Events

This year, the graduation party takes place on 21th of June, starting from 19:00 in the EKA Gallery.

In addition to the graduating students, all other students, graduates and staff are welcome to attend. To kick off the party, there will be a drag show followed by the band Arg Part.

After the band, DJs will take over. The EKA X SVETA BAR will be serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks all night long. Guests can also capture the night in the photobooth which will be installed next to the gallery. 

The EKA Grad Party is hosted by EKA Student Council. 

SCHEDULE: 

19:00 – beginning of the party 

19:30-21:00 – Drag Show

21:00-23:00 – Arg Part

23:00-00:00 – DJ Silikaat

00:00-03:00 — DJ YALLAH b2b DJ HOLY MOUNTAIN 

Event on Facebook

LMDA research institute at the Art Academy of Latvia invites You to join LMDA talks on June 15th at 6PM. 

The talk will be livestreamed on Facebook. 

15-minute presentations by invited speakers are followed by a discussion round. 

You are welcome to join!

Extended Bodies / Extended Spaces

It is through our bodies that we make sense of space. Bodies practice and enact spaces. Body-space-interfacing can lead to the creation of schemas, which we project onto our bodies. These might include the embodiment of technologies, leading to body schemas that overcome notions of inside and outside. Thus, they extend to the tip of a pencil or the outer limitations of a car. Some of these schemas, or models of thought, if you will, dissolve the boundaries between bodies and spaces—a selection of which we will be discussing in the upcoming talk. By redefining bodily ways of being and by challenging us to rethink space, these models help to reconsider how bodies and (digital) environments build relationships with one another. 

Moderator: Dr. Eva Sommeregger, senior researcher, Art Academy of Latvia

Invited Speakers:

Christina Jauernig: architect and arts-based researcher (dance, digital environments)

Johanna Jõekalda: architect and VR researcher (human spatial perception)

Valerie Messini: architect and arts-based researcher (digital environments, AI, machine learning)

Seth Weiner / Sadie Siegel: transdisciplinary artist (spatial practice, sound)

VENT SPACE Art fair +  Summer Market 6-10 July, Tallinn. Register now!

The event is open for everyone, who wishes to participate. International applicants are also very welcome (works for the Art Fair can be received by post)!

Opportunity to participate in one or both events. Participation possible by registration and filling a form in Drive until June, 20, 2022.

Photos and works should be submitted by mail until July, 1st (details explained in the rules). No comission applied. All sales revert to the artists.

SCHEDULE

Art Fair 6-10 JULY – submit 2-10 works. All works with the price of 15 EUR per piece.

Summer market 9-10 JULY – Bring and sell your art/craft/design/creation.

Location: 
Vabaduse väljak 6-8, 10146 Tallinn.

Registration

More info

See you at the ART FAIR SUMMER MARKET!

Team Vent Space 

The ESA Conference 2022 is to be held on 28–30 June 2022 at Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja puiestee 7) in Tallinn. 

The keynote speakers:

Professor Emmanuel Alloa (University of Fribourg)

Professor Pauline von Bonsdorff (University of Jyväskylä)

Professor Virve Sarapik (Estonian Academy of Arts)

Info

Sandra Nuut, Urmas Lüüs, Karin Vicente and Jüri Kermik talk about writing about design.

The conversation will be moderated by Taavi Hallimäe.

The discussion will be held in Estonian.

What approaches to design do we need, what do the designer need?
Who is the reader we should keep in mind when writing about design?
What kind of design should we write about at all?
What can be done with design writing, but what the design itself is not always capable of?
Do we need descriptive, evaluative, experiential, or interpretive design criticism?

The event will also introduce the new journal of the Faculty of Design of EKA, Leida the first issue of which will be published in the autumn.

TASE FILM on June 4 at 5 pm at EKA auditorium (A101) once again.

 

TASE FILM is an event which happens every year in the context of EKA’s graduate student exhibition, TASE. It offers a programme full of different videos and short films made by students of EKA.

 

TASE FILM 2022 explores the dream world and reality. The programme consists of two chapters, the first of which takes a look at socially relevant topics such as overconsumption and the tireless construction of shopping malls, and an insight into the work of food couriers. In addition, there are video pieces that look at everyday life around us. In the second part, surreal and abstract videos are presented, including documentaries of performances, dream landscapes and questions of identity.

 

The programme lasts about 2 hours.

 

Participating artists:
Aap Kaur Suvi | Potato, Seagulls, Reeds and cars
Camilla Prey | Blaue Stunde
Ditiya Ferdous | Family 1
Ivor Lõõbas | Tradition
Jamie Avis | The Wave
John Quirk | HIDE
Kadri Joala | Autoportree
Karl Joonas Alamaa, Lisette Sivard, Andreas Kübar | ONLY BASIC FASHION SHOW
Kush, Paul Simon, Timothee | TXMALL
Lauri Lest | Moulded
Maria Naulainen | KIHA
Martina Maria Semenzato | ALBAIONES
Moritz Simon | Sand, Stone
Paulina Schroeder, Christian Horner, Nabeel Imtiaz | Looking of Action
Santiago Ordoñez | The station´s seat
Xingpei Shen | Lotus Lantern

 

Event is free of charge!

