DOKKING Station at Vent Space

DOKKING Station exhibition opening at Vent Space on Thursday, 21.10.21 at 6 pm

DOKKING Station functions as a hub for the exchange of ideas and inputs from a variety of sources; it is a conduit for transference. Taking inspiration from how a docking station [dokkimisjaam] acts as an all in one technological solution; this exhibition explores how an intermediary consisting of a series of antiquated ports that allow for multiple forms of communication and information relay, can be understood as a rhizome. As the docking station is permanently in an in-between state, it becomes rhizomatic in nature, with its cables acting like roots. 

DOKKING Station exhibition at VENT Space aims to demonstrate the potential of a creative and physical manifestation of a docking station, bringing together a variety of ideas and inputs which reflect the metaphorical use of docking station as a mode of critique for the contemporary art gallery, with a focus on the sensitive relationships between our surroundings, natural environment and new materialism. 

DOKKING Station is an open space for collaboration and co-learning, it invites people to both plug-in and unplug, whether to receive information and learning or contribute to the creative transference themselves. It acts as a keystone, as without it, inputs on either side fail to communicate entirely. At DOKKING station, you are invited to choose your port and plug into either side — as artist and/or audience through joining free workshops and talks. Welcome. 

Programme:
21.10, 6 pm – Exhibition opening
23.10, 1 pm–3 pm – Large format dichotomy: Photography Workshop by Will Britten (to participate write dokkartscentre@gmail.com)
22.10/24.10, 1 pm–6 pm – Performative workshop: Beginnings of weaving by Ingrid Helena Pajo
26.10, 4 pm–6 pm – Bioplastics workshop by Katarina Kruus (to participate write dokkartscentre@gmail.com) 

Participating artists: Will Britten (UK), Katarina Kruus (EST), Liina Leo (EST), Eugenio Marini (IT), Kristian Stapleton (UK), Ingrid Helena Pajo (EST) 

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Graphic design: Liina Leo 

Exhibition is organized by DOKK Arts Centre. DOKK Arts Centre was founded in 2021 by Will Britten and Liina Leo as a temporary artist space in Baltic boatyard and metal workshop in Hiiumaa, Suuresadama. 

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia 

Thanks to: Morris Eigi, Tanel Eigi, Maris Lukk, Jonathan Chatterton, Vent Space, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia. 

Thursday, 21 October

*1 pm–3 pm International Coordinators’ Meeting

Friday, 22 October

10.00–12.30 Networking Meeting & Teachers’ Seminar
13.45–14.00 KUNO Biennale Introduction 

14.00–15.45 KUNO Seminar “Art Education and its Architecture”
Keynote speakers: Cecilie Andersen, Eik Hermann, Hannes Praks, Laura Toots (EKKM)

Streaming @ tv.artun.ee/kuno21

15.45–16.00 Break
16.00–17.00 KUNO Moderated Discussion on Zoom
Theme: Expectations of Accessibility and On-line Art Education 

Moderated by Josefina Posch, HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design

Saturday, 23 October

KUNO Network Meeting 2021 in Tallinn

Streaming @ tv.artun.ee/kuno21

11.00–13.30 KUNO Teacher’s Seminar 

Reflection on the theme by Kirke Kangro

Keynote: Nicolas Bourriaud 

15.30–16.00 Summing up and closing of the KUNO meeting

* All times in Easter European time zone

As part of the design theory course at the Faculty of Design, professor Alison J. Clarke will give a public lecture The Politics of Design on Tuesday, 19 October at 9:30AM at the EKA hall.

This lecture draws on the themes of the speaker’s recent publication Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World (MIT Press 2021) and the co-curated exhibition The Politics of Design (with Vitra Design Museum, Germany) exploring the origins of the social design movement and its attempts to consciously decolonise design. Unpicking the contradictions of designers’ gestures to transform the material and social worlds of the ‘excluded’ and ‘under-represented’ – the talk casts a critical eye on how attempts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to build cultural difference into design practice and theory.

The lecture will be held at the EKA hall. EKA students and staff are asked to follow the general EKA COVID-19 safety rules. Guests are kindly asked to follow all COVID-19 rules and prove their infection safety. There is no on-site testing. The lecture will be held in English, and it will be streamed on EKA TV platform live, however, the lecture will not be recorded.

