Paljassaare Kaleidoscope

From its abandoned beaches to the smelly yet indispensable water treatment plant, the hill made from trash, the willfully resistant garage town and its shiny new future plans – everything in Paljassaare seems to be exactly that: an ever-changing sequence of elements, a kaleidoscope.

After researching its abundance of topics, places and processes for one semester, first year Urban Studies students from Estonian Academy of Arts will take their turn and reflect on what they have spotted in that kaleidoscope, in a sequence of creative projects presented on site, in Paljassaare.

The detailed route and more information on each stop can be found on Urban Studies facebook page and Instagram soon!

EET/GMT+2 is a reflection on the Israel-Palestine conflict from Estonia.

The artworks featured represent the dual relations of artists and students as both insiders and outsiders to Estonian society and as insiders and outsiders to the Israeli Palestine conflict.

Navigating through the themes of war, identity, migration, local laws and the Estonian media landscape, this exhibition attempts to raise our collective political as well as social awareness.

We open up Vent Space as a space for learning, empathy, and discussion in order to lay the groundwork for building solidarity.

Collaborators:

Augustas Lapinskas
Community in EKA for Palestine
Ditiya Ferdous
Fatima-Ezzahra El Khammas
Karolis Lasys
Kush Badhwar
Lara Brener
Martha Liise Kapsta
Nabeel Imtiaz
Noah Morrison
Rok Ifko
Rose Magee
Ryan Galer
Shubham Aggarwal

Within the framework of the Open Lectures Series of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA, Birgitte Svarre will take the stage in the hall of EKA on 30th November at 6:15 pm with lecture “Public space / public life – an interaction – how to study and make room for it.” She talks about her work studying public life and creating space for it.

The lecture is preceded by public presentation of the book “How to Study Public Life” at 5:30 pm in EKA lobby.

Birgitte Svarre is the co-author of the book “How to Study Public Life”. She has a MA on Modern Culture, a PhD in Architecture and is CEO at BARK, Copenhagen, a consultancy focused on strategic development of places with a focus on both people and places. BARK is owned by the Building Heritage Foundation. Until 2022, Birgitte Svarre has been with Gehl Architects for more than 14 years consulting cities mainly in Northern Europe on human centered planning, public space and public life, including as head of Gehl’s Cities team. She is currently part of the advisory board for lively city centers for the Danish Foundation Realdania.

Architect Jan Gehl is an Adjunct Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture, Professor (ret.) of Urban Design, The Royal Danish Academy and Founding Partner, Gehl Architects. In 1971 Jan Gehl published the seminal book Life Between Buildings launching a whole new thinking about the design and development of cities. Gehl’s first book and subsequent publications sparked a showdown with the car-centric cities and began mapping and describing people-friendly interventions in the infrastructure of cities. His books include Life Between Buildings, Public Spaces – Public Life, New City Spaces, New City Life, Cities for People.

The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch previous lectures from www.avatudloengud.ee

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

Open Lecture:

Gustav Kalm
The Look of States as Investment Vehicles:
A Snapshot from Millennial Capitalism

Tuesday, Dec 5, 17.30
EKA, A501

India is open for business. Guinea is open for business. Promoting Bulgaria as a successful investment destination. Choose France. Welcome to Estonia. Advertisements of this kind litter the pages of Financial Times, The Economist, Äripäev and other business outlets. What do they do? Is it insignificant blabber or do they actually change something?

Promoting states as investment destinations took off in the 1990s after the liberalization of international capital flows. Typically associated with peak neoliberalism, in the 1990s policy circles came to think of states as competing with one another on a variety of metrics. Attracting foreign investment now came to be considered central political aim for most states. By the 2000s, most countries in the world had opened investment promotion agencies. By the 2020s, this millennial vision of capitalist globalization seems to be receding. As dusk is setting over the “end of history,” Minerva’s owl can take flight and we can look back and analyze millennial capitalism that we are leaving behind.

