Open Lectures

Photography artists Peter Fraser and Esther Hovers will hold their artist talks at 18:00 on Tuesday, October in A-501 at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Both artists are in Tallinn to hold a week-long masterclasses in the department of photography, Estonian Academy of Arts.

Peter Fraser is a fine art photographer who has been at the forefront of colour photography as artistic enquiry since the early 1980s. His works involve an intense philosophical focus on the matter and materials encountered in the everyday, frequently addressing the question ‘What is Real?’ in conjunction with changing societal preoccupations.

Born in 1953 in Cardiff, Wales, Fraser graduated in photography from Manchester Polytechnic in 1976. He began working with a Plaubel Makina camera in 1982, which led to an exhibition with William Eggleston at the Arnolfini in Bristol in 1984. Fraser went on to travel to the USA in the same year, spending nearly two months with William Eggleston. It was during this time that he decided to commit his life’s energies to exploring the expressive possibilities of colour photography.

Fraser was shortlisted for the International Citibank Photography Prize in 2004, and in 2014 awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society. He has exhibited internationally for nearly 40 years, with notable solo exhibitions held at the Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2002, PhotoEspana 2017, Camden Art Centre 2018, and Tate St Ives, which was the first Tate Retrospective for a living British Photographer in 2013 accompanied by a major Tate Monograph.

Recent major exhibitions include Mathematics, Photo Espana, Madrid 2017, and at Camden Arts Centre, London in 2018. In 2021 he received a Pollock Krasner Foundation Award to make new work across Europe in a time of increasing anxiety and apprehension for the future, and has been photographing in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Crete and Estonia for this series. He has had 12 books of his work published since 1988, referenced on his website. His works are held in many public collections including the Arts Council of England, Tate, London, the British Council, Fondation A Stichting, Bruxelles, Mast Foundation, Bologna, Yale Centre for British Art, USA and Private Collections worldwide.

https://www.peterfraser.net
INSTAGRAM peter_fraser9

Esther Hovers investigates how power, politics and control and exercised through urban planning and the use of public space in her artistic practice. She was trained as a photographer but creates installations in which photographs, drawings, text and film play an equal part.

Esther Hovers has exhibited at Aperture Foundation in New York City; Lianzhou Photo Festival in China; and Foam Photography Museum of Amsterdam, et al. Her work has been published in The New York Times; The Washington Post; M – Le Magazine du Monde and Wired, among other publications.

In 2019 Hovers was an artist-in-residence at NARS Foundation (The New York Art Residency and Studios) in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently based in the Netherlands.

https://estherhovers.com
INSTAGRAM estherhovers

David K. Ross and Rebecca Duclos (EKA Visiting Lecturers, MACA, Museum Studies) recently travelled across northern Ukraine to visit 8 arts schools in Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv. 

David will be showing images from this trip and discussing some of the pressing issues facing arts eduction in Ukraine at this moment.

On October 25, as part of the EKA Ceramics 100, the lecture From Hand to Hand by professor Yukinori Yamamura, a multidisciplinary artist with Japanese ceramics education, will be held for a wider audience in room A-501.

The lecture is held in English.

Yukinori Yamamura is an artist born in Kobe, Japan in 1972 and a professor at the Osaka University of Art, who has gained fame and recognition both in Japan and on the international art scene with his prolific exhibition activities.

Yukinori Yamamura: “Up until now, I have visited and created works in various countries and regions, Norway, Finland, Estonia, America, Thailand, Iran, Kenya, Germany, South Korea, China. I have searched for matreials and expression methods based on the history and culture of the land, and through encounters and exhanges with people and with the help of many people, he have realized my works. I value the process and the diverse relationships and connections that are created through my works.”

On Thursday, October 19 at 18.00 Eva Weinmayr will talk about her practice and the social and political agency of artists’ publishing. Speaking from an intersectional feminist perspective the talk’s focus is not on the commodity genre “art publication”, but on the collective processes, exchanges, and relationships such critical publishing practices can enable.

