Category: Institute of Art History and Visual Culture

On 15 May, the exhibition “In Isolation”, curated by the master’s students of the Estonian Academy of Arts, will open in the Tartu Art Museum. It uses the motif of looking out of a window to examine the isolation experienced in different eras and in different locations. The exhibition brings together the internationally renowned artist Ilya Kabakov and the oeuvre of the Estonian classic masters Ülo Sooster, Jüri Arrak, Karl Pärsimägi, Nikolai Kormašov, Andres Tolts, Ilmar Malin and Kai Kaljo. The exhibition will remain open until 27 June.

The central artwork and conceptual starting point of the exhibition “In Isolation” is Ilya Kabakov’s visual narrative “The Looking-out-the-Window Arkhipov”, which is about a character named Arkhipov who is hospitalised; isolation and loneliness have an increasingly devastating effect on his mental condition.

Last spring, we unexpectedly found ourselves in a situation that is reminiscent of Arkhipov’s. Isolated inside the four walls of our homes for an unknown length of time, we at first enthusiastically followed the random passers-by and everyday situations from our windows, but as time passed and loneliness intensified, windows became the border between isolation and freedom. Windows not only showed what was visible, but in them were also reflected our dreams and yearnings.

The curators of the exhibition invite visitors to look out of the window together with the artists and to contemplate this unique time in history when in a weird way isolation has become the thing that unites us all and maybe manages to do so in a more personal manner than any situation ever has.

Curators: Signe Friedenthal, Reigo Kuivjõgi, Eerika Niemi, Jelizaveta Pratkunas, Kerly Ritval, Jelizaveta Sedler and Mae Variksoo

Team: Richard Adang, Nele Ambos, Indrek Grigor, Mare Joonsalu, Margus Joonsalu, Hanna-Liis Kont, Kristlyn Liier, Katrin Lõoke, Kadri Mägi, Julia Polujanenkova, Anti Saar, Kristel Sibul, Peeter Talvistu and Ago Teedema

Graphic design: Laura Pappa

Works from the Tartu Art Museum, the Art Museum of Estonia and the artist Kai Kaljo

Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Krisostomus, Hektor Light and Peaasi.ee

Additional information: https://tartmus.ee/naitus/eraldatuses/

The book launch of the newest volume from the series History of Estonian Art, Volume 4, covering the years 1840–1900, will take place at the Kadriorg Art Museum in Tallinn on March 17th, starting at 17:00.

The editor of the volume is Juta Keevallik, the contributing authors are Tiina Abel, Jüri Hain, Karin Hallas-Murula, Lilian Hansar, Ants Hein, Juta Keevallik, Kaalu Kirme, Tiina-Mall Kreem, Mai Levin, Tõnis Liibek, Aleksander Pantelejev, Reet Piiri, Juta Saron, Mart Siilivask, Egle Tamm. The head editor of the series is Krista Kodres. The publishers of the book are Estonian Academy of Arts and Kultuurilehe AS, the volume was funded by the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On February 21–22, 2020, the Estonian Academy of Arts will host an international symposium titled “Prisms of Silence”. The symposium seeks to analyse and understand the prisms through which we could meaningfully reconsider significant silences. A particular interest lies in rethinking the silences about WWII, its aftermath and the Soviet era in order to explore how they could offer productive ways of understanding present social change. The main organizers of the symposium are Dr Margaret Tali at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and Ieva Astahovska at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art. The symposium is a part of the collaborative project “Communicating Difficult Pasts” between the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at EAA and the LCCA. The participants include humanities scholars, curators and artists: see the CFP.

“PRISMS OF SILENCE” SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

Venue: Room A501, Estonian Academy of Arts,

Põhja puiestee 7, Tallinn

DAY 1: FRIDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2020

9:00 – 9:10 Welcome by Mart Kalm, Rector of the Estonian Academy of Arts

9:10 – 9:30 Introduction to the Symposium by Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska 

9:30 – 11:00  Session 1: Absences, their Impacts and Memory Work, Moderated by Violeta Davoliūtė, Vilnius University

Asja Mandić, Suppression of Socialist Narratives of the Second World War and its Modes of Visual Representation

Annika Toots, Exhibition Displaced Time: 10 Photographs from Restricted Collections as a Model of Remembrance

Jan Miklas-Frankowski, A City of Amnesia: Marcin Kącki’s Białystok. White Power. Black Memory

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00  Session 2: Difficult Knowledge and Artistic Interventions, Moderated by Ieva Astahovska

Margaret Tali, Thinking through Silence and Mental Health in Recent Documentary Film

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Nomadic Memory: Artivism as Everyday Feminist Antifascist Practice

Rasa Goštautaitė, Contested Soviet Legacy: The Case of the Petras Cvirka Monument in Vilnius, Lithuania

13:00 – 14:00  Lunch break

14:30 – 16:00  Guided tour in the Vabamu Museum, Toompea 8 (1,5 h)

16:30 – 18:30 Session 3: When Sources Fail: Visual Languages for Analysing Past Trauma, Moderated by Margaret Tali

Assel Kadyrkhanova, Image, Sound, Absence, Silence. Artmaking on Historical Trauma

Lia Dostlieva, “I still feel sorry when I throw away food – Grandma used to tell me stories about the Holodomor.”

