Category: Doctoral School

Claudia Pasquero, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning will defend her thesis “Polycephalum: Aesthetic as a measure of ecological intelligence in Architecture and Urban Design” (“Polycephalum: esteetika ja ökoloogiline intelligentsus arhitektuuris ja linnakujunduses”) on the 22nd of November 2019 at 10.00 at Exhibition Space of BAU Design College of Barcelona (Carrer de Pujades, 118 Barcelona)

Supervisors: dr Veronika Valk (Estonian Academy of Arts) and prof Mario Carpo (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London)

Pre-reviewers: Prof Dr Christopher Pierce (Architectural Association, London) and Prof Dr Bart Lootsma (University of Innsbruck)

Opponent: prof dr Dr Christopher Pierce (Architectural Association, London)

This dissertation, titled ‘Polycephalum: the aesthetic as a measure of ecological intelligence in architecture and urban design’, unpacks and articulates the design methodology of the candidate’s practice-based research. It moves from an analysis of the relationship between ecoLogicStudio (co-founded by the candidate in 2005) and the academic work she conducts at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and at Innsbruck University (UIBK). The thesis then explores how, in this body of work, biology intersects computation as the basis for a new architectural and urban design method. Critical to the synergy among these disciplines is the role of aesthetics. The candidate refers to aesthetics as a language of non-verbal communication, a metalanguage, which, she argues, must now embody greater ecological agency in shaping future cities.

Methodologically, the development of this thesis has followed the Creative Practice Research model developed by RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), founded on the notion that any creative venturous practice intrinsically involves a form of research enquiry. In supporting the development of this original piece of work the Estonian Academy of Arts doctoral program in architecture and urban planning, in which the candidate enrolled as an ADAPT-r Research Fellow, has aligned its stream of creative practice research with RMIT’s long-established program.

A key outcome of this research is embodied in the concept of Polycephalum architecture. This notion mobilizes multiple forms of intelligence, both human and non-human, to redefine the urban realm in the post-Anthropocene age. What role will non-human intelligence, both artificial and biological, play in shaping future architecture? The Polycephalum dismisses the core notion of modern master-planning, to elevate humanity beyond its material substrate via its foundations in rationality. Its aesthetics apparatus becomes here a mean to establish cybernetic conversations, within which human and non-human ecologies constitute co-evolutionary systems, a form of extended mind.

The thesis was developed as part of the ADAPT-r (Architecture, Design and Art Practice Training-research) program within Architecture and Urban Planning program of EKA Doctoral School.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

Date: September 9-12 / 5 pm–8 pm

Venue: Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A301

Lecturer: Ewa Domanska

This series of seminars is based on the assumption that today art can offer the historian (as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, literary scholar, etc.) theoretical inspiration, and even an epistemological paradigm and a research program of knowledge building. Interesting cognitive models, research categories, and representations of reality can be derived from the analysis of works of art. Following Susan Sontag’s statement that “each work of art gives us a form or paradigm or model of knowing something, an epistemology,” I would claim that analysis of various types of art objects, performances and activities might help us to build an inclusive knowledge of the past.  Such knowledge would be more appropriate for the planetary condition than offered, for example, by history understood as a specific approach to the past that emerged within the Greco-Judeo-Christian tradition and carries a stigma as a colonial enterprise. Thus art participates in the struggle for the epistemic justice, commenting on the problem of “epistemological dependency” of non-western scholars, and criticizing Western cognitive (artistic) imperialism. It is an important force in the development of an emergent paradigm that is post-anthropocentric, post-Western, post-secular and post-global (planetary/ cosmic).

Contemporary art is a great laboratory for the testing of various kinds of future. If indeed there is a need for realistic, responsible (local or micro) utopias in the world today, they might be developed with the help of various ways of knowing (the world). This would include not only humanities, social sciences as well as life sciences and Earth Sciences (“radical interdisciplinarity”) – which is to say, Western type of knowledge, but also include indigenous ways of knowing. The question arises as to whether the historian and the artist can offer a more positive (affirmative) scenario of the future?

Registration

The seminar is open to PhD students.

Registration is open until 01.09.2019. Max group size is 15.