The lecture will take place at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

Eva Weinmayr conducts practice based research at the intersection of art, critical pedagogy and institutional analysis. In 2020 she published her doctoral thesis, titled Noun to Verb, on a MediaWiki. This research is concerned with the micro-politics of publishing and entangled notions of authorship from an intersectional, feminist perspective. (HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, SE)

As interims chair of faculty Art and Education at Munich Art Academy (2022-23) she co-initiated together with students kritilab, an open source platform for discrimination-critical teaching in the arts. From 2019 to 22 she co-led the EU-funded collective research and study programme “Teaching to Transgress Toolbox” inspired by US activist, teacher and theorist bell hooks (with erg, Brussels, BE). She is currently Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University (UK) with Ecologies of Dissemination​​​​​​, a collaboration with artist Femke Snelting seeking strategies for dissemination and a politics of re-use that acknowledge the tensions between feminist methodologies, decolonial knowledge practices and principles of Open Access (HDK-Valand, 2023-24).

Eva Weinmayr lectures widely and works with art and activist spaces (SALT Research Istanbul, MayDay Rooms London, Showroom London, Kunstverein München, Steirischer Herbst Graz) as well as established art institutions (National Art Gallery Warsaw, Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Madrid, Biennale di Venezia).

Recent artistic research-based projects include “Teaching the Radical Catalog – a Syllabus” (2021-22, with Lucie Kolb), “Library of Inclusions and Omissions” (2016-20), “The Piracy Project” (2010-15, with Andrea Francke), AND Publishing (2010-ongoing, with Rosalie Schweiker).

Eva Weinmayr’s lecture is co-organized by MA Graphic Design and MA Contemporary Art programs.

In autumn 2023, the open architectural lectures will take place under the title Mobile Masters. The theme brings architects and theorists to Tallinn, who analyse architecture’s flexibility and the mobile practices of architects, spatial designers and artists.

On October 26, at 6 pm Berlin-based architect, designer and carpenter Alexander Römer will be on the EKA main hall stage in Tallinn with the lecture Convivial Ground.

Alexander Römer initiated the international design-build network ConstructLab in 2012 as a member of the former EXYZT collective (2005–2013). ConstructLab is a laboratory for action research, constructive experimentation and interdisciplinary creation.

ConstructLab takes a dynamic approach to uniting concepts, realisation and activation of project situations. Breaking with traditional divisions of labour, the organisation engages a team of multitalented artists and designers – as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, film makers, photographers, curators, educators, and web developers – who carry the creative process from the drafting table into the field, enabling concept and design to respond to the possibilities and constraints posed by an environment, it’s people and utilisation.

Alexander introduces his lecture in the following words:

Construction is fundamentally a collaborative activity. In this talk, the collaborative aspects of construction processes are examined from different perspectives. In the design and planning process a lot of different expertise comes together, in the construction itself different trades are involved and during the construction there are situations where in sometimes very short moments, e.g. when straightening a roof truss, a lot of hands are needed. A planning and construction process is complex and can only succeed in teamwork. In addition, a broad community is created through participation processes in the building process, and through this participation, a community that cares about the building itself.

I would like to convey the community aspect of design-build processes by looking at our ConstructLab projects. In doing so, I draw on the content structure of the latest ConstructLab book Convivial Ground. Stories from a Spatial Practice (Jovis 2023, Editors: Joanne Pouzenc, Peter Zuiderwijk and Alexander Römer).

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The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch previous lectures  www.avatudloengud.ee

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

Curator: Gregor Taul

English landscape design, landscape art and the Anthropo(s)cenic (1750–1850)

On October 26th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture is hosting an open lecture by Frédéric Ogée.

The growing importance of ecological concerns and its transcription into the new discipline of eco-criticism have identified the first half of the 19th century as a possible starting point for the Anthropocene, a period when the profound effects of the two Industrial Revolutions could be felt and seen, when man’s imprint upon Nature became primordial, essential and irreversible.

With their new ‘landscape garden’ and the subsequent rise of picturesque tourism and landscape painting, the British developed a new, empirical exploration of man’s frictional inscription within Nature. The natural world seemed no longer considered as man’s ‘environment’, something peripheral surrounding man’s central presence, in their works Nature IS the center, and is somehow restored as the source of knowledge and truth. Yet this revolution is ambivalent when we know that the main patrons of these English landscapists were also the main actors of the industrial revolution and colonial expansionism, which consisted primarily in commodifying and ‘exploiting’ both nature and man.

