T4EU Week in EKA “Design & Sustainability”
Sustainability is one of the core values of EKA – we promote sustainable thinking and green transition on every level, and integrate it in our teaching, research and artistic activities. When planning activities, the ecological footprint and the impact of people’s behavioural habits is assessed. We think that art and design are important part of the solution to the ecological crisis.
We are happy to invite you to experience our everyday life and also our highlights! The T4EU Week in EKA will take place from 13 – 17 June in Tallinn. The general subject is “Design & Sustainability”.
We have carefully planned the Week itself to be sustainable – not producing things for a short time usage, offering you food and coffee breaks in a sustainable way and even offering you eco-friendly hotels within walking distance.
Meet our lecturers and their lectures and workshops!
Lecturers
Taras Lesiv
Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and Research
Taras Lesiv has been teaching art and art history at Lviv National Academy of Arts (Ukraine) since 2007. He received both BA and MA degrees in Fine and Applied Arts, specializing in sacred art. Since 2005, he has been employed as an artist and project manager on various interior design projects for Christian churches. During 2017–2018 he was a Fulbright fellow at Georgia State University (USA). He defended his dissertation “Icon Painting in Galicia from the late 19th – early 21 centuries: Artistic Imagery and Theoretical Discourse” in 2021, receiving the Candidate of Sciences degree (PhD). Taras Lesiv was appointed Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and Research of the Lviv National Academy of Arts in September 2021. His research interests embrace history, theory, and practice of Christian sacred arts, visual arts and national/ethnic identity building.
Lecture: Resilience in Action: Art Education in the Face of War
During the war, the Lviv National Academy of Arts was faced with the critical challenge of safeguarding the safety and education of its students. This presentation provides a narrative account that highlights the diverse challenges our art institution encountered at the onset of the conflict, offering insights into our management strategies under trying circumstances. These challenges, including the mass departure of teachers and students to foreign countries, the transformation of educational settings, and financial constraints, all occurred alongside ongoing higher education reforms. Through partnerships with other art institutions and thanks to the dedication of our faculty, staff, and students, we established a resilient framework to maintain classes during the chaotic wartime conditions. While overcoming numerous obstacles, we are prioritizing the quality of education during and after the war. Recognizing the importance of support from both within and outside Ukraine, our goal is to prevent brain drain and preserve the vibrancy of art education.
Tuesday, June 13, room A101
Mona B. Livholts
Mona B. Livholts is Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland; Founder of the Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies, RAW (2008-2017). Livholts works with glocal-, post-anthropocentric, feminist- and postcolonial power analysis for social and environmental justice in the intersection of social work, creative writing, and art-based research. She has invented new forms for creative life writing, such as the thinkingwriting subject, post/academic writing, and the untimely academic novella by uses of literary fiction, memory work, diaries, letters, poetry, and photography. Research themes include media narratives on rape, sexual harassment, gender, space and memory, monuments and narrative inequality, environmental exhaustion, and the body politics of social work. Livholts has published monographs, and co-edited and edited volumes in Swedish and English, including The Body Politics of Glocal Social Work. Essays in the Post-Anthropocentric Condition (2022); Situated Writing as Theory and Method. The Untimely Academic Novella (2019); Discourse and Narrative Methods: Theoretical Departures, Analytical Strategies and Situated Writing (with Tamboukou 2015), Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies (2012). Blogposts and short papers on writing:
https://socialdialogue.online/sd26/05_article.html
http://www.sosiaalityontutkimuksenseura.fi/Ajankohtaista?id=177 http://www.urbariablog.fi/tracing-urban-exhaustion-through-slow-writing/
Lecture: Diffractive Writing as Methodological Practice in Art~Based Research
How do our embodied knowledges come into being through different ways of writing in art~based research? What kind of mo(ve)ments can be created through a diffractive writing methodology, by which multiple and inventive ways of composing writing allows the author to form textual shaping? Inspired by Haraway’s and Barad’s conceptualisation of diffraction as a pattern that occur when waves encounter an obstacle, this talk is composed as a series of real and imagined practice-based writing installations, interwoven with embodiment, landscapes, artifacts, water, space, and time in rural and urban settings. Drawing on my book Situated Writing as Theory and Method. The Untimely Academic Novella (2020) and some of my more recent work on more-than-human perspectives, I demonstrate how narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memories, poetic writing and photography can be useful to promote analytical reflexivity, critical, creative and reflexive ways of writing in artistic research.
