“Preservation: Architecture, Nature and Politics” studio final presentations in Pärnu

Preservation has achieved cultural significance as a lens through which various urban experts have come

to imagine what a socially and environmentally sound future might look like. As an approach, preservation has been applied to disparate phenomena ranging from historic neighbourhoods and natural environments to democracy and identity. This studio unfolded the formative concepts and historic moments that define contemporary understandings of preservation and applied these discussions to various typologies of architecture, urban fabric and the natural environment taking Pärnu and the wider region as a case study. In particular, the studio focused on the ways in which ideas, labour and design have intersected in the past to identify alternatives to the mainstream forms of preservation.

The studio culminates with a presentation of group projects that explore a variety of approaches to layers of heritage and questions of preservation in Pärnu and Sindi. Pärnu, the fourth largest city in Estonia, is struggling with the seemingly conflicting and contradictory notions of growth, shrinkage, preservation and destruction. Sindi, as a smaller town in the region, faces similar, but also additional challenges connected to its significant industrial heritage. Efforts to imagine and construct a vision for a city are also tied up with the tactile practices of preservation; set within specific administrative and management frameworks of maintenance, care, and neglect. 

Despite intentions, prescriptive visions by the city and developers can serve to exacerbate inequalities through the various infrastructures, supply chains, policies and environmental conditions that extend well beyond the rigid borders of a city.

Can the concept of preservation open a discussion around a vision for Pärnu (and its hinterlands)

beginning not with growth and progress, but rather with repair, maintenance or even deterioration?

Student projects explore who gets to decide what is valuable, organise the preservation of things, and who then carries out the work. Negotiations about what should be preserved and what “good preservation” entails, are always contingent and contextual.

Projects: 

• • Decompressed Transition: Paula Veidenbauma, Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup
  • Tides of a Summer City: Khadeeja Farrukh, Anna Dzebliuk and Christian Hörner
  • Fabricated Heritage – Interweaving the Past and Future of Sindi’s Kalevivabrik: Luca Riese Ritter, Paulina Schroeder and Augustas Lapinskas
  • Tea, Coffee or Hot Water?: What to Make of the Boiler Room: Kush Badhwar, Nabeel Imtiaz and Paul Simon

Decompressed Transition

Paula Veidenbauma, Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup

Pärnu is caught between diverging time regimes. In its role as a major spa and resort town, the city aims at slowing down the rhythm of life of the urban workforce. In parallel, the developments surrounding Rail Baltica will likely greatly compress this rhythm within Pärnu. The project examines frameworks of the relationship between those phenomena. It deals with instances of built and immaterial heritage and acts of preserving, especially the latter through shifting political systems. The float, emerging as the central piece of the project, can be interpreted as a gradient operating between Rail Baltica (a linear and high-velocity infrastructure), Pärnu’s leisure facilities and the open sea. It might function as a means of transportation while also exploring the possibility of non-arrival.

Visitors will be engaging with the project via a video installation, a float building workshop and a presentation. Float building instructions will be summarised in a booklet.

Tides of a Summer City

Khadeeja Farrukh, Anna Dzebliuk and Christian Hörner

The project explores possible resilient futures in Pärnu as a resort city. Showing how the “Summer City” developed historically, the video installation extrapolates empirical insights through Pärnu’s present-day reality into a future of constant flood emergency. The installation mobilizes futuristic renderings of possible resilient futures after a catastrophic flooding event to juxtapose and question the concepts of heritage, seasonality and resilience. We touch upon the inter-urban dependencies between Pärnu and Tallinn, manifesting historically, materially and spatially at the seaside of Estonia’s summer capital, securing the cities influx of holidaymakers during summer, but also causing issues of urban disenfranchisement of its residents, exploitation of its workers and destruction of coastal habitats of non-human residents. Looking into the future, it will no longer be possible to brush over the threat of flooding and the prospect of permanent crisis. The project “Tides of a Summer City” asks hypothetical questions, working towards a framework for understanding future challenges by following the changing historical tides of a summer city.