Frédéric Ogée is Professor of British Literature and Art History at Université Paris Cité. His main publications include two collections of essays on English artist William Hogarth, as well as ‘Better in France’? The circulation of ideas across the Channel in the 18th century (Lewisburg, 2005), Diderot and European Culture (Oxford, 2006), J.M.W. Turner, Les Paysages absolus (Paris, 2010) and Jardins et Civilisations (Valenciennes, 2019). In 2006-07, he curated the first-ever exhibition of Hogarth for the Louvre. He is currently working on a series of monographs on 18th and 19th-century British artists – Thomas Lawrence, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth – to be published by Cohen & Cohen (Paris). The first one, Thomas Lawrence – Le génie du portrait anglais came out in December 2022. The next one, on Turner, will be published in the fall of 2024. From 2014 to 2017 he was a member of Tate Britain’s Advisory Council, and since 2014 of the City of Paris Scientific Council. In 2018-19 he was a Kress Fellow in the Literature of Art at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and also a Neilson Professor at Smith College, Massachusetts. Next summer he will be a visiting lecturer in Beijing, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the University of International Business and Economics.

Transform4Europe Open Dual Lecture: “Dissonant Heritage: Re-evaluating the Soviet Legacies”. 

On October 17, the Estonian Academy of Arts will organize an open conversation/ lecture with two speakers, where academic knowledge and practitioner are discussing about the dissonant heritage from the Soviet Legacies

The dual lecture will explore both local and transnational aspects of dissonant heritage in relation to Soviet legacies. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022, Russian political behaviour, both in present and past, has been discussed across Europe and beyond as never before, including scrutinising Soviet and Russian-related heritage as one of the reactions to the aggression. This has resulted in creating new and opening up old conflicts between different communities. On the other hand, the situation gives a much needed opportunity for countries and memory groups to acknowledge their collective suppressed conflicts, provoking discussions that had been put on hold for decades. In this delicate process, transregional exchange of comparative experiences is substantial, paving the way for balanced discussions and cross-disciplinary expertise on heritage protection. 

On behalf of EKA – Anu Soojärv

Her field of research is Estonian monumental art in the Soviet era, focusing on the role of public monuments in identity formation of local communities. In her everyday work she is mapping and documenting public monuments and works of art from the perspective of preservation and data gathering. She is a doctoral student and a junior researcher in EKA at the department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation. 

You are invited to the Summer Hall (Suvesaal) of Maarjamäe Castle, doors open at 4:30 p.m. 

The event will be broadcast live on YouTube, but you can definitely have a more exciting discussion experience when you join us in Tallinn, at Maarjamäe!

NB! The event will be in English.

Born in the USA, Roger Ballen has worked in Johannesburg and its surroundings since the 1970s. Initially, he documented marginalised white South Africans in remote regions near the end of the Apartheid era, conveying their state of mind through stark black and white photography. However, from 1995, Ballen’s aesthetic began to transcend the boundaries of traditional photography. In his unique multimedia ‘Ballenesque’ style, people, figures, and animals inhabit meticulously crafted stage sets adorned with primal, child-like drawings that can be likened to the “Theatre of the Absurd.” This signature style—haunting and beguiling—has captured the imagination of viewers around the world.

After developing an idiosyncratic style which is referred to as “Ballenesque”, Roger Ballen became one of the most prominent artist/photographers of his generation. He achieved international recognition through his unique and powerful use of drawing, painting, and collage alongside various sculptural techniques in elaborate installations, inventing a new, hybrid aesthetics, firmly rooted in the art of photography. From 1995, Ballen’s work evolved into a provocative fusion of reality and imagination. Well-known publications, including “Outland”, “Boarding House”, “Asylum of the Birds”, and “The Theatre of Apparitions”, transcend the confines of traditional documentary photography and incorporate painting, drawing, sculpture and film. His distinctive ‘Ballenesque’ style features ‘outsiders’, animals, found objects, wires, and childlike marks that cultivate a surreal Theatre of the Absurd.

Ballen’s work has been the subject of exhibitions at prestigious institutions for more than thirty years now. His decision to exhibit at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris on 2019, a museum devoted to art brut and outsider art, is a special event which demonstrates his freedom from artistic genres. Since the exhibition has been successfully exhibited at Jakopic Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia; as well as the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague.