Tuesday, June 13, room A101
Workshop: Creating Spaces for Different Ways of Writing in Art~Based Research
How can we create spaces for writing and language in artistic research that are inclusive to diverse ways of knowing and life forms, textually, materially and visually? This workshop invites you as participant to engage in thinking, conversations and practices of writing as art-based practice in dialogue with your own research projects. It is inspired by the ideas and practices from the lecture the 13th June where I promote understandings of writing as a situated and diffractive practice that is embodied and spatially located entangled with times, spaces, things, institutions, and landscapes. The methodological tool for taking on different ways of writing is composed by literary fiction and creative narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memory work, poetic writing, and photography. The seminar includes hands-on writing practices and small and large group conversations based on selected reading and individual preparations (see separate document).
Wednesday, June 14, room A403
Marta Konovalov
Marta Konovalov is a designer, craftsperson and an educator in the field of sustainable design; PhD student and a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts; Researching Repair and Regenerative Textile Design. As a craftsperson she is repairing holes in clothing. She looks for new ways to contribute to the zero waste mindset as a designer-maker. As a designer and a researcher she is repairing the relationships with fashion and speculating on a future of regenerative fashion.
Lecture and workshop: “Layers of repair and emotional durability” + learning basic repair techniques
Marta Konovalov makes mending visible in her creative practice with the aim to remind repair as a philosophy and inspire others towards the act of repair for prolonging the use phase of fashion artefacts. The aim of the course is to (re)learn some basic repair techniques like darning while discussing the importance of repair.
Participants are asked to bring a knitted piece of clothing (socks, a sweater, a scarf etc.) for repair if possible.
Wednesday, June 14, room B510/B511
Anna-Maria Saar
Anna-Maria Saar is an artist who has focussed on repairing clothing items as her main practice since 2021. Her creative activity is permeated by everyday performativity, which from time to time touches the boundaries of personal space in the exhibition hall, in the home environment, as well as in public space. Saar mediates the repair activities of garments as a creation or an act of performative art, thus making the hidden work visible and unraveling the connection between the typical concept of women’s work and the monetary value of it. She works across media and materials, displacing notions of value and the mundane.
Workshop: From silk to denim: Reinforcement and repair of worn clothing
Anna-Maria Saar will teach sashiko inspired patchwork techniques and share notions based on her own personal journey of mending her clothes. She will also share her observations on the material and the time needed for the practice.
Participants are asked to bring a worn out or broken piece of clothing or woven textile (jeans, shirt, etc) if possible.
Thursday, June 15, room B510/B511
Maris Taul
Maris Taul is a student of native textiles at the UT Viljandi Culture Academy. She has taken a deeper interest in repair since 2017. Maris has volunteered with the Repair Cafe in Tartu as a textile repair master. During her studies, she has dived into the topic of repair in Estonian textiles. In her seminar paper, she researched the techniques of repair used to mend peasant trousers. In addition, she described the most common techniques for mending textiles according to the literature from the beginning of the 20th century.
Workshop: Traditional Patchwork
The workshop by Maris Taul provides inspiration from the common practice of our ancestors and the mending techniques popular in the beginning of the 20th century in Estonia. It gives practical tools to mend woven textiles.
Participants are asked to bring a piece of clothing or textile (shirt, dress, trousers, etc) that needs repair if possible.
Friday, June 16, room B510/B511
Henry Kuningas
He is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation at the Estonian Academy of Arts. His research focuses on industrial heritage, but also critical heritage studies. Until recently, he worked for more than a decade in the Heritage Protection Department in the Urban Department of Tallinn City as an Old Town specialist.
Thursday, June 15, City sightseeing tour with Henry Kuningas
MARTYN ROBERTS
Founder, Fashion scout. After a successful career in Fashion PR in London, Martyn Roberts founded Fashion Scout in 2006. Over the past 17 years he has developed Fashion Scout into one of the world’s most recognised and acclaimed independent platforms for international fashion designers, and the largest independent platform at London Fashion week. Under Martyn’s direction, Fashion Scout has also delivered showcasing events and Business Accelerator Programmes in UK, France, Estonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, Armenia, Kenya, Sri Lanka and China.