Professor Alison J. Clarke, author of Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design (MIT Press 2021) and Design Anthropology: Object Cultures in Transition (Bloomsbury 2018), explores the intersection of design, material culture and anthropology. A design historian (Royal College of Art London) and trained social anthropologist (University College London), she joined the University of Applied Arts Vienna from the Royal College of Art, London to become chair of the department of Design History and Theory and founding director of the Papanek Foundation: she is convener of the biennial Papanek Symposium exploring the ethics and futures of contemporary design. Recipient of major international grants and fellowships (including the Smithsonian; Arts and Humanities Research Council; Austrian Science Fund; Graham Foundation), she acts as an expert advisor and jury member for numerous academic bodies including the Danish Independent Research Council and the German Research Foundation (DfG) program, Clusters of Excellence.

Clarke is a regular media broadcaster, curator and international speaker in the field of design; her monograph Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s American was optioned for an Emmy-nominated documentary. She is co-editor of the anthology Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture and co-founder of the leading academic journal Home Cultures: The Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space. She has recently curated, with Vitra Design Museum, Germany, the international travelling exhibition Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design (2017-2020). Her latest book project, for MIT Press, explores the historical origins and legacies of the intertwining of social science and industrial design.

Presentation of workshop results and talk on the potential of urban interventions.

“Reports from the field” is a presentation of the workshop results of the MA Urban Studies students from the Estonian Academy of Arts and a talk on creating urban interventions as a research method, but also as a civic exercise and public right.

The presented projects will review and reflect the process of constructing vernacular interventions and their reception in Tallinn. Topics included in the presentation concentrate on infrastructure, public space, care, maintenance and social responsibility on the examples of the T1 mall, unpaid female labor in Majaka, private security in public space and new cycling lanes among others. There will also be a presentation about EKKM’s role in public space and a display of the interventions. 

You are very welcome to take part in this talk and contribute to the discussion on the role and responsibility of urban intervention. The event is in English.

The authors are: Kush Badhwar, Yu-Li Anne Boonen, Khadeeja Farrukh, Timothée Girault, Christian Hörner, Nabeel Imtiaz, Marie Lucet,  Agota Maziliauskaitė, Dorothea Müller, Luca Liese Ritter, Zeno Schnelle, Paul Simon, Nora Soo, Akvilė Stundytė, Katrin Tomiste, Paula Kristiāna Veidenbauma, Friederike Zängl.

Studio lead: Mattias Malk

As part of the Open Lectures series of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA, architectural critic and urbanist Konstantin Budarin will take the stage in the hall of EKA on October 14, 6 pm with a lecture “Infrastructure of Care: The Past, Present, and Future of Soviet Leisure Heritage”.

This fall, all the lectures in the series revolve around the issue of healing in one way or another. Let’s look at whether architecture as a process can be therapeutic and in what way inhabiting space could be restorative, Simultaneously, whether and how architects can contribute to the healing of the construction world. However, some of the lectures in the series – as well as the October 14 lecture – look directly at the architecture created especially for landscape of care.

Konstantin Budarin is a member of the architectural collective Kultura and one of the initiators of the research project Sanatorium Premium – the focus of the latter is on the Soviet-era recreational infrastructure and the development of its possible uses today. The sanatorium architecture of the so-called Eastern Bloc has become a social media hit in recent years, viewed as an archaic curiosity with aesthetic pleasure, without delving into the role of sanatoriums in the operation of large-scale industry, or how a recreational machine worked to oil the human cogs of a production machine. The spatial programme of any sanatorium was led by prescription procedures, and Budarin asks – what procedures and what space would we need today to stimulate exhausted bodies and burned out minds? Do we have anything to learn from the sanatorium system in the Eastern Bloc?

Konstantin Budarin is the author of numerous publications on architecture and urbanism published in Strelka Mag, Calvert Journal, Project Baltia, and others. He is an alumnus of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design 2014/15.

In order to minimize the risk of the virus spreading, we will broadcast the lecture on EKA TV and it can be viewed along with all previous lectures at www.avatudloengud.ee. However, the lecture can also be attended in-person – we do ask you to carry your COVID vaccination certificate or proof of having had COVID; there will be no on-site testing. Academy students are subject to the usual in-house rules. NB! You can’t ask questions via EKA TV, so it’s worth coming to the hall to participate in the discussion! The lecture is free and in English.