The exhibition “The World according to Roger Ballen” is an unprecedented overview of the artist which presents, along with 90 photographs, drawings, paintings and unseen installations that Roger Ballen has exclusively created for this event.

Wollen opens his personal exhibition “The World According to Roger Ballen” in Fotografiska Tallinn on October 13th – it is a retrospective exhibition that transforms visitors into participants in a living tableau—a gesamtkunstwerk of installations, videos, drawings, and photographic mastery.

Tickets for the opening: https://fienta.com/et/roger-balleni-naituse-avamine

In connection with the Delft University of Technology architecture course in Tallinn and EKA, Dr. Willemijn Wilms Floet gives an open lecture about Hofje – the type of building common in the Dutch cultural space, on October 12th at 18:00 in the hall of EKA.

The lecture unravels the secrets of the Dutch Hofje: how to direct the urban atmosphere; what can we learn about collectivity; how is this tradition taken forward by architects reflecting on the archetype and contemporary societal conditions?

The Dutch Hofje – a hidden green intimate courtyard enclosed by repetitive houses for singles – is a very inspirational typology for those working on sustainable social inclusive and green urban living environments.

In contrast to courtyards that were part of, for example, monasteries or speculative exploitation buildings, which were only built in a certain period, the architecture of charity hofjes effortlessly survived the late Middle Ages, the early capitalist era, the Enlightenment and the era from the industrialization period to the development of the post-modern service society. Up to the present time, dominated as it is by neoliberal ideas and market forces, the hofje remains a source of inspiration for (social) housing.

The hofje is deeply rooted in Dutch culture and therefore in Dutch collective memory. Time and again, it is put on the table by not only architects and policymakers, but also socially committed property developers or developers of luxury projects, because of all the positive connotations that surround it.

Dr. Willemijn Wilms Floet, assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology is teaching and researching how to make city out of buildings.

She developed her expertise in the documentation and analysis of architectural projects, notably: A Hundred Years of Dutch Architecture (Dutch 1999, English 2002, Chinese 2009). In 2009 she was involved in the organization of the exhibition ‘ From Berlage to Koolhaas_ a hundred years of Dutch Architecture’ in the CAFA Art Museum Beijing. Willemijn is the co-author of the Zakboek voor de Woonomgeving (2001) and editor of Het ontwerp van het kleine woonhuis (2005) and Architectuurgids Delft (2011).

Willemijn obtained a joint PhD degree Villard d’Honnecourt from Venice Faculty of Architecture (IUAV) in 2012 and TU Delft 2014. This architectural study on the Dutch almshouse typology reveals the secrets of green courtyards hidden within the perimeter block, by means of drawing. This resulted in two books ‘Het Hofje Bouwsteen van de Hollandse stad, 1400-2000’ (2016) and Urban Oases; Dutch Hofjes as Hidden Architectural Gems (2021).

Within the global community of the Faculty of Architecture Delft University of Technology she is a leading figure in carrying on the Delft method of plan analysis in-form-ing design, relating knowledge and creativity.

Since 2021 she is initiator and leader of the research programme Architectural Pedagogies at the department of architecture, building a broad platform to reflect upon design education.

The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch lectures from previous years on YouTube or www.avatudloengud.ee

How is knowledge about the city produced and to what ends? What methods help broaden perspectives on the city? How to learn from urban space and represent the results?

Urban Studies year I students invite you to the final presentations of the “Art and the City” course, which has focused on creative urban methods. Entitled Momentum Montenegro, the evening of presentations delves into the social and material aspects of the first microdistrict of Mustamäe.

As Estonia’s first panel house district, it pioneered a new spatial configuration and quickly became an iconic dream destination in war-ravaged mid-century Tallinn. However, the implementation of this housing model has been heavily critiqued since its inception. Now, four houses from the I micro-district have been earmarked for a neighbourhood renovation pilot project seeking to upgrade the buildings as well as the space between them.

The presented projects focus on the public space between these four panel houses, not with the aim to prove something but to learn something.

The course is tutored by Mattias Malk.

Event on Facebook