Open Lectures

Erik Sigge will give an open lecture “The Worth of Welfare: A Historical Perspective on the Costing and Financing of Public Buildings”

on October 28 at 5 pm at EKA classroom A-501

Since 1993, Sweden has deregulated many of its welfare services, with a majority of the privatization taking place after 2007. In a historical perspective, the longstanding problem of being able to make decisions regarding policies and programs on the basis of social needs – the classic problem of a welfare economy – has gradually been formalized into questions of efficiency and competitiveness.

The talk will address some of the historical changes of welfare policies in relation to building construction and focus on understanding the hidden logics of welfare economics in order to elucidate how architecture and real estate are contingent on the economic policies of its time. Central to “the cost of architecture” is how costing and budgeting are activities that have changed from primarily being conducted in direct relationship to production expenses, to being done in relation to financial opportunities.

Erik Sigge is an architectural historian and preservationist, and Lecturer in theory and history of architecture at the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, Lund University in Lund, Sweden. He is Head of Unit of Form, Design, Culture and primarily teaches courses in the bachelor program. Erik gained his PhD in architectural history from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and holds a master degree in Historic Preservation from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York (M.Sc. 2003).

The lecture is organised by Urban Studies Curriculum.

On November 25 at 4:30 p.m., Hanna Norrna’s lecture “Metamorphosis in Weaving” will take place in room A501. 

The lecture focuses on creative practice centered around silk.

Norrna grows her own silkworms, watches the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies and processes their cocoons into silk, which in turn is woven into fabrics. Mythologies, spirituality and materiality intertwine in his practice.

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Hanna Norrna works with weaving as an alchemical formula and ritual gesture – an intertwining of silent knowledge and spirituality, mythology and materiality. Her practice touches how craft, passion, vulnerability, body and sanctity are connected and claims its space.

At the core of Norrna’s weaving process is the silkworm. An originally wild species, domesticated for thousands of years for human needs and productions. In the summers, she breeds silkworms in her home and follow the caterpillars’ growing transformation into butterflies. She processes their cocoons into thread and dye them with symbolic plants.

In her loom, the home-grown silk is placed into systems of bindings and meetings between metallic and animal materials. Layers and fields with various centers of gravity and density grow. In exhibitions, the woven material extends into spatial and site-specific installations.

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.

On October 30 at 4:30 p.m., the lecture “The making of Inspiration” by Hanna Kaisa Korolainen will be held in room A501

The lecture focuses on the artist’s research and opens up his work, which extends from textiles to other media as well.

Hanna Kaisa Korolainen is a designer, artist and lecturer at Aalto University. He defended his doctoral thesis The making of Inspiration at Aalto University in 2022.

Korolainen is a visual artist whose diverse production includes textiles, glass and ceramics. She has been living and working in Paris, Beijing, Brussels and Helsinki. In addition to her artistic career, she teaches in Aalto University of Arts, Design and Architecture, and writes about art and design.
Korolainen’s artworks have been presented both in her natal Finland and abroad, consequently her works belong to several public and private collections. Her recent exhibitions include Emma Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Design Museum of Helsinki and Hvitträsk, a historical Art Nouveau site near Helsinki.
Korolainen is fascinated by the idea of time travelling to a fictional past. For her this dialogue between the past and the present represents an inexhaustible source of inspiration. In her creative practice, Korolainen is constantly influenced by old craft techniques; she is interested in updating them for the world of today.

“Sketching is the heart of everything; it is the decisive moment of the process. I try to work as much as possible with my hands and as little as possible with the computer.”

On Thursday, 24 October at 17.00, Philipp Teufel, Professor Emeritus of Exhibition Design at the Peter Behrens School of Art (PBSA), University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf, will give a lecture on Japanese aesthetics, material culture and philosophical approach to life. In the lecture, Teufel will present a travelling exhibition of the same name curated by himself, which opened this summer at the The Japan Cultural Institute in Cologne and will open in Tallinn in spring 2025. The lecture will be introduced by Masayo Ave, a Japanese designer and former professor of product design at the EKA.

The exhibition “Japanese Happiness” presents the joy that the Japanese experience through aesthetic everyday objects. To put together the exhibition, Philipp Teufel asked dozens of curators, artists, philosophers and other creatives well-versed in Japanese culture to propose objects that they believe best represent the symbiosis of everyday objects, a sense of beauty and well-being. The result is a broad-based exhibition of Japanese product design and applied art, including historical folk art, contemporary high-tech design and phenomena from contemporary mass culture. For example, traditional brooms, bonsai scissors, kimono and a high-tech titanium tumbler are among the curator’s choices. Many of these items are made with the utmost dedication in small Japanese factories, employing highly skilled craftsmen. As well as the form and use of the objects, the exhibition focuses on the way in which they are made – the touch of the master’s hand.