Fabricated Heritage – Interweaving the Past and Future of Sindi’s Kalevivabrik

Luca Riese Ritter, Paulina Schroeder and Augustas Lapinskas

The project explores the significance of Sindi´s industrial heritage. In recent decades, globalisation, deindustrialization, economic restructuring and industrial relocation have produced new landscapes within many European cities and towns – the post-industrial landscape. Deprived of their raison d’être, they are often regarded as spatially, socially, and semiotically empty places. In order to overcome this apparent ‘void’, the transformation of these post-industrial remnants into new uses is now an essential part of urban development practice.  

Turning to industrial landscapes as potential carriers of cultural heritage ostensibly provides a  framework for the continued management of these sites. Industrial heritage then becomes the bearer of local identity and creates uniqueness out of the former mundane. 

The town of Sindi, a place essentially born from the settlement of a textile factory in the early 19th century, is in the process of discussing the reintegration of the material remains of industrial production into the town’s fabric which, since the closure of Kalevivabrik, the textile factory, has outgrown its original purpose. In this process of readjusting the relationship between factory-gone-ruin and the reorientation of the city, our project seeks to understand the potentials and conflicts that arise from industrial heritage, while taking a critical perspective at the practices of heritage preservation and its political implications. How and by whom is the town’s history preserved and remembered? Can there be a value of the material remains in the process of their decay? What is the role of heritage as a legal imperative? What role can the factory building play in the future of Sindi? 

Tea, Coffee or Hot Water?: What to Make of the Boiler Room

Kush Badhwar, Nabeel Imtiaz and Paul Simon

Drawing on the interest in the role of the educational institution Academia Non-Grata, elephants and other far-out references, the project explores junctions between the plan, the script and performance; preservation, the boiler room in the wider fabric of Pärnu; and the pitfalls and possibilities of experimental approaches to planning.

Plans for places chart a set of intentions that seek to influence the future of a place. Could the duration in which a plan is enacted be considered a performance?

Conversely, the script may be considered the plan for a performance. But despite the presence of a script, in performance, there can be room to manoeuvre in and around what is on the page, to improvise, to confront uncertainty and the yet to be known, to discover and learn from the process. Could such an approach also be applied to planning a city?

What might be discovered about prospective futures, preservation and other possibilities in Pärnu through the act of performance? Can performance and planning ever effectively speak to one another?

The possibilities of these questions are explored through three intertwined narratives of the boiler room, also the site of performance/presentation of the work: one in which the boiler room remains, structurally, as it is today; another in which the boiler room retains its shell but is appropriated over time; and, lastly in which the boiler room is razed and the site changes in purpose. Speculative fiction and alternative history take us through the boiler room and into the possible futures of the boiler room and the city of Pärnu.

On May 19, a joint exhibition “SHIFT” of the second-year jewelery and blacksmithing students of the Estonian Academy of Arts will be opened in the Old Town of Tallinn, Uus tn 4, where various states of change will be discussed.

There is a constant hidden movement within the apparent stability of the material world. Although stability and change seem at first sight to be opposites, change is the only constant element in our lives. However, we cannot escape the effects of the slightest change – regardless of its essence, we will inevitably have a shift between reality and the assumptions made on the basis of our experience, knowledge and feelings.

As the temporal forms solidify through exploratory and repetitive practice, the viewer will remain a testimony to the limits of our age.

As spatial phenomena change around through emerging and diverse practices, the viewer is left with only a tribute to the inaccuracies of our existence. “artybollocks generator”

Participants in the exhibition: Anna-Maria Vaino, Ardo Teesalu, Bianca Triinu Toots, Ellen Axberg, Hugo Toss, Margus Elizarov, Camilla Prey, Villu Mustkivi, Visa Eino Eduard Nurmi

The works have been supervised by: Nils Hint, Eve Margus

The exhibition is part of the EKA’s TASE ’22 satellite program and will be open daily from 12.00–20.00, until June 2.

The exhibition is supported by: Estonian Academy of Arts, Kaili Baked Goods, Fabric Jungle, Kräftwärk, Valmiermuiža, Barrel

Facebook event

Adrianus Kundert is a Dutch designer working on products and spatial design and is an enthusiastic basketry maker. Playfulness, experimentation and a delicate application of both colors and materials characterize his design language. His hands-on working method vouches for groundbreaking projects – materialized ideas twisting techniques into new crafts.