This talk untangles how that form of statehood operated and how it reconfigured politics in most countries in the world. It is grounded in a study of one of the crucial visual forms of this era—advertising states as investment destinations. No longer heraldry of throned heads, nor glass palace fantasies of colonialism, the millennial representation of the state was an advertisement proclaiming the state to be open for foreign investment. What is or was this political form?

Gustav Kalm is an Anthropologist of Law and Economy. He is currently Fondation Bruno Latour postdoctoral fellow at Sciences Po Law School. His research studies how the legal techniques that undergird world economy operate as a form of power and structure international inequalities. In his doctoral dissertation, he studied how the legal forms of foreign investment have recalibrated statehood. He also writes cultural and political commentary and has pursued multiple collaborations with artists and curators. Gustav Kalm received his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University (2023) and previously trained as a lawyer at Sciences Po (2014).

Everyone is welcome to join!

On December 4, EKA Urban Studies students will present the zine “The Cheapest Option”.

Urban Studies students Elena Pusčiūtė, Ishrat Shaheen, Jonas Vyšniauskas, Maria Laura Benduzu Ulluo, Kalina Trajanovska and Kush Badhwar in collaboration with EKA GD students Joao Nogueira and Karthik Palepu release The Cheapest Option, a zine emerging from the semester-long studio Production of Urban Space, guided by Helen Runting and Leonard Ma.

The zine explores how ideas of the non-plan, neoliberalism, markets, cybernetics, and neo-liberal subjects shape our experience of space, explored through forms including city postcards, generic characters, local newspapers, and memes. The event takes place in 501, 5th floor. A limited number of copies of the zines will be available for distribution.

The zine launch will be followed by a presentation from Professor Helena Mattsson on her recent book “Architecture and Retrenchment: Neoliberalization of the Swedish Model across Aesthetics and Space, 1968–1994,” which investigates the relation between architecture and the neoliberalization of the Swedish welfare state.“

Schedule:

In autumn 2023, the open architectural lectures will take place under the title Mobile Masters. The theme brings architects and theorists to Tallinn, who analyse architecture’s flexibility and the mobile practices of architects, spatial designers and artists.

Gregor Taul, the curator of the autumn lectures, introduces the program with the following words: “Architecture stands at a significant crossroads. Ten-year-old buildings are demolished and taken to the landfill. The lifespan of an interior design project is five years at best, if that. These bleak facts do not inspire confidence in a discipline that requires so many resources in light of such a short time perspective. What does ‘better not do anything’ mean for spatial design? What might ‘mobile architecture’ refer to or who is a ‘mobile designer’? How can moving people or things be a positive spatial practice?”

On December 7, Brussels-based Laurens Bekemans and co-founder of Brussels-based BC architects & studies, will be on the EKA main hall stage in Tallinn with the lecture The Act of Building.

BC is BC architects, studies and materials. BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew – embedded within place and people. Started in 2012 as a hybrid office, BC is manoeuvring the boundaries of architecture in a doers manner. With three different legal entities, the team engages in a variety of experimental projects through which it designs bioregional and circular architecture, researches educational and construction processes and produces new building materials using local waste streams such as excavated earth

Laurens introduces his lecture in the following words:

From the first fieldtrips for the design of a library in Burundi to involving over 150 workshop participants in the construction of a public building in Belgium, these stories tell how BC engages in acts of building. The act of building is act and discourse.It is the complex effort of a temporary association to create an infrastructure of its own. In order to have a positive impact on our society, BC believes that architects need to intervene beyond the narrow definition of the professional who designs and controls the execution of buildings. 

Hence, BC ventures into material production, contracting, storytelling, knowledge transfer, community organization, which all influence BC’s design approach. The act of building has an impact and is at the same time a manifestation of values and ideas, which grew out of a broad network around a specific project. Building has a transformative power, driven by action, narrative and result. The lecture will guide you through key moments and key projects, which helped transform BC into the hybrid practice it is today. 