Professor Philipp Teufel studied visual communication and scenography at the HfG Gmünd University of Applied Sciences in Schwäbisch Gmünd. From 1985 to 1995, he was a partner at the concept design agency in Frankfurt am Main. Until 2007, Teufel was a partner at the nowakteufelknyrim design studio, and from 2008 to 2017, he was managing director of the malsyteufel studio. As artistic consultant for scenography, he supported the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace from 2010 to 2015. Philipp Teufel has been teaching and researching in the field of 3D communication at Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences for more than 25 years and is currently a member of the Federal Ministry of Finance’s Art Advisory Board. He has also been a jury member of Red Dot since 2015 and currently curates and designs exhibitions on the Anthropocene and on green urban living (“Grüntopia” and “Transition Now”).

The exhibition is a joint project between PBSA Exhibition Design and the EKA  Interior Architecture, supported by the Identity Foundation, a Düsseldorf-based institution promoting philosophical discourse. The exhibition design was the result of three workshops led by Japanese designer Masayo Ave. The MA students had to create a unique travelling exhibition, which involved the creation, production and installation of a holistic exhibition architecture and modular design, as well as the sensory communication of the content. The exhibition was first exhibited in Cologne at the Japan Cultural Institute from 24 May to 31 July 2024. In spring 2025, the exhibition will travel to Estonia, opening on 6 March in the ARS project space. The Tallinn exhibition will also be set up by students from EKA and PBSA. For this purpose, a workshop will be held at the EKA on 21-25 October under the guidance of Masayo Ave. In autumn 2025, the exhibition will travel to Japan.

Everyone from the fields of architecture, design, art, media and art research interested in the questions of exhibition design and exhibiting design are welcome to join! The lecture will be in English and is free of charge. Thanks for the support from the Erasmus+ programme.

Further information:

Gregor Taul
gregor.taul@artun.ee
Visiting lecturer
Department of Interior Architecture
Faculty of Architecture
Estonian Academy of Arts

Mare Tralla’s first public solo performance, Breaking Illusions (1993), and her most recent performative video work, Becoming a Unicorn, exhibited last month in Edinburgh, represent two significant milestones in her artistic journey. In her first performance, Tralla began with a quiet, symbolic action of destroying the perceived notion of a (young) woman / herself. In many ways, Becoming a Unicorn continues this exploration, presenting a self-ironic and humorous act of creating a queer self. Between these two works lies a journey of feminist inquiry, spanning art, activism, and life.

Mare Tralla (b 1967, Tallinn) is queer-feminist artist and activist. Her professional art career started in Estonia in the early 90s, where she was one of the very few conducting a feminist revolution in the field of contemporary art. Drawing from her personal history and everyday experience her practice was in direct critical response to how the transition period of Eastern European societies affected women. In her art practice she employs and combines a variety of media: video, photography, performance, interactive media, painting and various traditional crafts. As an activist she has been involved with Act Up, London, Catwalk4Power, No Pride in War coalition and LGSMigrants. Her recent performative projects deal with queer experiences, gender issues, investigate sustainability and economics. Currently Mare Tralla lives and works in Edinburgh.

Recent exhibitions include: ‘Duck and Cover’, Vabaduse Gallery Tallinn (2024), ‘In the Name of Desire’, Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga (2024); ‘We Don’t Do This. Intimacy, Norms and Fantasies in Baltic Art’, MO Museum, Vilnius (2024);  ‘Same Subject Continued’, Edinburgh Palette, Edinburgh (2023);  ‘Consequences’, Out of A Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh (2022); ‘Atishoo, A-tishoo, We All Fall Down’, EKKM, Tallinn (2019); ‘Machine Divas’, steirischerherbst’20, Schaumbad, Graz (2019);  ’Woman&Woman’, City Gallery, Pärnu, 2019; ‘The X-Files [Registry of the Nineties]’, Art Museum of Estonia KUMU, Tallinn, (2018-2019); ‘Give Up the Ghost. Baltic Triennial 13’, Kim?, Riga, (2018);  ‘Bastard Voices’, Baltic Triennial 13, evening of performances, South London Gallery, London, (2018); ‘Women’, Threshold Artspace, Perth, UK (2017-2018).