Adrianus: ”The projects I especially enjoy working on tend to push boundaries. Currently I am exploring the world of basketry and organizing my initiative Basketclub. Besides I work on product and spatial design for clients such as: Jongeriuslab, Susan Bijl, Crafts Council and Envisions.”

In this lecture Adrianus Kundert will take you on a journey through his working method, highlighting some projects that he worked on so far. With his playful and experimental approach Adrianus works on a very diverse range of projects within the scope of product design; all coming forth out of an hands-on making attitude while designing. The outcome of this process is often craft oriented, and tries to push the boundaries in an attempt to bring something new to these techniques. Recently he has been focussing on basketry, and in the lecture he will also explain more about his initiative Basketclub, that brings designers from around the world together on the theme of basketmaking. Finally, he will end the lecture by sharing his vision and what questions drive him while working on new designs.

The lecture is in English.

www.adrianuskundert.com

www.instagram.com/opblaashelicopter

https://www.instagram.com/_basketclub_/

The lecture is brought to you by EKA Accessories and Bookbinding Department

PhD VITAMIN 2023 – OPEN LECTURES AND CONSULTATIONS FOR DOCTORAL ASPIRANTS

On March 10,  PhD Vitamin will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts, room A501.

PhD Vitamin aims to support and pave the way – and inspire artists with a research approach on their way to doctoral studies. The goal is to introduce artistic research and advise potential candidates for postgraduate studies in planning a doctoral thesis project. In a program consisting of public lectures and one-on-one consultations, artists and experts discuss their approach to artistic research and share individual advice.

Artists, designers, alumni of EKA and other creative universities, and graduate students interested in artistic research methods are invited to participate.

The event will be held in English.

To participate in a one-on-one consultation, please fill out the FORM.

A detailed consultation schedule will be sent to your email after registration. Be quick – the number of participants in consultations is limited!

In case of additional questions, please write to kati.saarits@artun.ee

PROGRAMME

10.03, Friday, room A501

11:30-12:00 Coffee and welcome

12:00-12:45 Jaana Kokko “Ideals and Practices”

12:45-13:30 Daniel Peltz “Rural Contextual Practice: Long-term, place-based research in a centre for Peripheral Study”

13:30-14.00 Taavet Jansen “Directing a hybrid event as practice-based research”

14:00-15:00 Moderated discussion: Daniel Peltz, Jaana Kokko, Taavet Jansen, Maarin Ektermann

15:00-15:30 break

15:30-18.15 Consultations with Daniel Peltz and Jaana Kokko

SPEAKERS:

Daniel Peltz is an artist and Professor of Time and Space Arts at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. Prior to his professorship in Helsinki, Peltz served as Professor of Film/Animation/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design and co-founded the long-term, place-based, artistic-research project Rejmyre Art Lab’s Centre for Peripheral Studies, in Rejmyre, Sweden.

In his presentation “Rural Contextual Practice: Long-term, place-based research in a centre for Peripheral Study”, Peltz will provide an introduction to some of the strategies he has developed over the past 20 years of making works that emanate from engagements with specific communities and socio-cultural situations. The works intertwine multiple planes of existence from the ecological, to the social, to the financial, to the spiritual. There will be a particular focus on his epic, long-term engagement (going on 15 years) with the rural, glass-factory town of Rejmyre, Sweden. 

Jaana Kokko is an artist, filmmaker, educator and occasional curator based in Helsinki. In her artistic practice she is now in the search of the common: the emergent need for the change that is starting from our practices of art making, learning and being together. Her practice-based Phd project for the Aalto University is thinking the political together with Hannah Arendt and others.

She is and has been teaching and lecturing f.ex. at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Turku Art Academy, Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Latvian Academy of Arts, Riga and Akademie der Bildende Künste, Nürnberg. Her work has been exhibited f.ex. at the Lithuanian National Gallery in Vilnius, Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga, Tallinn Art Hall, Helsinki Art Hall, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Joensuu Art Museum in Finland, Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival and Tokyo Media Art Festival. 

www.jaanakokko.com

Taavet Jansen is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in dance, choreography, sound, and video. His current research focuses on creating immersive experiences for online art events. He is pursuing his doctoral degree at EKA and working on enhancing the elektron.art platform for online art events. His project promises to bring fresh perspectives to the digital creative sphere and contribute to the performing arts community.

