Category: Departments

Artist’s talk: Film and the Practice of Social Dreaming by Andrea Luka Zimmerman 22 November at 3.45 pm / Room A 403 

How we might resist being framed exclusively through class, gender, ability or disability, and even through geography… I will outline my working process, spanning over a decade, which contributes attention to the under-expressed intersection of public and private memory and itinerant lives, human and otherwise, often in relation to structural and political violence. Processes where radical encounters call for uncommon commons and futures, using filmmaking practice as a form of social dreaming.
Curator and event / film producer Gareth Evans will conclude the presentation by examining the various possible distribution and exhibition platforms for such work.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a filmmaker and artist whose engaged practice calls for a profound reimagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology. Focusing on marginalised individuals, communities and experience, her practice employs imaginative hybridity and narrative reframing, alongside reverie and a creative waywardness. Informed by suppressed histories, and alert to sources of radical hope, the work prioritises an enduring and equitable coexistence. Andrea’s feature length films have won numerous awards internationally. Andrea is Professor of Possible Film at Central Saint Martins.

www.fugitiveimages.org.uk 
https://linktr.ee/andrealukazimmerman

The peer-review of Maria Kapajeva’s exhibition “Loose Photos, Odds and Ends” will take place on 29 November 16.00 at EKA (room A202). This exhibition is the first event of Kapajeva’s practice-based doctoral studies.

The thesis is supervised by Dr. Redi Koobak (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) and Prof. Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff  (University of Gothenburg). The peer-reviewers of the exhibition are Dr. Ingrid Ruudi (EKA) and Prof. Mika Elo (Uniarts Helsinki).

The exhibition is open 14.06.- 30.12.2022 at Kumu, the Project Space II.

The exhibition “Loose Photos, Odds and Ends” is Maria Kapajeva’s artistic experiment: presenting a research process as an installation. What can you do and what would you do with a random collection of photographs?

Kapajeva experiments with different ways of opening up the potential of the often undervalued, under-researched, marginalised heritage of vernacular photography. In the age of automated face recognition software – partly developed by historical archives, but even more so by state and military institutions and international corporations – her project demonstrates the benefits of “slow recognition”. As she slowed down for an artistic exploration of this collection, Kapajeva also made this a part of her own homecoming, as she has lived abroad for years, just like the photos she is exploring.

Gradual identification of the photographers and the people portrayed by them reveals new perspectives on Estonian (micro-)history, which gain new meaning in the context of the permanent exhibition focusing on “landscapes of identity”. By focussing on the faces of the photographed people, their stories and some other forgotten facts which she learned from these images, Kapajeva shows her appreciation for each person and every individual story in our history.

Exhibition design: LLRRLLRR – Laura Linsi, Karolin Kull
Graphic designer: Maria Muuk
Exhibition coordinator: Magdaleena Maasik
Exhibition technician: Andres Amos
Artist’s research assistant: Ketlin Käpp
With contribution in kind by Linda Kaljundi, Annika Toots and Karmen-Eliise Kiidron

Special thanks to Liisa Kaljula, Merilis Roosalu (Tallinn City Museum – Museum of Photography), Aado Luik, Janeli Suits, Piret Karro, Lembi Anepaio, Aljona Kapajeva and the Sokk family.

An open lecture and discussion on the possibilities of artistic research to approach socially complex and even conflicting questions through the practices of the curator and architectural researcher dr Ines Moreira and the media scholar dr Nico Carpentier.

Both of their artistic research travels to sites, which are related to non-beloved industrial heritage and memorialisation, feeding into the complex, sensitive and divisive debate with creative means.

The event is organised by the Design Faculty of the Estonian Academy of Arts and the museology working group of the Estonian National Museum. It is part of our collaboration over the sites in the European geographical fringes at COST Action EFAP working group 1 “Contexts”.

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Iconoclastic controversies: Arts-based research on the memorialization of the Cyprus Problem 

Nico Carpentier

The Cyprus Problem is a term that refers to a chain of armed conflicts, starting with the decolonial struggle of EOKA against the British, followed by the ethnonationalist violence after independence, then leading to the Turkish 1974 invasion and the division of the island. The cultural trauma that came out of these conflicts also had a very tangible translation through the production of a multitude of memorials and commemoration sites, on both sides of the divide. Using arts-based research, this nomadic research project offers a visual, theoretically-supported analysis of these memorials, how they often connect to (and strengthen) antagonistic nationalism, but also how—in rare cases—they offer counter-hegemonic possibilities by articulating a peace discourse. The analysis also juxtaposes the memorials from north and south, showing the uncanny similarities in how they both represent the Self and the Enemy-Other.