Recent text contributions in books: Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms, ed. Katy Deepwell, Valiz 2020; Watched! Surveillance, Art and Photography, eds. Louise Wolthers, Dragana Vujanovic, Niclas Östlind, 2016; re.act.feminism a performing archive, eds. Bettina Knaup and Beatrice Ellen Stammer, 2014; quite queer, ed. Claudia Reiche, 2014

www.tralla.net 

The talk will be held in English.

Design specialist Steinar Valade-Amland will hold a public lecture on Tuesday, October 29.

Design has slowly and perhaps unfortunately slipped away from one of its historical hallmarks; that of safeguarding the aesthetical value of solutions by giving them form and beauty. Many designers dream about being allowed to focus more on the aesthetical resonance of their work. The need to develop more compelling – and at the same time more responsible products, services and systems, could be their big chance of doing so because trade-off design can never be utilitarian, or spreadsheet-driven. Design to foster more responsible choices and a more sustainable way of life hence must be more attractive, more captivating, more fun or more enriching than what is already out there.

For more than a decade, Steinar Valade-Amland has acted as an independent consultant, working for a wide range of private sector companies, NGOs and public sector organizations, as well as for the European Commission since he stepped down after twelve years as CEO of the Association of Danish Designers in 2012. He has written numerous articles for trade magazines, contributed to several books – including the “Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design”, and played an active role in processes focusing on design policy, design practice and design education – in particular on a European level. He’s the author of “INNOLITERACY – From Design Thinking to Tangible Change”, published in Denmark in 2016, and in English by Business Expert Press in 2018, as well as co-author of “Design: A Business Case – Thinking, Leading and Managing by Design” together with Brigitte Borja de Mozota, published in 2020. Re-published as a tool-book under the name “Strategic Design for a Responsible Future” in collaboration with designer Hervé Collignon in February 2024.

Artist talk by Family Connection

For the exhibition Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds (curated by Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska, until Oct 20 on show at the Tallinn Art Hall Lasnamäe Pavilion) Family Connection has researched Black people present in historic Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian popular cultural and brought them in conversation with each other. From Mauritius, the patron saint of the Blackheads Brotherhood, to Eewar, the Jamaican maroon in Lydia Koidula’s “Juudit or the Last Maroons of the Jamaica Island”. In their artist talk two members from the collective – Rudsel Martinus and Quinsy Gario – will present about their works and discuss the themes present in the collective’s presentation. Martinus will be presenting via zoom from the Caribbean island Curaçao and Gario will be present in Tallinn. As part of their contribution to the exhibition, Gario will also be performing on Saturday, Oct 19, 18.00 at the House of the Blackheads. During the talk he will also speak about that performance titled In the Presence of Blues Part II.

Family Connection is an artist collective founded in 2005 from Curaçao and the Netherlands. The members are part of the Martinus family who were based in the Buena Vista neighborhood on Curaçao. For each presentation the participating artists vary. In Tallinn works are presented from Glenda Martinus, the co-founder of the collective; her brother Rudsel Martinus; and the children of Glenda Martinus – Jörgen Gario and Quinsy Gario. The group has worked together to present an installation consisting of paintings, audio, video and sculpture. Their work is concerned with decoloniality and presenting speculative histories. The subject matter differs per exhibition, but the collective actively relates their positioning in the Caribbean with the local context of their presentations. Previously the collective has presented work in Riga (Latvia), Berlin (Germany), Utrecht (the Netherlands), Eindhoven (the Netherlands) and on Curaçao.

‘Contemporary Art and Context’ is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art.

The artist talk will be held in English, everyone is welcome to join!

The Open Lecture series of the EKA Faculty of Architecture will take place in the autumn of 2024 under the general title S*cial – Values in the built realm.

The lecturers will focus on the ongoing shift in planning practice, where considerations other than pure economic viability increasingly play a role in decision-making.

On October 31 Christian Pagh will hold the lecture “Mission Neighbourhood – (Re)forming communities”.