Kai Ziegner, A History of Violence 

Aslan Goisum, Realms of Memory and Sources of Resistance

18:30 – 19:30 Dinner

SATURDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2020 

9:30 – 10:15 Short keynote by Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Reconstruction of Contested History: Vilnius, 1939-1949, Introduced by Margaret Tali

10:15 – 11:45 Session 4: The Unspeakable and Agency, Moderated by Eneken Laanes, Tallinn University

Katrina Black, Absence as Form: Spaces of Articulation in the Work of Chantal Akerman

Kati Roover, Project Red

Jaana Kokko, Oral History and Moving Image

11:45 – 12:15 Coffee break

12.15 – 13.45 Session 5: Patterns of Muting and Silencing, Moderated by Siobhan Kattago, University of Tartu

Franziska Link, Brawling Silences. Rereading Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Écrits Maudits 

Mischa Twitchin, Refracting Implication: The Uses of Silence

Jan Matonoha, Dispositives of Silence: Injurious Attachments and Discursive Emergence of Silencing; “Missing” Gender in Czech Dissent Samizdat and Exile Literature

13:45 – 14:45 Lunch break

14:45 – 16:15 Session 6: Breaking Silences and Challenges to Changing Discourses, Moderated by Ilya Lensky, Director of the Museum “Jews in Latvia”

Shelley Hornstein, Architecture’s Dirty Little Secrets

Ieva Astahovska, On Collaborations, Silences and Lustration

Maayan Raveh, The Implication of Silence – The Promised Land in Palestinian Christian Theology

16:15 – 16:45 Coffee break

16:45 – 18:15 Session 7: There and Not There – Ways of Giving Voice to the Past, Moderated by Pille Runnel, Head of Research at Estonian National Museum

Elina Niiranen, Finnish Linguist Pertti Virtaranta and Silenced Identity of Karelians in the 1960’s Soviet Karelia

Paulina Pukytė, Repetition of Silence

Elisabeth Kovtiak, (Non-)sites of Memory of the Holocaust in Belarus: Cases of Minsk and Brest

18:15 – 18:45 Final discussion and conclusions

19:00 – 20:00 Dinner

Supporters of the symposium:

EKA LOOVKÄRG – Eesti visuaal- ja ruumikultuuri õppe- ja
teaduskeskus (Sisutegevuste projekt)
2014-2020.4.01.16-0045

Nordic Culture Point

Cultural Endowment of Estonia

EKA research fund

NEP4DISSENT: COST Action 16213

The series of open lectures titled “International Inspiration”, co-organized by the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia and the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, is proud to host our next guest, dr Anna Novikov.  On January 15th, she will give a lecture titled “Nation is the New Black: Patriotic Fashion and Performance in the Post-Communist States” at EKA, starting at 18:00 in the room A501. The lecture will focus on  the transnational revival of patriotic attire linked to patriotic performance that became fashionable in the Post-Communist states of Eastern-Central Europe and Central Asia in the last decade. Dr Novikov will examine visual and ideological links between media, dress, performance and the current development of patriotic fashion and performance in these areas.

The open lecture is followed by a seminar “”My Body is My Runestick and My Tattoos Tell My Story”: Performing Self-Barbarization in the Digital Age” held on January 16 in room A301, starting at 18:00. The seminar will focus on the broader trend in current popular culture of celebrating what the “civilized” Western cultural narrative has previously regarded as “barbarian”, and seeking to return to authenticity, albeit in reconstructed or borrowed forms.

Dr Anna Novikov, originally from Israel, lives and works in Greifswald in Germany, studying the broader sociopolitical context of fashion, including the recent rise in nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and its impact on the issues of fashion and identity.

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

On Monday, January 13th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture will host a research seminar “Technical Art History and Forgeries” by professor Hilkka Hiiop from the Department of Heritage Protection and Conservation, and Greta Koppel, curator at the Art Museum of Estonia, on the topic of contemporary technical research methods and their impact on the study of art history, as well as the issue of art forgeries.

See the roundtable discussion published in the cultural weekly Sirp.

The next European Society for Aesthetics Conference will take place in Tallinn on June 10-12 2020, hosted by the Estonian Academy of Arts.
This year’s keynote speakers are:
· Professor David Davies (McGill University)
· Professor Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp)
· Professor Virve Sarapik (Estonian Academy of Arts)

More information along with the CFP at the ESA homepage.

On December 13th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts is hosting a seminar in honour of professor emeritus Jaak Kangilaski. The seminar will focus on the history of Estonian art history, with four presentations by Jaak Kangilaski’s former students (prof Krista Kodres, prof Virve Sarapik, dr Epi Tohvri and Eero Epner), followed by speeches and a reception.

You are cordially invited to a public lecture by Nora Sternfeld, Professor for Curating and Mediating Art at the Aalto University on Tuesday, February 21 at 18.30 at The institute of Art History and Visual Culture (Suur-Kloostri 11, Tallinn)

“Some Thoughts About Learning Together. Strategies of Art Education as Critical Practices of Knowledge Production”

How can we learn something that doesn’t exist yet? On the one hand this sounds paradoxical. But isn’t it on the other hand exactly what radical education is all about? Learning as a political and emancipatory practice has always been understood as a process towards another possibility: as a way to understand the social relations in order to change them; to understand them as they might only be understandable in another world. And maybe by doing so this one might change… As this process of self-transformation is a collective practice we can only learn it together. Following this thoughts the lecture will look at some examples of trafo.K – an office for art, education and critical knowledge production based in Vienna. We will discuss strategies for in-between spaces and contact zones that lay the ground for learning together.

Nora Sternfeld is Professor for Curating and Mediating Art at the Aalto University in Helsinki and co-director of /ecm — Master Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is co-founder of trafo. K, office for art education and critical knowledge production and part of freethought, platform for research, education, and production based in London. In this context she is was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly 2016.

In cooperation with CuMMA – Studies in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art at Aalto University (https://cummastudies.wordpress.com).