Registration form

Readings (readings will be sent after registration)

• Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns. New Orientations in the Study of Culture, trans. Adam Blauhut, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
• Bruno Latour and Timothy M. Lenton, “Extending the Domain of Freedom, or Why Gaia Is So Hard to Understand.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 3, Spring 2019: 659-680.
• Ariella Azoulay, “Potential History: Thinking through Violence”.Critical Inquiry, vol. 39, no. 3, Spring 2013.
• Rosi Braidotti Rosi, “Powers of Affirmation: Response to Lisa Baraitser, Patrick Hanafin and Clare Hemmings.” Subjectivity, vol. 3, no 2, 2010: 140–148.
• Ewa Domańska, “Affirmative Humanities”. Dějiny – teorie – kritika [Czech Republic], no. 1, 2018: 9-26.
• Ruth Lipschitz, Skin/ned Politics: Species Discourse and the Limits of “The Human” in Nandipha Mntambo’s Art. Hypatia, vol. 27, no. 3, August 2012: 546–566.
• Ann-Marie Tully, Becoming Animal: Liminal Rhetorical Strategies in Contemporary South African Art. Image & Text, vol. 17, 2011: 64-84.
• Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. Sage, 2006.

Program

 Monday, September 9

1. Paradigm shift in the contemporary humanities and social sciences

Tuesday, September 10

2. Prefigurative Art/Humanities

 Wednesday, September 11

3. Contemporary Art and the Future of History

Thursday, September 12

4. How to build a theory? [workshop]

Exhibition „iTouch Store” Darja Popolitova

Vault Room of A-Gallery, Hobusepea 2, Tallinn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Video: Ando Naulainen

Sound Design: Andres Nõlvak

Graphic Design: Johanna Ruukholm

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

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Date:6–8 May 2019 at 10.00 – 15.30

Venue:Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A402 (6-7 May), A301 (8 May)

Lecturer:Nithikul Nimkulrat

Practice-based research[1]has been adopted by creative practitioners in various art and design disciplines for over three decades. Its basic proposition is that “not only is practice embedded in the research process but research questions arise from the process of practice, the answers to which are directed toward enlightening and enhancing practice” (Candy and Edmonds 2018, p. 63). An emphasis on the contribution of research outcomes from practice-based research is that new knowledge is generated to inform creative practice and such knowledge may at times only be obtainable by means of practice.

Whilst artifacts created from within a research project is viewed as an integral part of the practice-based research process, they are expected to be placed in context through written theses and/or disseminated in published papers. By the necessity of written theses in academic research, reflection and documentation of the creative process and the overall research process is unavoidable (Nimkulart 2007).

This seminar aims to assist art and design students in situating their creative artifacts in research (Nimkulrat 2013) and in designing and structing their research conduct that involves their own practice as a research method based on their research questions initially set. This is not to understand practice as research. Practice is not research but can play a significant role in research.

The seminar will focus on the following research components:

1. Research question– Why would art and design practice be necessary for answering it?
2. Research process– How is it constructed based on the research question? Where is art and design practice located within the research process? How is documentation performed throughout the processes? How does reflection drive the process further and transform the research question initially set?
3. Artifacts– Do they answer or support the written thesis to answer the research question?

In addition, the seminar will highlight how documentation functions as a research tool for capturing the practitioner-researcher’s reflection in- and on- action (Mäkelä and Nimkulrat 2018).

Requirement

To participate in the seminar, please send an abstract (250 words) that describes their PhD project and includes a few photos of artifacts and their processes, if any, to elika.kiilo@artun.eeby 1 May 2019. Please note that a primary research question must be clearly stated in the abstract.

In preparation for the seminar, participants will be asked to read

Candy, L. and Edmonds E. (2018). Practice-Based Research in the Creative Arts: Foundations and Futures from the Front Line. Leonardo 51(1), 63–69. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01471

Mäkelä, M., & Nimkulrat, N. (2018). Documentation as Practice-Led Research Tools for Reflection on Experiential Knowledge. FORMakademisk 11(2).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.1818

Nimkulrat, N. (2007). The Role of Documentation in Practice-Led Research. Journal of Research Practice, 3(1), Article M6. http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/58/83

Nimkulrat, N. (2009). Paperness: Expressive Material in Textile Art from an Artist’s Viewpoint (pp. 34–38). Helsinki, Finland: University of Art and Design Helsinki. https://nithikul.com/PDF/Paperness.pdf

Nimkulrat, N. (2013). Situating Creative Artifacts in Art and Design Research. FORMakademisk, 6(2), Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.657

Registration

The seminar is open to PhD students. Registration is open until 30.04.2019.

Registration form

Nithikul Nimkulrat is a practitioner-researcher who intertwines research with textile practice, focusing on experiential knowledge in craft processes in the context of design research. Prior to her current appointment as a Tenured Associate Professor at OCAD University in Canada in December 2018, Nithikul has worked at Estonian Academy of Arts, Loughborough University, and Aalto University, where she earned a doctorate in 2009. Nithikul is an elected council member of the Design Research Society (DRS), the convenor of the DRS Special Interest Group on Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG), and the leader of the Cumulus Association’s Fashion and Textile Working Group.

[1]The term “practice-based research” is chosen over “artistic research” and “practice-led research” to be used in the workshop in order to give practice a general role in scholarly research. For differentiation in meaning of different terms, see Nimkulrat (2009, pp. 34–38) and Candy and Edmonds (2018, pp. 64–65).

This event is organised by the Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts, supported by the ASTRA project of the Estonian Academy of Arts – EKA LOOVKÄRG (European Union, European Regional Development Fund).

Date: June 4, 6, 7 at 10.00 to 17.00

Venue: Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A202

Lecturer: Benjamin Lignel

Artist, writer and curator Benjamin Lignel will conduct a 3-day seminar in June, focusing on the challenges and opportunities inherent to artistic research. We will be thinking through the temporalities of making, documenting, and argumenting, and the different sort of “proof” they invoke; we will attempt a 21st century autopsy of the author-function and look at subject-positions with the help of Italo Calvino, Joan Scott and Audre Lord; we will play at presenting an object (textual or physical) for public scrutiny with a view to understanding what “stewardship of ideas” might imply.

Students who sign up for the seminar will be required to read 3 texts in advance:

Audre Lord, the Use of Anger, Women responding to Racism (1981)

Joan Scott, The Evidence of Experience (1991)

Ulrike Müller, Herstory Inventory (2011)

You will also be required to write, in conversational/diaristic mode, how you first met an idea that subequently guided your current research (max. 500 words).

Registration

The seminar is open to PhD and MA students.

Registration form

Registration is open until 28.05.2019.

This event is organised by the Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts, supported by the ASTRA project of the Estonian Academy of Arts – EKA LOOVKÄRG (European Union, European Regional Development Fund).

The Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Art and Design’s PhD student Varvara Guljajeva will defend her thesis “From interaction to post-participation: the disappearing role of the active participant”(“Interaktsioonist osalusjärgsuseni: aktiivse osaleja kaduv roll”) on the 21st of December 2018 at 12.00 at Põhja pst 7 building, room A101.

Supervisors:dr Raivo Kelomees (Estonian Academy of Arts) and dr Pau Waelder (The Open University of Catalonia)

Pre-reviewers:prof dr Christa Sommerer (Interface Cultures, The University of Art and Design Linz) and prof dr Moises Mañas Carbonell (Faculty of Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia)

Opponent: prof dr Christa Sommerer (Interface Cultures, The University of Art and Design Linz)

The practice-based dissertation analyses and contextualises passive audience interaction through the lens of post-participation. Research explores the shift from active to passive participation in interactive art. By exploring interactive art history and the discourse of identity within the field, this dissertation investigates how artworks that demonstrate no audience involvement, but still incorporate an internal system interaction with a data source, are addressed. In other words, the research tracks down the interest shift from human-machine to system-to-system interaction, and explores the reasons behind this.

In this thesis, a differentiation is made between direct and indirect post-participation. Hence, the selected artworks are analysed from the perspective of concept, direct or indirect post-participation components, and realisation. In addition, related artworks by other artists are introduced and discussed under each subcategory of post-participation.

In the end, the dissertation contributes to the evolution of interactive art, by analysing and contextualising passive audience participation in the form of post-participation. Author argues that the concept of post-participation helps to address the shift from an active to a passive spectator in the complex age of dataveillance, an age in which humans are continuously tracked, traced, monitored and surveilled without our consent.

Please find the PhD thesis here.

The defense will be in English.

Exhibition dates:

15.11.2018 12-18

16.11.2018 12-20

Sofia Hallik’s “Tangibility Matters” exhibition finissage takes place on Friday, November 16th, in the ARS Project Room at 18.00.

Peer-review event takes place in Nov 16th, at 14.00 in ARS Project Room (Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn)

Supervisors: prof Kadri Mälk and dr Jaak Tomberg

Peer – reviewers: dr Kärt Ojavee and dr Raivo Kelomees

Works on display are made as a part of a PhD thesis, and consist of wearable objects that are a hybrid of hand work and digital production. While working on a jewellery, the author is in need of touch and tactility, while an object that is made using 3D printing appears as an empty form, which demands substance. In the world of tech, because the process of work using CAD or 3D printing excludes tangibility, the author is lacking physical contact with a work of art. That is exactly why in these series of works the artist razes in a way the digital tarnish from the surface of the printed object by implementing hand work and traditional jewellery techniques. In this way a 3D printed object gains emotional expressiveness.

