (2023), Homophone Dictionary (2019), Grace Crowley (2019), Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif (reprint and translation) (2014) and Marlow Moss (2013).

Wijnen has had solo exhibitions at venues including Kunstverein Milano (2022), Manifold Books, Amsterdam (2019); Lumen Travo, Amsterdam (2018); P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2016) and Dolores, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2015). She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2017–18), the Van Doesburg Huis in Paris (2022), EKWC in Oisterwijk, NL (2023) and has participated in groups shows at, among others, SculptureCenter, New York; 21st Biennale of Sydney; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA, Portland; Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht; and Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm. Wijnen teaches in the Graphic Design and TXT department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
rietwijnen.nl

The lecture is in English. Riet Wijnen is in EKA to have tutorials with students from Contemporary Art MA and Graphic Design MA programs.

On March 22, at 18:00, Helmut Völter’s open lecture “Cloud Studies”  in auditorium A-501.

In this illustrated talk, Berlin-based artist and graphic designer, Helmut Völter, will speak in depth about two projects, Cloud Studies and The Movement of Clouds Around Mount Fuji.

As a research project, Cloud Studies has taken both book and exhibition form as it probes the field of scientific cloud photography. The book follows the history of cloud imagery from the Swiss Alps in the 19th century to the first weather satellite in 1960. The Movement of Clouds Around Mount Fuji traces the work of the Japanese physicist Masanao Abe, who set up an observatory near Mount Fuji in 1927 in order to observe and document the shapes and movements of the mountain’s clouds using film and photography.

Helmut Völter is visiting EKA as a guest lecturer with “Among Clouds”, a MACA workshop week course.

On March 9 at 6 pm, Marcel Smets will give the first lecture of the lecture series – The modern landscape of infrastructure.

As primary public investments in our societies are devoted to infrastructure, we need to consider roads, canals, railways, trams, cycle paths, etc., not merely as means of transport but rather as prime urban/ public spaces. For this reason, the lecture intends to sketch out how infrastructure design initially transformed from an architectural to an engineering project, and to clarify why this evolution is reversed today. Reviewing significant projects worldwide of recently implemented projects in transport infrastructure, it advances four important paradigms that dominate the landscape of infrastructure design today: 1. hiding its presence; 2. beautifying its form; 3. appreciating it as vehicle for urban improvement; 4. deploying it as the driving force for urbanization.

On Friday, March 10, at 11:30 am, will be Marcel Smets’ book “Foundations of Urban Design” (2022) launch and an open seminar with 4th-year architecture and urban planning students on the 4th floor of the atrium (A400) in EKA.

Everyone is welcome!

Marcel Smets is an architect and urbanist and emeritus professor of urban design at the University of Leuven. As academic, he taught urban design at the University of Leuven (B) and Harvard GSD. As urbanist, he was the head designer for certain important conversions: the Leuven Railway Station area, the Isle of Nantes, three complex nodes of the Antwerp Ring coverage project – and he directed fundamental projects for Brussels, Rouen, Genoa, Oporto, Conegliano. As scholar he published many articles (Archis, Casabella, Lotus, Planning Perspectives, Storia Urbana, Topos, Urbanisme and Urbanistica Etc.) and books: most recently The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure (2010–2016, with K. Shannon) and Foundations of Urban Design (2022). As public servant, he acted as spatial Advisor for the City of Leuven (1995–2001) and as Flemish State Architect (2005–2010).

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge.

The lecture series is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curated by Andres Ojari

www.avatudloengud.ee

https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

Thomas Eschenbach, development director of Priedemann Facade-Lab GmbH, will hold an open architecture lecture on energy-efficient facades in the EKA hall on March 9 at 4:00 pm.

The presentation of an engineer with 25 years of experience in the facade industry “Active Cavity Transition (ACT) Facade – transparency made energy-efficient” deals with effective solutions for modern building facades in all aspects. The architectural features of the facades, space efficiency, energy load, construction efficiency, lighting and temperature effects, as well as renovation solutions that a modern architect faces when designing, are under consideration.

ACT technology combines the advantages of traditional heat-retaining facades made of aluminum profiles with modern lighting, air exchange and temperature solutions in a new system that reduces investments and costs.

Priedemann Fasade-LAB is a competence center that participates in the development of non-traditional technologies and, together with research institutions and professional associations, guides the future of facade construction in practice.

The lecture is intended for architecture students and professionals. The lecture takes place in the large auditorium of EKA, is in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties.