Category: Faculty of Art and Culture

Open lecture is cancelled!

On March 16th at 17:00 a public lecture will be held in Estonian Academy of Arts on Late Soviet Modernism in Georgia by Nini Palavandishvili and Estonia by Laura Ingerpuu. The lecture is part of a study course “Understanding Late Soviet Modernism”. Both countries are rich of intriguing architectural masterpieces worth to be evaluated and protected.

NINI PALAVANDISHVILI is a passionate and erudite researcher of Georgian architecture and heritage, especially late soviet modernism. The focus of her research and curatorial projects lies in social and political contexts and their interpretation in the framework of cultural production and contemporary art. She cooperates with Blue Shield Georgia in the protection of heritage in Georgia.

LAURA INGERPUU is a PhD student of Estonian Academy of Arts. Her research field is the soviet modernist architecture in Estonia with an emphasis on the architecture of the collective farms.

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.

On Thursday, 5 December, Tallinners will be invited to take part in TRAMWARM, a theatrical performance staged in Tallinn trams by Estonian Academy of Arts scenography students.

On Saturday, 7 December, EKA will host EXHUMATION, a play during which all audience members will be able to participate in an excavation. Both performances are free.

TRAMWARM
On Thursday, 5 December at 16.00, the performance will take place on trams running on line no. 1 and at the following stops: Põhja puiestee (15.30–16.00 and 17.02–17.22), Kadriorg (at 16.19–16.42) and Kopli (at 17.42–17.59).

TRAMWARM is inspired by the location of the new EKA building near the central train station and the tramway. Tram line no. 1 connects various districts, as well as three public universities. According to Aleksandra Ianchenko, who directed the play, the piece focuses on the topic of public space, privacy, home and cosiness, in addition to public transport. “Moving along the tram line, artists create a temporary home for themselves. They play gently but consciously, invisibly but at the same time traceably. Their strange behaviour, which still falls within the boundaries of the normal, invites us to look at the border between personal and public space, hospitality and hostility, and the ordinary and the special,” Ianchenko says, in describing the theme of the play.

EKA’s 1 st year scenography students: Milla Mona Andres, Linda Mai Kari, Anita Kremm, Liisamari Viik, Kristel Zimmer. The performers also include tram passengers, city dwellers and others.
Director: Aleksandra Ianchenko, junior researcher in PUTSPACE (a research project „Public Transport as Public Space in European Cities“, www.putspace.eu)
Stage manager / initiator: Erki Kasemets (Polygon Theatre)

EXHUMATION
On Saturday, 7 December at 16.00 at the third-floor public area (A300) at EKA, Põhja pst 7.

EXHUMATION is primarily about time and the preservation, prolongation and re-conceptualisation of material time stamps, including works of art, and everything that is directly touched upon by
conservators and restorers in their work. During the play, a mysterious dark plastic garbage bag is opened and its contents are explored following strict rules of procedure. Beforehand, it is only known that the bag contains remains of artefacts commemorating historic dates. In the course of delving into the bag, new and deeper layers of issues open up. From the realm of technical work, the journey continues to the philosophical vanishing point and finally finds its way back on the ground. The show ends with an inevitable decision – what will happen to the remnants that have come to light? What will become of them and how? All those present have the opportunity to actively participate in the excavation process.

Coordinator: prof. Hilkka Hiiop (Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, EKA)
Organising manager: Taavi Tiidor (Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, EKA)
Stage manager / initiator: Erki Kasemets (Polygon Theatre)

Polygon Theatre is a so-called environmental theatre that is open to immediate action; everything, including unplanned events, can become part of the performance. Polygon Theatre often mixes the roles of audience members and actors so that the viewer can become a performer and vice versa.