*

The open lectures are intended for students and professionals of all disciplines, not just the field of architecture. All lectures take place in the large auditorium of EKA, are in English, free of charge and open to all interested parties. Be there!

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA brings to the audience in Tallinn every academic year about a dozen unique practitioners and valued theoreticians of the field. You can watch lectures from previous years on YouTube or www.avatudloengud.ee

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

Curator: Gregor Taul

On 21 December Mariann Raisma, a PhD candidate at Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, will defend the thesis „The Power of the Museum. Shaping Collective Memory in Estonia during the Turning Points of the 20th Century“ („Muuseumi võim. Muuseum kollektiivse mälu kujundajana Eestis 20. sajandi murranguperioodidel“).

Public defence will be held on 21st of December 2023 at 11.00 at EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A101.

Supervisors: Prof. Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts), Dr. Anneli Randla (Estonian Academy of Arts)

External reviewers: Dr. Anu Kannike (Estonian National Museum), Dr. Marleen Metslaid (Estonian National Museum)

Opponent: Dr. Anu Kannike (Estonian National Museum)

The defense will be held in Estonian.

Over the past two centuries, museums have played a pivotal role in shaping societies’ understanding of the past. They guide our perceptions of history, determine the delicate balance between forgetting and remembering, and influence the hierarchy of values associated with heritage.

This dissertation critically examines the power and influence of museums as mediums of cultural memory, with a focus on the Estonian museum field. Given that our identity is intricately tied to what we remember and what we choose to forget, it is crucial to understand the reasons and processes behind the shaping and shifting of collective memory throughout historical periods. This research focuses on the history of the Estonian museum in the 20th century, examining three periods which saw significant historical turning points: 1919–1925, 1940–1941/1944–1953 and 1987–1994.

The history of Estonian museums offers insights into how the core principles, values and canons for constructing cultural memory changed during these periods of social and political upheaval. These changes encompassed the nature and interpretation of ideologies, themes and how they were represented, museums as institutions, their hierarchy and nomenclature, the dynamics of the relationship between power and the institution, and the capacity, intent and ability of museums to shape society’s collective memory.

The identity and institutions of the Estonian museum field underwent significant changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning with self-definition rooted in European culture, museums transitioned to embracing ‘Heimat’ before evolving to value ethnicity. This evolution culminated in ideas for large national museums, which eventually diversified into various specialised museums during the 20th century. The regional discourse of the early 20th century gave way to a national narrative, followed by a Soviet-Marxist perspective. In the final decade of the century, national cultural memory underwent a revival. This sequence of ideas was also reflected in history-themed permanent exhibitions: the 1920s witnessed the legitimisation of popular culture as elite; the 1940s established a normative approach to historical materialism; and from the late 1980s, nationalism triumphed once again, ushering in new museological approaches. While analysing all these changes, this dissertation emphasises the hybridity of Estonian museum history and its interweaving with different cultural spaces and paradigms.

Throughout the three periods of upheaval discussed, museums were at the forefront of the shaping of a new cultural memory canon. Correspondingly, these turning points have contributed to the formation of Estonia’s own unique museum field.

The thesis is available HERE.

Members of the Defence Committee: Prof. Krista Kodres (Head of the Committee), Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Hilkka Hiiop, Prof. Juhan Maiste, Prof. Kurmo Konsa

The department of Interaction Design MA at EKA will contribute to the World Usability Day Estonia (WUD) with a public talk and workshop.

Conference FB event

Nesli Hazal Oktay’s Talk

Tanel Kärp’s Workshop

Conference LinkedIn event

World Usability Day Estonia (WUD) is an annual UX-, web- and interaction design conference, the largest in the Baltics. WUD 2023 topic is Collaboration and Cooperation.