The neighbourhood is a fundamental physical and social horizon for human life. Yet, the intricate mix of relations that makes up a neighbourhood is rarely given the attention it deserves in policy making or urban planning. As Director and Chief Curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale from 2021-2024, Christian Pagh dedicated his curatorship to exploring neighbourhoods as a horizon for reforming urban and societal development. The lecture – and book – Mission Neighbourhood – (Re)forming Communities, offers insight into how to form more sustainable, diverse and meaningful neighbourhoods, and explores the urgent urban issues of our time – from social infrastructure, nature and biodiversity, to mobility and urban governance – from a neighbourhood perspective. Intent on inspiring action, the lecture includes best practice projects, perspectives and hands-on advice from Pagh’s experience in the intersections between urban planning, design and culture.

Mattias Malk, curator of the autumn lecture series, PhD student and visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture, describes the main theme of the lecture series as follows:

Inclusion, the valorisation of social space and the changing role of architects, especially in the public sector, are gaining ground in Europe’s spatial development, but things are still moving slowly in Estonia. So far, our economic growth has been based on environmental degradation and, despite rigid market-driven planning, we are among the weakest in the EU in resource use. However, the foundations of a smarter spatial policy, which is more useful than profit, are still undefined and untested.

One of the aims of the lecture series is to define and rehabilitate the word ‘social’ in Estonian spatial policy, including the social responsibility mentioned in the new planned public procurement. All the invited lecturers deal with the issues of space and sociality in their daily work and will share their experiences of the changing role of architects through examples.

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.

Schedule of the autumn 2024 lectures:

September 5 at 6 pm Jonas Janke (architects, b+)

September 19 at 6 pm Elina Alatalo (architect, Tampere University)

October 31 at 6 pm Christian Pagh (curator, Oslo Architecture Triennale)

November 28 at 6 pm Petra Marko (architect, Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava)

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

“Paljassaare Palimpsest. A journey Through the Interstices of Trash and Treasure.”

On October 18 from 13:00 to 17:00 in Paljassaare

The first-year urban studies students have once again spent half a semester exploring Paljassaare peninsula – the very edge of the capital where today the entire city’s waste is directed… but also where the new focal point of the future Tallinn, the contemporary urban centre of the Nordic capital, is imagined. This Friday, October 18, the students invite everyone who is interested to join them on a journey between trash and treasures in the (post)industrial heart of Paljassaare, to explore what processes and value judgments shape today’s space.

Gathering on October 18 at 13:00 in front of the Maleva 2A building.

The approximately 5-kilometer journey takes place outdoors in changing landscape and weather conditions and ends around a campfire near Pikakari beach. The event is in English.

Things to bring along:

• snacks + drinks
• headphones
• a mug
• warm clothing
• waterproof footwear

More information on urban studies social media: https://www.facebook.com/urbantallinn

On Monday, 21 October 2024 at 17:00, artist talks by Berit Schneidereit and Saskia Fischer will take place at EKA A-501. The artists will be in Tallinn to conduct masterclasses in the photography department of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Berit Schneidereit’s artistic work revolves around the question of the nature of photography and the physical and bodily act of looking. Rooted in photography, her practice extends to spatial installation and sculpture. Using a variety of techniques, Berit Schneidereit creates constellations of closeness and distance, reality and suggestion, with which she creates a constant oscillation between image space and reality.

Berit Schneidereit (b. 1988, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she graduated as a master student in 2017. She has been exhibited at Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf; G2 Kunsthalle in Leipzig; Kunsthalle Recklinghausen; CCA in Andratx, Mallorca; at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein; de Warande in Turnhout, Belgium and Goethe Institut Paris, among others. She received the Stiftung Kunstfonds work grant, the dhCS-studio grant from the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, as well as the van-Rinsum grant for the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She lives and works in Düsseldorf.

https://www.beritschneidereit.de/

instagram: beritschneidereit

Saskia Fischer is an interdisciplinary artist working with images, objects, texts, and environments.

Her research is concerned with the paradigms that form and inform landscape as a reflection of cultural and social values. She examines the ways Western understanding separates anthropological urbanity from a colonial concept of nature, reinforcing problematic notions of femininity and what is ‚natural‘. Her working motifs draw on transitory architectures and the fabricated barrier between nature and the commons. This interdisciplinary research is expressed through photographs and installations synthesizing diverse media blending materials and motives from architecture, mobility, urban planning, landscape design, horticulture, gender studies and art history.

Currently working as a lecturer at the Mathilde Planck Stiftung and State Academy of Art and Design, Stuttgart, DE. She has obtained MFA at the Goldsmiths, University of London, UK 2016 – 2018 and studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen, DE, 2010 – 2015.

https://www.saskia-fischer.com

https://www.instagram.com/___saskia_/