Maarin Ektermann is an art worker, based in Tallinn, Estonia, who is working on intersections between contemporary art and more-or-less experimental education. Recent projects have included “Artists in Collections” (w M-A Talvistu, 2017 – ), re-imagining social rituals of the cultural field under RESKRIPT (w H. Hütt, 2019 – ), proposal for fair fee system for Estonian art scene (w A. Triisberg, 2019 – ) and since 2020 running a new educational platform proloogkool (“school of prologues”). On a daily basis she works  as a Head of Center for General Theory Subjects at Estonian Art Academy and teaches there courses on art history of 20th century, self-organized practices and on art criticism.

When you think about the phrase “beautiful legs’’, you may first associate it with the idea of something feminine and seductive, which reflections are secretly stored in our minds through advertising culture. What if the stereotypical and restrictive standards would turn into playful self-expression where feminine accessories could easily be worn by anyone, regardless of their gender identity? The photo is inspired by fashion photography and advertisements from the turn of the century and the last decades, using known symbols in a twisted manner.

The actors of Lunacharsky Drama Theatre have arrived in Tallinn! Let us introduce: The Christmas Boy, The Knight, Mr. Xavier and The Dog With a Man’s Body. The collage is composed of pictures taken in the 1970s which were found in a former military base.

Group exhibition “Ideations of the World”
Manufaktuuri 7, Uue Loomingu Maja (ULM)

Artists: Alyona Movko-Mägi, Ats Kruusing, Cloe Jancis, Kati Müüripeal, Lara Brener, Laura Liventaal, Maris Paal, Noah Emanuel Morrison, Samuel Lehikoinen, Zody Burke
Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna
Graphic design: Taylor Tex Tehan

Jaan Valsiner (2021) has written, that culture is a part of a person’s relationship with their self and the outside world. Due to psychological limitations, animals have to accept the fact of an experience as they are unable to enrich the experience with meaning. However, people cannot be satisfied with the fact that a bad experience has taken place. They feel the need to make sense of it – to give it meaning. If a car accident is explained as a coincidence, it does not sound too meaningful. By adding karma or sorcery as a justification for the event, one has enriched a personal experience with cultural significance. People are the creators of meanings, and the meanings they create frame their relationships with their surroundings. Art is a delusion, that speaks the truth (Picasso).

Open until 26.05
Sat-Thur 12 am–6 pm 

Installation and technical support: Estonian Fairs Centre, Valge Kuup Studio, Tallinn Art Hall

Artists: 

Laura Liventaal is an Estonian artist and filmmaker, who is interested in physicality, tactility, intimacy and uniqueness of an individual experience. Her work was last exhibited at the EKA Young Sculptor Award Exhibition at ARS Art Factory 17.02-05.03.2022.

Samuel Lehikoinen is on abstract and surreal painter from Finland. His last solo exhibition “Strange questions” took place in Helsinki, Malmitalo Center on 10.02-6.3.2022. His works are depicting dream states and obsessive thought patterns with repetition and sense of materiality.

Maris Paal is a painter, who has graduated from the Painting Department at Pallas University of Applied Sciences and received further education in Greece and Hungary. Her last exhibition with Brita Maripuu “Parallel Potentials” took place in Põhjala Tehas on 17.04-01.05.2022. 

Kati Müüripeal is an Estonian painter, who has participated in several group exhibitions since 2019. In her painting she depicts abstract magical realism. 

Cloe Jancis has studied photography at EKA. Her last exhibition took place at the Riga Photography Biennale on 21.05.2022 , where she represented Estonia with an artist Sigrid Viir.

Zody Burke is an American artist and musician. The last exhibition “Mousetrap. America eats it young ”took place at the DOM Gallery in Riga from 1.04-15.04.2022. In addition, on 17.02.2022 she participated in the EKA Young Sculptor Award Exhibition at the ARS Art Factory and won the silver medal.

Lara Brener is an artist and educator from São Paulo, Brazil. She is interested in building ambiguous narratives and spaces that could incite memories and projections. Her works are developed mostly by experimentations in text, photography, and graphic processes.