The works presented during the exhibition originate from two contradictory principles: digital production and hand work, and embody the mutual closeness of human and the machine. In other words, while people approach the digital world, technology becomes more and more humane.

Sofia Hallik (1991) is a jewellery artist, designer and PhD student at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In her doctoral thesis “Hand vs. Machine: Three Methods of Jewellery Making” (supervisors prof. Kadri Mälk and Dr. Jaak Tomberg) Sofia focuses on innovative materials and digital technologies. What interests her the most is the way digital technology influences jewellery.

Special thanks to: Kadri Mälk, Jaak Tomberg, Oskar Narusberk, EAA Jewellery and Blacksmithing department, 3D Koda OÜ.

The exhibition was made possible with the support of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Date: November 19, 2018 at 14.00 – 17.30

Venue: Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A502

Lecturer: Pia Sivenius

The idea of using psychoanalysis for artistic research seems tempting for artists in various fields, designers and architects. The aim of the seminar is to introduce the cornerstones of the theories of psychoanalysis and reflect on their uses in the field of arts. The seminar is open to PhD and MA students.

Pia Sivenius specialises in the French psychoanalysis theories. She has published numerous articles on the subject and translated the works of Lacan, Kristeva and Irigaray into the Finnish language. She is the long standing research coordinator in Aalto Arts (formerly University of Art and Design Helsinki) which gives her valuable insight into current artistic research.

Registration

Theseminar is open to PhD and MA students. Registration is open until16.11.

Registration form.

Program

14.00-15.30 seminar

15.30-16.00 break

16.00-17.30 seminar

Date:November 7-8, 2018

Venue: Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7

Lecturer: Thomas Markussen

Research through design is about understanding how processes of designing and creating artworks can serve as the primary method of inquiry into questions relevant for art and design. Originally, the method was described by Christopher Frayling (1993) and Bruce Archer (1995), and since then many different suggestions for what the characteristics of research through design have been presented. This 2-day seminar offers PhD students visual sketching techniques and methodological tools that can be used to clarify how they practice research through design. Based on readings and the students’ position papers, we will be using visual models and diagrams to map out the role played by designerly and artistic experiments in the students’ own projects? Questions that will be addressed are: How can experiments in art and design serve as means for inquiry? How do we account for knowledge produced by these experiments? Each day will be framed by a talk that will set up a conceptual space for collective work.

Thomas Markussen is associate professor and co-founder of the Social Design Research Unit, at the University of Southern Denmark. In his work, Markussen focuses on how design can be used as a political and critical aesthetic practice, notably in the fields of social design, design activism and design fiction. He is one of the contributors to the recently published book Practice-based Design Research, edited by Laurene Vaughan, and has previously been head of phd education at Kolding School of Design. His other publications include journal articles such as “The disruptive aesthetics of design activism: enacting design between art and politics” (Design Issues); “Disentangling the ‘social’ in social design’s engagement with the public realm” (CoDesign); and “The politics of design activism – from impure politics to parapolitics” appearing in Routledge’s forthcoming book Design and Dissent.

Registration

Theseminar is open to PhD and MA students and researchers with ongoing research projects. Registration is open until 26.10.

Requirements

Particpants must submit a position paper (max 1 page) that describe their PhD project. The paper should provide understanding of the aim of the project, primary research questions, methods and the students training and background. Please send your paper to elika.kiilo@artun.eeby 30.10

As preparation for the seminar, participants will be asked to read:

Bang., A-L; Ludvigsen, M; Krogh P-G & Markussen, T. (2012):The Role of Hypothesis in Constructive Design Research. The Art of Research Conference, Aalto University, Helsinki.

Krogh, P-G; Markussen, T & Bang, A-L (2015): ICord’15 – International Conference on Research into Design, Springer Verlag.

The text will be made available upon registration.

Students can earn 2 credit points (ECTS) for participation.

Preliminary Program

Wednesday, Nov 7

13:00-14:00Introduction to Research through Design – a murky concept or expanding methodology?, talk by Thomas Markussen

Break

14:15-15:30 Group work – understanding the basic elements of research through design PhD projects

Break

15:45-16:30 PhD Poster exhibition

Thursday, Nov 8

9:30-10:30Ways of drifting – 5 methods for experimenting in research through design, talk by Thomas Markussen

Break

10:45-11:45 Group work on the role of designerly and artistic experiments in research through design PhD projects

Lunch

12:30:-13:15 Group work on the role of designerly and artistic experiments in research through design PhD projects

13:15-14:30 Collective sharing and presenting

This event is organised by the Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts, supported by the ASTRA project of the Estonian Academy of Arts – EKA LOOVKÄRG (European Union, European Regional Development Fund).