Nico Carpentier is Extraordinary Professor at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), Chief Research Fellow at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania) and President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (2020-2024). His theoretical focus is on discourse theory, his research is situated in the relationship between communication, politics and culture, especially towards social domains as war & conflict, ideology, participation and democracy. His latest monographs are The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation (2017, Peter Lang, New York) and Iconoclastic Controversies: A Photographic Inquiry into Antagonistic Nationalism (2021, Intellect, Bristol).

http://nicocarpentier.net/

Foto siin: http://www.nicocarpentier.net/temp/Nico.tif

Fieldwork in/on/through Non-beloved Heritage – curator’s notes from eastern and western European fringes

Inês Moreira (Lab2PT-UMinho, Portugal)

The year 2022 has been a period of rising tension and awareness on war, conflict and its consequences in Europe, and elsewhere. The sociopolitical and cultural situation has led us to look upon past events and to non-beloved legacies of conflict from the last century.

For some years I have been doing research and curatorial projects around postindustrial sites in Eastern and Western Europe, from Gdańsk to Ave Valley. Some sites embody the material and symbolic legacy of eastern political past, some encapsulate military and security secrecy – industry and the military systems have close articulation.

This talk shares field notes and some theoretical references collected in the last couple of years, which were devoted to fieldwork inquiry and to nomadic research around (what we perceive as) sites in the European geographical fringes. Focusing on ecologies, settlements, memorials and other symbolic and artistic legacies of military and post-socialist past, it is a modest visual and urban cultures contribution to address and relate to non-beloved heritage.

Bio:

Inês Moreira is a Principal Researcher in Visual Arts at Lab2PT-University of Minho, Portugal. She completed a Postdoctoral project at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2016-2022) and created the research cluster Curating the Contemporary: on Architectures, Territories and Networks (2018-21). PhD in Curatorial/Knowledge (University of London), Master in Urban Culture (Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya/CCCB) and Architect (FAUP).

She is an active member of cultural and academic European projects, such as European Forum for Advanced Practices, and Press Here, a Living Archive of European Industry.

inesmoreira.org

Exhibition of the fall semester’s one-week workshop “Clog—wooden soled sandals” by the Department of Accessory and Bookbinding, Estonian Academy of Arts. The students made their unique footwear out of recycled textiles and industrial leftovers or scrap materials.

Participants:
Angela Aavik, Helina Raud, Hanna Eliise Lahe, Jürgen Sinnep, Katarina Nemcova, Liis Tisler, Marie Willfort, Natalia Wojewnik

Tutor: Kristiina Nurk

Technician: Sirle Rohusaar

Exhibition is open every day from 12-18 in
Estonian Design House +, 0. Floor, Suur-Karja 14, Tallinn

‘It’s Lonely in the Metaverse’
Egle Ehtjen, Kelli Gedvil, Kristen Rästas, Sten Saarits
11.11.–11.12.2022
Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art 

Four artists will create an audiovisual participatory exhibition in the hall of the Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art, exploring the soul of the ‘metaverse’, a recently popular medium that uses various spatial and virtual reality technologies. Platforms for virtual worlds are a hot topic both in the crypto world and, increasingly, in the ‘normal world’, through ‘fear-of-missing-out’ advertising campaigns promising new social, investment and entertainment environments on the internet. Behind the exaggerated promises of the future, however, today’s meta-worlds besides their edgy commercial undertones are lonely, not that interactive, and full of digital gambling and collective tokens. ‘It’s Lonely in the Metaverse’ is the interpretation by the four artists of the significant contrast between the advertising hurricane and the virtual landscapes that fall into its shadow.

Graphic design: Henri Kutsar

The artists would like to thank: Markus Tiitus, Alexei Gordin, Ian-Simon Märjama, Hendo Kidron, Leegi Kiis, Marek Gedvil, Tiina Vändre, Laura Suur, Anna-Liisa Männik, Ingrid Algma, Ingrid Kääramees, Linda Zupping, Jüri Ruut, Mirko Känd, Erko Ever, Kristjan Koskor, Anni Koskor, Katarina Koskor, Ander Koskor, Kennet Lekko, Estonian Academy of Arts

The exhibition remains open until 11th of December, Tue–Sun 3–6pm.

This exhibition is funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Location: Rapla County Centre for Contemporary Art. Tallinna st 3b (3rd floor of Espak building), Rapla

Exhibition To Sense the Light, You Must Close Your Eyes, with the works of the painter Kristi Kongi and printmaker Mare Vint, opens in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.

At first glance, the handwriting of these too very individual authors seems almost contradictory. Mare Vint’s metaphysical, nearly black-and-white landscapes demand that their discreet tension be quietly contemplated. Kristi Kongi, however, yanks the viewer into her endlessly colourful world, where deep dark tonal gradients are interspersed with pastel variations and, by including the space surrounding the works of art, she emphasises the comprehensive nature of her oeuvre.