This year’s WUD theme encompasses the essence of effective teamwork and smooth interaction in the realm of User Experience (UX). We aim to shed light on the significance of synergy and collective effort in driving innovation and fostering a cohesive UX community.

The event is in English and this year we will continue with the hybrid format which combines a live event (Kultuurikatel) with an online event.

November 21-23rd – workshop days
November 23rd – pre-event at Tallinn University (Narva mnt 25, Tallinn)
November 24th – conference day – the hybrid format – combines a live event (Kultuurikatel, Põhja puiestee 27a, Tallinn, ESTONIA) with an online event

You can watch the conference till the end of the year 2023!

More information on the event website

#wud2023 #ux #conference

“How to give structure to something that itself is lacking one? How to present something like that? This is a question of visibility and making visible. What are the means for making visible something that always remains invisible? More precisely: the thing that remains invisible in real life, but of which we can get a glimpse in Crystal Grid, is the structure of capitalism. But how to display something like that?”

Neeme Lopp Paul Kuimet’s Analytical Photography
Essay from artist’s book Crystal Grid (Lugemik, 2023)

The exhibition features 25 new works from the Crystal Grid series. The series, commenced in 2020, consists of collages composed of photos taken in palm houses of various botanical gardens around the world. The collages are arranged in sets of two, three or four, juxtaposing plant fragments, which in reality are located hundreds or even thousands of kilometers apart.

For the collages, a pattern is used, derived from the structure of the ceiling of the central transept of the Crystal Palace, erected for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. For each work, a new pattern is designed within the existing framework, based on the internal composition of each photo – part of the image is cut according to the pattern, and part is left uncut.

Public programme:

23.11, Draakoni Gallery and Kanuti Gildi SAAL

18.00 Guided tour with the artist (in English) and book launch (in Estonian)

Please join us for the launch of Crystal Grid – a new artists’ book by Paul Kuimet – on Thursday, November 23 at 6 pm. The event will begin at Draakoni Gallery with a guided tour by the artist. The tour will be held in English. After the tour the book launch will take place at Kanuti Gildi SAAL. At the launch the artist will be in conversation with the art critic Hanno Soans. Discussion is held in Estonian. During the launch the publication will be sold at a special price of 20 euros. On the evening of the launch Paul Kuimet’s exhibition at Draakoni Gallery will be open until 8 pm.

Paul Kuimet’s new book presents two series by the artist – “Crystal Grid” (2020–2023) and an ensuing series of assemblages “What It Is to Be What You Are Not” (2022).

The works are connected by a set of geometric shapes from a grid that is based on the roof structure of the central transept of the Crystal Palace, erected for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. While the photographic material of the “Crystal Grid” collages has been photographed in different botanical gardens around the world, the assemblages of the “What It Is to Be What You Are Not” series use images exposed to light-sensitive paper in the darkness of a photo lab together with leaves collected in the Tallinn Botanic Garden. Juxtaposed, the works raise different questions about the notions of place, form and representation in photography.

The book includes an essay by Neeme Lopp and was designed by Indrek Sirkel. The book is published by Lugemik and supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Paul Kuimet (1984) is an artist who works with photography, 16 mm film, and installation comprising of these media. Although his work is often described by a technological way of seeing, his practice places emphasis on the movement and presence of the beholder in the exhibition space. Since 2013, his work has been interested in modernist forms. In his latest works he has concentrated not so much on the forms of modernism, but on its materials, such as steel and glass, and their relationship to the development of modern capitalism since the mid-nineteenth century. He received an MA degree from the Estonian Academy of Arts (2014). In 2018, he participated in residency programmes at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, and at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City. Since 2022, Kuimet is the Associate Professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Photography.

Draakoni Gallery (Pikk 18, Tallinn)
Open: Mon–Fri 11.00–18.00, Sat 11.00–17.00
Opening 1.11.2023 at 18.00
Free entrance
Limited wheelchair accessibility

Exhibition “Crystal Grid”