This lecture takes place in cooperation with the Estonian Museum of Architecture and is part of the Future Architecture programme 2021. Future Architecture is the first pan-European platform uniting architectural museums, festivals and other development organisations in the field, bringing the public closer to both the cities and the future of architecture. The lecture is supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.

Curators: Sille Pihlak and Johan Tali.

The season of open lectures is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

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Read more about the project: https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/fb47b9a7-2d22-44fb-ae41-c292af573953/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanatorium_premium/?igshid=2vsox2u8jewe

Soft Negotiations
Exhibition of the Department of Textile Design of EKA in the EKA Gallery.

Exhibition is opened 16.10–13.11.202. Põhja puiestee 7, Tallinn. Opening hours Tue–Sat, 12–18
Opening of the exhibition on the 15th of October at 4 p.m.
The performance of Inês Rodrigues Neves “Drawing the Line” will take place at the exhibition opening. Entrance with covid pass.

Just as the warp threads connect the weft, serving as a bridge for each other, this exhibition by the Department of Textile Design invites audiences to ponder the role of textile in today’s and future society. At the exhibition, the department presents contemporary trends that often straddle or meld with the boundaries of other disciplines. That in turn creates a new, multidisciplinary approach where textile can take very different forms: it can convey structure, idea, protest, message, self-expression, pattern or simply colour combination.

The exhibition presents works by students and teaching staff of the Estonian Academy of Arts that investigate the all-encompassing role of textile design. Besides conventional roles, new hybrid forms emerge, presenting new knowledge in the context of artistic research. Emerging technological approaches are demonstrated, in which textile, interwoven with digital properties or technology at different levels, mediates collaborative processes in design of social interaction.

The exhibition has three conceptual threads, which intersect each other:

Textile as STATE(MENT)

#critical and conceptual practices

Textile as LAB

#experimental practice #flirting with science #biotextiles #new materials and structures

Textile as WELLBEING

#design that values the environment and well-being #sustainability #recycling #healthcare #social responsibility #therapy

Participants:

Frank Abner, Arife Dila Demir, Katrin Kabun, Liisbet, Karjel, Kadi Kibbermann, Mari-Triin Kirs, Kristi Kuusk + Ana Tajadura-Jiménez (Madriidi Carlos III Ülikool) + Aleksander Väljamäe (Tartu Ülikool), Krista Leesi, Kille- Ingeri Liivoja + Juulia Aleksandra Mikson, Greth-Ann Loog + Riina Samelselg + Anete Vihm, Inês Rodrigues Neves, Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD UNIVERSITY), Marin Nooni, Kärt Ojavee + Johanna Ulfsak, Ingrid Helena Pajo, Maria Kristiin Peterson, Piret Roos + Liisa Torsus, Zane Shumeiko, Marie Vihmar + Sirje Sasi (TLU), Piret Valk, Varvara & Mar + Sebastian Mealla, Carl-Rasmus Õunaste

Curators: Varvara Guljajeva (HKUST(GZ)), Kristel Laurits, EKA Department of Textile Design

Exhibition design: Varvara Guljajeva
Exhibition technical support: Tehniline Direktor
Graphic design: Jesus Rodriguez Santos
Translation and proofreading: Gepard OÜ
Exhibition team: Kristi Kuusk, Varvara Guljajeva, Krista Leesi, Kadi Kibbermann, Eelike Virve, Frank Abner, Juulia Aleksandra Mikson, Johannes Luik, Piret Valk

Supporter: Cultural Endowment of Estonia

Exhibition Catalogue: https://issuu.com/artun/docs/softnegotiations_catalogue_lowres

We are now seeking proposals for solo and curatorial exhibitions, performances and events. Submission deadline is September 20, 2020. Please include all the required materials in the e-mail attachment as a zip-file. Send your proposals to eka.galerii@artun.ee.

APPLICATION FORM: shorturl.at/yKMQU

A jury reviews all applications. The application is accepted if it is submitted by the required deadline, all fields of the form are filled and all the required materials are attached. EKA Gallery space (Põhja puiestee 7) is rent-free.