Noah Emanuel Morrison is an artist and a professional photographer from New York. The main art mediums used in his work are video, photography and text. He is interested in the topics of gender, nationality and origin, family and race.

Ats Kruusing is a master’s student at EKA, whose main art mediums are painting, photography and video. He participated in the EKA graduation festival TASE21. He is mostly interested in everyday rituals, relationships between space and the individual and modern masculinity and sexuality.

Alyona Movko-Mägi is an audiovisual and video artist studying at EKA. She creates installations and art with mixed media. The artist recreates her perception, revealing the inseparable connection between image and sound. She collaborates with directors, orchestras and theaters and works in the field of new media. 

The curator Liisi Kõuhkna is an art therapist and artist, who has graduated her BA (2014) and MA (2016) in art therapy at Tallinn University. She is currently studying jewellery and blacksmithing, curating in EKA.

Info:
Liisi Kõuhkna
liisi.kouhkna@artun.ee
+56665255 

Exhibition “Notes on Fashion and Gender” on the 4th floor of Estonian Academy of Arts on 14–16 May 2022.

Participants: Karl Martin Kelder, Hedy Kohv, Karolin Kärm, Maria Kristiin Peterson, Jentl Rietdij, Mairo Seire, Sanna Särekanno, Kirke Talu, Liis Tisler, Anni Vallsalu, Dana Lorên Vares

This Saturday, the exhibition Notes on Fashion and Gender, which is outcome of the course Fashion and Gender opens at the 4th floor of Estonian Academy of Arts. 11 students present their works that could be considered floating between the areas of fashion, design and contemporary art. The focus of the course was on fashion as visual communication and as embodied practice: how different embodied practises contribute to the creation and communication of gender and other identity-related categories (age, sexuality, ethnicity, social class), and how the prevailing notions of identity can be challenged. Shoes, a mask, a hat, bags, pants and other objects will be exhibited at the show.

Tutors of the course are Sten Ojavee from Estonian Center for Contemporary Art and Annamari Vänskä from Aalto University. Ojavee and Vänskä first collaboration took place in 2016 in the event VI Artishok biennale which was produced by CCA.

Tutors: Sten Ojavee, Annamari Vänskä (Aalto University)

Exhibition is open until 16 May 2022.

Estonian Academy of Arts, 4^th floor, Sat–Mon 08–23.

Seminar Likeness in Difference. Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History 

Location: Estonian Academy of Arts, Kumu Art Museum
The working language at the seminar is English.

The seminar jointly organised by Estonian Academy of Arts and the Art Museum of Estonia brings together art researchers and curators from the three Baltic countries. The art history of the Soviet period serves as the point of departure for the seminar.

The regional, comparative, and international focus on an analysis of cultural practices and the respective institutional conditions establishes a basis for presentations on both shared and individual experiences, facilitates studying their causes and backgrounds, and helps to challenge the established narratives that we construct and reproduce about our own art histories and those of others.

The meanings and self-understanding of the Baltics as a geopolitical and cultural region have changed several times throughout history. In the field of culture, the frequent interaction between the three Baltic republics in the Soviet time was replaced by narratives of national independence in the 1990s. Because of the polarised world perception of the Cold War era, the three countries sought to define themselves through these narratives as part of either Eastern Europe or the West. Therefore, their interest in one another and the sense of shared regional characteristics remained in the background for quite some time. Nevertheless, the last few years have witnessed changes in several spheres (of culture), which have served as a launch pad for a more active and productive dialogue.

The two-day seminar has been divided into six panels. Topics vary from photography and studies of the heritage of women artists to analyses of Soviet exhibition activities and experimental art practices. Presentations will also deal with real and imaginary art collectives and pose future-oriented questions about potential trans-Baltic research topics, exhibition projects and new theoretical approaches that provide the necessary framework. The aim is to explore intersections between the participants’ research interests and activities, and to prepare a foundation for future cooperation projects.

‘Likeness in Difference – Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History’
Digital Thesis PDF

More info + the programme

Event on Facebook

Public play event “Don´t lose, but let loose” will take place on 10th May 18-19 at EKA caffeteria hole (A100). 

And playground is open for the whole day.

This is part of course “Design for play”, which is led by Eva Liisa Kubinyi.

Until we play!