Category: Departments

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.

Luce Grosjean, head of Miyu Distribution will visit EKA animation department on Tuesday November-26. She has been distributed some of the biggest hits from the last couple of years, like Negative Space, Garden Party, Bloeistraat 11, Egg and I’m Going Out for Cigarettes. She is currently working for six animation schools in France and Denmark.

At 20:00 starts the screening in EKA auditorium A101 and Luce Grosjean will be there to comment the screening.

#21XOXO by Sine Özbilge, Imge Özbilge
Hors Piste by Léo Brunel, Camille Jalabert, Loris Cavalier, Oscar Malet
Egg by Martina Scarpelli
I’m Going Out for Cigarettes by Osman Cerfon
Symbiosis by Nadja Andrasev
Toomas by Chintis Landgren

Miyu Distribution was created in 2017, Miyu Distribution was born from the partnership between Luce Grosjean and her company Seve Films, and Miyu Productions. Specialized in international sales and distribution of animation short films, Miyu Distribution distributes the graduation films of leading animation school as well as films from independent production structures.

Find out more here.

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 Faculty of Architecture of EKA is glad to ask you to join an open lecture by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen – a professor in urban planning at Aalborg University. In her lecture “Cities, Mobilities, Futures” she talks about planning the city keeping cycling in mind. Freudendal-Pedersen will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 20th of November at 10 am. Lecture is free of charge and open to everyone.

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Professor in Urban Planning at Aalborg University and has a interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology.

Focus for her research is how mobilities frame and enable modern everyday life. How individuals experience, evaluate or describe their mobilities and what propels their actions is important to understand if we aim at more sustainable mobilities in the future. Specific transport modes have different values and importance in planning cities. Values or taken for granted knowledge about transport and mobilities produce path dependencies in everyday life mobilities that are also diffused into policy and planning systems. Her research addresses interrelations between social practice and transport modes and the role the for urban spaces and city life.

More info:
E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee
Tel. +372 642 0071

The Inevitability of Urbanization: Open Lecture by Ross Exo Adams

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be London based architect, urbanist and historian Ross Exo Adams, who will talk about the inevitability of urbanization. Adams will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 28th of November at 6 pm.

Ross Exo Adams is Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Architecture at Bard College. He is the author of Circulation and Urbanization (Sage, 2019) and has written widely on the intersections of architecture and urbanism with geographies and histories of power. His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Royal Institute of British Architects, The London Consortium, Iowa State University and The MacDowell Colony.

To speak about an urbanized planet today is at once to utter an unthinkable reality and to name the inevitability of a process we take to be rooted in the human condition itself. As we confront this situation today, we are met with questions of how we urbanize—sustainable urbanism, resilient urbanism, adaptation regimes, development as improvement, etc.—almost never asking why we must urbanize in the first place. In his talk, Adams argues that the inevitability of urbanization is based in part on the way in which we have historically overlooked the emergence of the urban itself, treating it instead as a natural outcome of human co-existence. By suggesting a genealogical account of the formation of this space-process in parallel to the rise of the modern state, its colonial outposts and the capitalist order it gave rise to, he attempts to open a space in which we might challenge the inevitability of an urban future. Now more than ever, as we confront endgame thresholds and the countless injustices of limitless growth, we need to find ways to ask: if not the urban, then what?

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee
www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:
Kadi Karine
E-mail: arhitektuur@artun.ee
Tel. +372 642 0071

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.

Flo Kasearu (b. 1985) :

I was born in Soviet Union but grew up in Estonia. I studied painting (2004-2008) and photography (2008-2013) at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
In 2006-2007 I was an exchange student at the Rebecca Horn studio at Berlin University of the Arts, where I started doing performance and video art. I work and live in Flo Kasearu House Museum in Tallinn, Estonia.

The nature of my works is seasonal and explorative, in that each project begins as an open-ended game. No favourite theme or a medium. I am interested in grassroots level, private and public space, vertical vs horizontal relationships, monumental vs unstable. I value irony more than aesthetics. So far I have played with private and public space, freedom, economic depression, patriotism and nationalism, domestic violence…

More info: www.flokasearu.eu

The talk is in English and is part of the EKA Contemporary Art MA (MACA) programme’s public lecture series ART TALKS.

Everybody is welcome to join!

Aesthetics, spatial practices and the 1980s neoliberalization: Open Lecture by Helena Mattsson

The first lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will be Helena Mattsson, Professor in History and Theory at KTH School of Architecture. In her lecture The Politics of the Archive: Aesthetics, spatial practices and the 1980s neoliberalization, she sets the historical foundation for our neoliberal and capitalist cityscape. Mattsson will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 7th of November at 6 pm.

Helena Mattsson is Professor in History and Theory of Architecture at KTH School of Architecture. She is the co-editor of Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State and the forthcoming Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture and transformation from the 1960s to the present. She is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Architecture. Her research deals with the 20th century theory on welfare state architecture and contemporary architectural history with a special focus on the interdependency between politics, economy and spatial organizations. Another focus for the research is methods of historiography, and investigations into participatory history writing.

Today’s social and political landscape of the welfare state is in a period of radical transformation, a process often labeled as neoliberalization. The role architecture and spatial practices play in this landscape have radically changed, with the separation between spatial dimensions and the administrative state apparatus. This shift calls for new conceptualizations of architecture as a discipline and how it operates. Her lecture discusses the contemporary architectural history of neoliberalization and revisits the archives of the emerging constellations of spatial practices and politics in the 1980s.

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee 
www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/