Maris Mändel PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Cultural Heritage and Conservation will defend her thesis “Bricks, blocks and panels commonly used in 20th century Estonian architecture. The story of their use and value” on the 18th of December 2019 at 14.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

Supervisors: dr Mart Kalm (Estonian Academy of Arts) and dr Lembi-Merike Raado (Tallinn University of Technology)

Pre-reviewers: dr Karl Õiger (Tallinn University of Technology, School of Engineering) and dr Kurmo Konsa (University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology)

Opponent: dr Karl Õiger

This research focuses on issues in restoration regarding man-made building materials commonly used in 20th century Estonia. These are building materials that in contemporary restoration processes tend to be regarded as having less value and because they are commonplace are often overlooked. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to find solutions to the issues of value and appreciation that arise in the restoration of such materials – to determine when these commonly used materials should be preserved as a valuable original material and when and what kind of a replacement material should be used.

This thorough study of concrete blocks, silicate bricks, large silicalcite blocks and large reinforced concrete panels provides a good overview of Estonian building practices and its step-by-step development from handcrafted techniques and building methods to fully industrialised construction.

This research has clear practical applications. Its outcomes will make it possible for architecture historians, heritage protection specialists, construction engineers, homeowners and others, to make considered decisions about restoration in regard to the materials covered in this study. It will also assist in the informed preservation of Estonian cultural heritage.

Please find the PhD thesis here

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.

October 9, at 16.00, room A101

Open Lecture by Jan van Boeckel
Art and Sustainability Education in an Age of Uncertainty and Climate Fear

Jan van Boeckel will give a presentation on fostering attention through arts-based open-ended approaches in an age of ecological emergency and radical uncertainty. If we are to respond adequately to the rapid and deep changes taking place in the world in our current times, we may need to envisage a very different type of education. Not one that is predominantly based on knowledge transfer, but a kind of teaching and learning that foregrounds engaging with radical uncertainty. In more open-ended modalities of education, learners tend not to know on forehand what the outcomes and expected deliverables will be. Such approaches may cause a sense of unease because of a presumed lack of control, of missing framing guidelines and clear target objectives. It is exactly in this space of vulnerability that it is essential that learners feel that their educational experience is safely contained and held by teachers and facilitators. A way of achieving this may be through employing arts-based approaches. Through such practices of artful exploring (for example together with a group of students) a sense of excitement, of curiosity and wonder may be prompted.

One of Van Boeckel’s key areas of interest is in educational activity as primarily and fundamentally an open-ended process. The outcome is not given, though the participants follow certain sequential steps which frame the process. Through teaching and hands-on doing, it aims to promote understanding of interconnected systems – both biological and cultural. Van Boeckel contextualizes this form of arts-based environmental education by valuing it as a form of ‘poor pedagogy’, as articulated by Jan Masschelein. Such practice is expressive of a view on education that is not about the transmission of knowledge but rather is a way of attending to things (Tim Ingold). It is also ‘weak pedagogy’, in which is foregrounded what Gert Biesta regards as ‘the educational imperative’: to arouse in another human being the desire to exist as subject, in dialogue with the world. For him this means being ‘in the world without occupying the centre of the world’, trying to exist in dialogue with what and who is other.

Exactly because artistic activities and research, as part of this kind of education, aren’t prima facie linked to urgent themes such as climate change – that they may lend possibilities, affordances, to take up such subjects in new ways. For, on a meta-level, they can also be seen as exercises in facing complexity, uncertainty, not-knowing, and of discovering and forging new relationships between phenomena and processes, in ways that are often far from obvious. Van Boeckel suggests that it is precisely this element of sustainable education (Stephen Sterling) we need, if we are aiming to equip new generations with skills to live in ‘postnormal times.’

Jan van Boeckel is an artist and art educator who has worked for many years on the intersections of art, education and ecology. He was professor in art pedagogy at EKA from 2015 until 2018. Before he was a teacher at the Iceland University of the Arts and other places. In academic year 2018-2019 Jan worked as senior lecturer in art education at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and as visiting lecturer and teacher on the themes of art, sustainability and climate leadership at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS) in Uppsala, also in Sweden.
More info: www.janvanboeckel.wordpress.com

The lecture is in English, attendance free.