Masterclass / Workshop: Brand Positioning and Identity, Building Value and Brand Communications
In this Masterclass / Workshop Martyn will explore how emerging fashion and accessories brands can build their brand identity, creating value for their clients and communicating this in crowded media scene. Martyn will delve into how emerging brands have successfully developed their brand positioning, how to identify target markets and how to price their designs. This is a subject he has delivered and discussed at leading universities and fashion weeks around the world.
Friday, June 16, room A501
Gytis Dovydaitis
Gytis Dovydaitis is a media specialist, technology philosopher, Ph. D. student, and lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University and Estonian Academy of Arts. Gytis’ Ph.D. project is on the philosophy of space, the internet, and internet art. Additional to Ph.D., he’s currently working on Artificial Intelligence and software-based art projects, and multiple teaching responsibilities. Topics covered in Gytis’ classes include internet culture, internet art, memes, media philosophy, hyperreality and creativity to name a few. Beyond professional responsibilities, Gytis is an avid biohacker, wellness and nutrition enthusiast, amateur cyclist, marathon runner, and a nature lover with a special love for wetlands.
Bog trip with Gytis Dovydaitis
By entering the bog, we’re ought to become-bog. It is not to impose our will or our vision on the bog, but to let ourselves be to learn from it. Bog is a territory of slow fermentation, and through our presence, we have to ferment together with it. However, modernity have alienated the bog. It repressed, marginalized and exploited the bog. Current ecological crisis with sea level rise is how the ghost of the bog reappears in the hyper-modernity, slowly fermenting the cities centimeter by centimeter. But there’s hope. Bog demands our attention, our care, our responsibility. The walk in the bog is an opportunity to reconnect with the bog, to acknowledge its existence and its value, to appreciate its beauty and its wisdom. Ultimately, it is an invitation to rethink our modes of living and thinking in a more ecological and ethical ways. Here we will ferment together with the bog by walking in both a relaxed, and mindful ways, and tasting fermented food. While modernity operates in speed, here we will resist it with slowness. Through fermenting, we will celebrate life in all its diversity. We will become-bog.
Saturday, June 17, bog trip
Karolin Eks &
Mariann Hendrikson
Karolin and Mariann are a dynamic duo of young designers to be. Currently in their second year of studying product design at EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts), they have already made their mark as enthusiastic organizers and advocates. In their first year, they successfully coordinated craft workshops for Ukrainian families and have continued to organize various events since then.
On their agenda there are design thinking workshops for high school students, recycling craft workshops for children, and they are both actively participating in co-design movements. Both Karolin and Mariann are now pursuing their first professional design roles – Mariann as an industrial design intern at Iseasi and Karolin as a innovation intern at SEB bank.
Karolin and Mariann are new to the field, but their passion and drive are evident in their work. They continue to learn and grow, positioning themselves as up-and-coming talents in the design community.
Design thinking workhsop “Through Their Eyes: A Workshop in Empathy”
Join us for an immersive workshop in speculative design that delves into the world of students in 2040, where dreams and challenges intertwine with higher education. Through collaborative problem-solving, we’ll unravel the complexities of study abroad experiences in a changing future society. Explore the transformative power of empathy in decision-making and speculate on a future where student needs and desires flourish.
Design thinking workshop for admin staff. Wednesday, June 14, room A502
Kadri Kalle
Kadri has been working in the field of environmental awareness and sustainable development education for over 10 years, both in the role of organiser and trainer. She is one of the creators of a “Zero Waste Training Handbook”, and zero waste training programs.
In 2019, together with Kristiina Kerge, she helped to create the concept of separate waste collection for I Land Sound festival. Among other things, Kadri has also worked as a chef and thus has a practical understanding of the needs and limitations of catering businesses.
Kadri is an experienced trainer and lecturer of environmental awareness, thus bringing a scientific approach to our team. She is also very familiar with the EU environmental and waste directives.
Sustainability workshop for admin staff. Thursday, June 15, room A502
Kristiina Kerge
Kristiina has contributed to the growth of several environmentally friendly initiatives, such as Kuhuviia.ee and the World Cleanup project of Let’s Do It Foundation. In 2019, together with Kadri Kalle, she helped to create the concept of separate waste collection for I Land Sound festival and also implemented it successfully. Kristiina has 8 years of project management experience and is very skilled in dividing big ideas into feasible stages.
Sustainability workshop for admin staff. Thursday, June 15, room A502