Online discussion “Working with the Post-Cold War Heritages in the Baltics and Beyond”

The discussion will take place on Facebook

Participants: Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Hilkka Hiiop, Kati Lindström, Raitis Šmits, Linara Dovydaitytė, Ele Carpenter

Moderators: Ieva Astahovska, Linda Kaljundi

The visible traces of the Soviet period in the Baltic landscapes include diverse and numerous technologically political infrastructures, including remnants of abandoned, collapsed or destroyed military buildings. This online discussion addresses the ways of working with the post-cold war heritages from the perspective of environmental history, technology studies, as well as contemporary heritage conservation and art.

More info 

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This is the fourth discussion of the research and exhibition project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Post-Colonialism in the Baltics,” organised by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum and the research project “Estonian Environmentalism in the 20th Century” (both Tallinn). The project analyses the imprints of post-socialism and post-colonialism in the Baltic region, here exploring them through the prism of environmental history and the current ecological crisis.

As a part of Tallinn Photomonth The Institute of Art History and Visual Culture’s Research Secretary and lecturer, Annika Toots, is curating the exhibition “Tierras malas”, which examines the representation of landscape in photography, emphasizing two aspects related to the landscape.

Artists: Bleda y Rosa (ES), Aap Tepper (EE), Paco Ulman (EE), Dovilė Dagienė (LT)

First of all, the exhibition focuses on landscape as a way of seeing, examining how landscapes are constructed through the gaze and looking. The exhibited works point out how some parts of the surrounding environment are seen in aesthetic terms, while others are seen as useless. Second, the exhibition looks into the traces of cultural memory hidden in the landscape, focusing on what is not visible or what is left out of the frame.

Tierras malas refers to a type of landscape characterized by a lack of vegetation and the erosion caused by water and wind; it is considered poor, useless or dull. The exhibition takes a look at how such “useless landscapes” are defined in different contexts and how they are represented in photography. The title also refers to invisible traces of gloomy past events that the landscape might conceal.

Opening times: Tue–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16
Vaal Gallery (Tartu maantee 82, Tallinn)
Accessible by wheelchair

Ástríður Jónsdóttir (IS) & Kaisa Maasik (ET)
Flag Days
6.-17.10.2021

Locations:
Vent Space Project Space, Vabaduse väljak 6/8, Tallinn (entrance from the courtyard)
Flag poles in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, Tallinn

Opening times:
Tue-Sun 12pm – 6pm

Opening:
On Tuesday, October 5, 2021 from 6pm at Vent Space
Please provide COVID certificate upon arrival at the opening event

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Flag Days, an exhibition dealing with nations’ conquests and pride, is a project between Kaisa Maasik, from Estonia, and Ástríður Jónsdóttir, from Iceland. Both artists’ home countries have relatively short histories of independence. Flags of both nations are young and have played an important part in their plights and fights for freedom.

The exhibition raises questions about national pride and affiliation. With the flag as their subject, the artists’ emphasis is on notions and ceremonies surrounding it. Flags unite, invoke pride and disrupt unities. In an attempt to broaden the idea of what constitutes a flag, the artists draw parallels between sports and international relations in order to examine the power struggles and need to dominate opponents inherent in both.

Flag Days is part of the satellite programme of the Tallinn Photomonth contemporary art biennial and is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Embassy of Iceland in Helsinki.

Contributors: Karen Sif Ársælsdóttir, Madis Kurss, Rakel Ýr Stefánsdóttir
Thanks: Hilja Koplimets, Fimleikafélag Hafnarfjarðar – FH, Karel Koplimets, Kling & Bang, Nudist Drinks, Tartu Ülikooli Akadeemiline Spordiklubi.

ÁSTRÍÐUR JÓNSDÓTTIR (b. 1991, Iceland) is a visual artist from Reykjavík. She studied fine arts and sculpture respectively, at Iceland University of the Arts and Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. Ástríður’s work, often site specific, delicately marries balance and tension: A suggestion of an event that has passed – or perhaps a story yet to be concluded.

KAISA MAASIK (b. 1994, Estonia) is an artist and curator based in Tallinn. She has graduated from the Master of Contemporary Art programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2021. Maasik values shared practices and working with techniques which expand into the space. In 2020, Maasik was awarded the Wiiralt stipend.