But colour and its (almost complete) lack have something in common: light. Both artists have used it in their works directly and indirectly. Although light is a shared theme, they offer viewers different ways and opportunities to perceive it. As a result, a wandering rhythm of different times and places is created in the gallery, where colour and colourlessness start to highlight each other in unison.

The curator Peeter Talvistu proposed a joint exhibition to the artists way back in 2018 and both authors enthusiastically agreed. “For me, both of them have a similar immersive approach and I have never felt that their works would compete in the gallery space. Instead, I saw this as an experience where two sides would support each other. Unfortunately, Mare’s health deteriorated and she is no longer with us to shape the final outcome. Kristi, however, has had many years to contemplate Mare’s oeuvre and has been inspired to make new works and to compose the actual exhibition.”

Kristi Kongi (b 1985) has studied in the Tartu Art College and the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has been awarded the Sadolin Art Award (2013, currently the AkzoNobel Art Award), the Konrad Mägi Award (2017) and the Annual Award of the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia (2021). During the period 2022–2024, she is one of the receivers of Estonia’s artist’s salary. Although Kongi has recently had exhibitions in Tartu in the Kogo Gallery, her works last appeared in the Tartu Art House in 2013.

Mare Vint (1942–2020) graduated from the Estonian State Art Institute as a glass artist but is primarily known as a printmaker and drawer. Besides the Kristjan Raud Award and the Fifth Class of the Order of The White Star, in 2019 she received the lifetime achievement award from the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. In 1987, she held a joint exhibition with Andres Tolts in the Tartu Art House.

The exhibition’s graphic design is by Tuuli Aule.

Thanks: Ahti Lill, Gristel Mänd, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Akzo Nobel and Eventech.

The exhibition takes place in dialogue with the Kogo Gallery project “Laura Põld with Andres Tolts. Common Threads, Polar Bear and Elephant” (25.11.2022–28.01.2023, curator Šelda Puķīte). On 10 December at 3 pm a walk and talk between the artists and the curators will begin in the Kogo Gallery and conclude in the Tartu Art House.

“To Sense the Light, You Must Close Your Eyes” will remain open until 11 December.

On Friday, 11 November at 6 p.m. Erik Alalooga opens his solo exhibition “Liberated Machines” in the monumental gallery of Tartu Art House.

The artist invites everyone to bathe in an undulating sound array because the monumental gallery is filled with acoustic machines. Large and small, acoustic and amplified, soft and aggressive, fast and slow objects allow you to experience different sound patterns in an unlimited range of combinations.

The artist explains: “During the campaign to liberate the machines, we managed to give a new identity to ten car windscreen wiping engines and five disco ball engines. Never again will they have to perform the dull movements of scrubbing water droplets and bird droppings from the windshield or spinning a silly mirror ball for nights on end for the joy of sweaty and squirming bodies. Monotonous rhythms have been replaced by dynamic ones. Instead of direct or alternating current pulsating incessantly through the grooves, the machine beats in the unpredictable rhythms of a random generator. By forever abandoning the claustrophobia of an engine compartment or the loneliness of a night club ceiling, instead forming systems with their companions and creating kaleidoscopic rhythm patterns in order to dominate the space. Man is only an observer here.”

Erik Alalooga (b 1974) is a visual artist, performer, director, sound artist, teacher and cultural organiser living in Tallinn. He graduated the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) with a bachelor’s degree in sculpture and acquired a master’s degree in interdisciplinary arts. Since 2018, he has been studying at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater doctoral studies. He has worked as an associate professor of the Interdisciplinary Art Department of EKA (2006–2010) and as the head of the Performing Arts Department (2010–2013). He currently works as the head of the EKA sculpture studio. Alalooga has presented exhibitions, performances and experimental concerts in Estonia, the Nordic and Baltic countries, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, France, the USA, and Australia.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
The exhibition is open until 11 December.

Public seminar Arts, Crafts, Affects: Documenting HerStories and Worldbuilding at Estonian Academy of Arts and workshop by #FramedinBelarus

Participants: #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar), Katrin Mayer, Mare Tralla

Discussant: Katrin Kivimaa

Organized by Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts) & Ulrike Gerhardt (University of Potsdam)

Pre-registration is required. Please register here

Introduction

Handi/crafts have made a visible and present return in contemporary art. Many artists have found their tools of expression in traditional media which require special training and skills that are often passed down through generations. Yet these manual ancestral techniques have complex connotations which can be pinned down to their specific purposes; these range from spiritual to communicative, ecological to existential, and last but not least, economic needs.

The area of handi/craft and textile studies has long been neglected and marginalized in art history writing. Yet textile art often has a strong conceptual and epistemic grounding and the use of crafts and old techniques brings to the fore new possibilities of resistance and alternative worldbuilding. In various Eastern European countries between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, many communities were formed around textile art, transforming the genre into an experimental, progressive, and community-feeding way of art making (Hock 2013). More recently, over the last decade, textile, quilting and embroidery techniques have seen a renaissance that urges us to rethink this research field as an increasingly intertwined and interdisciplinary terrain of art, design, material culture and handi/craft.

Feminist art historians have suggested that embroidery and related media have provided women with weapons of resistance, offering a potential challenge to the boundaries between high and low, gender and class relations, and their intersections with identity, race and diasporic memories (Parker 1984, Smith 2014, Plummer 2022). In this context, embodied herstory can be understood as women’s history embedded and encrypted in gendered techniques, textures and patterns, through which this historical knowledge is being carried, lived and transformed through generations, continents and local contexts.

This public seminar will bring together the experiences and research strategies of two artists, Mare Tralla (London / Tallinn) and Katrin Mayer (Düsseldorf / Berlin), as well as one collaborative craftivist project, #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, Prague). They will articulate relationships between embodied herstories and their chosen material forms. Furthermore, they will consider handi/craft as a channel of alternative communication that has long been used for transmitting women’s struggles and hardships in patriarchally structured and capitalist societies. Central questions of the public seminar are: How can we explain this return of traditional and transgenerational body-related techniques in art in the age of surveillance capitalism and diaspora? What kinds of affects do these techniques and materials channel and carry? How do they allow us to document and connect different feminist struggles, and bring together contemporary and historical resistances? In the context of this public seminar, art historians Margaret Tali (Tallinn) and Ulrike Gerhardt (Potsdam) are specifically interested in handi/craft as a newly interpreted tradition and as material labor and a means to express and communicate the unspeakable, including its capacity to raise new questions about international solidarity, acts of resistance and mental health, and to offer alternative worldbuilding practices.

On November 26^th a workshop by #FramedinBelarus will take place in collaboration with the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in the framework of the seminar.

Mare Tralla is an Estonian queer-feminist interdisciplinary artist and activist living in London.

Katrin Mayer is an artist based in Berlin. Her approach is a type of archeology of knowledge, she takes up gender political histories of a place and translates them into spatial-material formulations.

Rufina Bazlova is a Belarusian artist who works with the traditional folk embroidery as a medium to depict socio-political issues.

Sofia Tocar is a curator and cultural manager who works on artivist collaborative projects and documentary films in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

#FramedinBelarus is a social art project by Stitchit dedicated to political prisoners and organized by Stitchit art group. Stitchit was created in 2021 in Prague by Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, who invite different communities and individuals to join their creative process.

Katrin Kivimaa is an art historian, whose main areas of research are feminist art history, Estonian modern and contemporary art, historiography of Estonian art history, representation of women in art and visual culture.

Ulrike Gerhardt is a visual studies scholar with a focus on cultural memory practices in post-socialist art and artistic co-directress of the feminist video art platform D’EST.

Margaret Tali is an art historian and cultural theorist whose work deals with memory politics, art museums and curation of difficult histories in the Baltic context. She co-curates the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts”.

The event is supported by European Regional Development Fund, Estonian Academy of Arts and University of Potsdam.

Kaisa Maasik’s new solo exhibition The Human Sponge in the Age of Screens is open from Thursday, November 3, 2022 at the ARS Showroom Gallery. The new project dealing with the susceptibility of children and the way kids mimic everything they see and hear, brings together video footage filmed by kids themselves. The exhibition will remain open until November 29.

Something that the gathered material has in common is its influences from mass media, the mainstream film and music industry. From the 2000’s onwards, filming equipment like video, web, digital and phone cameras became more affordable. Ever since then, kids have had a way to record different re-enactments of what they see on screens. The artist adds: “The endless creativity, sincerity and enthusiasm of children in the work is amazing, but it’s clouded by the violence in most of the scenes. When mirroring their surroundings, kids have a way of showing us what society is like in general.”

Graphic design by Nora Pelšs

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Estonian Artists’ Association.

3.–29.11.2022
Mon–Fri 12–18, free entry
NB! The exhibition is exceptionally open on two Saturdays: 19.11 & 26.11 at 13–16
ARS Showroom gallery
ARS Art Factory
Pärnu mnt 154
11317 Tallinn
www.arsfactory.ee

More info:
Kaisa Maasik
kaisamaasik@gmail.com
5396 2524
https://fb.me/e/9IVyk3ha4