 

Film programme curators: Johanna Kuzmenko, Lígia Fernandes

Location: Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7), A-101 

 

TASE FILM on Facebook

10:00-10:10 Introductions

 

10:10-11:10 (EEST)

Luisa Fernanda Ayla Torres

Precariousness in the Transformation of Labour: Through Working Class Identity in the city of Turin

 

Between the 1960s and 1980s, nine million Italians migrated from the agricultural regions of Italy to the productive areas of Turin, shaping the periphery of the city from a rural to an industrial area. The Post-War economic boom provided jobs in the northern plants, giving life to a workers’ hegemony and demographic, social, and cultural transformation. This socioeconomic transformation that affected the organisation of workers, labour, political activity, and society in general, was manifested in two cases. The Palace of Labour, an avant-garde building intended to celebrate the struggles of the working class with an exhibition focused on “man and his progress”, and the case of Mirafiori Sud, a working class neighbourhood symbolising the association of workers. In this way, this thesis explores the identity of the working class in the contemporary city of Turin, where security in neoliberal times no longer needs the scope of the protective techniques of the liberal social State, and as a consequence precarization is now the norm. This is reflected in the transformation of labour manifesting itsel through productive connection with others, where labour is not purely characterised by the increasing capitalization of social life but is effectively reflected with others, producing new social relations.

 

Examined by Alberto Vanolo (University of Turin) and Aro Velmet (University of Southern California)

 

11.15-12:15 (EEST)

Mira Samonig

the matter of right-wing populism in Polish LGBT-free zones; towards a with-standing xenourbanism?

 

Almost a third of Poland had been declared an ‘LGBT-free zone’ in 2020, stigmatizing the LGBTIQP+ community as a threat to Polish identity; this labeling remains a reality for many Polish towns. In this thesis, I am turning towards the concept of the ‘LGBT-free zones’ as a case to investigate the material reality of right-wing populism. I seek to develop a third position to a historical or new materialist understanding in order to investigate such material reality. By that, the ways values find physical expression and thus possibly mobilize oppressive attitudes into ever new futures ahead are traced. It becomes quite evident that the way structures of oppression are advanced and maintained within the public realm exists quite dominantly in everyday narratives. In a bottom-up manner, right-wing populism is advanced on the street; yet, it is by far not perceived by everyone. This marks the entry point for sketching out a possible approach to how the discipline of urbanism could position itself in social struggles. Drawing on Helen Hester’s Xenofeminism, the thesis introduces the concept of xenourbanism describing urbanism based on the conceptual notion of solidarity without sameness. I argue that the notion of xeno- as a prefix attached to urbanism focuses on an inherent transformational potential within the current, rendering a perceived unarming reality into a weapon of contestation and by that suggesting trajectories away from paralyzing no-alternative narratives.

 

Examined by Piotr Plucienniczak (Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts) and Helen Runting (Secretary)

 

12:25-13:35 (EEST)

Zahaan Khan

Tourism-Led Gentrification: The Case of Dal Lake in Kashmir

The dissertation explores tourism-led gentrification, its causes and the impact on the communities living in and around the ecologically-sensitive region of Dal Lake in Kashmir. The dissertation employs methodological triangulation using interviews, survey and policy document analysis, as methods. The policy document in question is the Srinagar Master Plan 2035 issued by the Srinagar Development Authority. Analysing the correlation between tourism and gentrification in a conflict-torn region and using displacement as a conceptual lens, the thesis maps the socio-cultural and economic aspects of touristification especially in relation to the everyday lives of the communities. The dissertation employs a two-pronged analytical approach by using two categories – land milieu and water milieu – to foreground the patterns and impact of gentrification in and around the lake. The analysis of the land milieu concerns itself with a detailed exploration into Boulevard, the long promenade along the lake’s periphery. It further discusses holiday rentals and issues of mobility and maps the city’s land-use patterns particularly in relation to expansion along the lake’s periphery. The study of the water milieu, on the other hand, is an exploration into the historical houseboats of Kashmir and the local hanji (or haenz) community; foregrounding the issues concerning policies of renovation and relocation of

houseboats. The dissertation also delves into the government’s land use and tourism-driven development plans around the lake, especially post abrogation of

Article 370 of the Indian constitution that gave ‘special status’ to the region.

 

Examined by Dr Mathew Varghese (Mahatma Gandhi University) and Karlis Ratnieks (EKA)

 

13:35-14:25 Lunch

 

14:25-15:25 (EEST)

Egemen Mercanlioglu

THE WORK OF A RIFT: Kanal İstanbul and Turkey’s Authoritarian Neoliberalism

 

Turkey under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi was touted as a paragon of neoliberalism and a burgeoning democracy until the late-2000s. Two decades later, the positive portrayals of the country have decidedly shifted. Turkey is now considered to have retreated from neoliberalism; an emblematic case of authoritarian turn. However, this thesis rethinks authoritarian governance as the kernel of the Erdoğan-led AKP’s brand of neoliberalism. It does so by focusing on a to-be-built urban megaproject, Kanal İstanbul—a 45-kilometer long man-made waterway, aiming to locate İstanbul as a signature node in the global web of flooding money and commodities. Using the megaproject as a lens, the thesis shows how neoliberal reforms in the early-2000s have propelled İstanbul and the construction sector as financial growth generating engines of the country. Subsequently, these

reforms have buttressed contemporary coercive governance structure and a megaproject spree in the city. Finally, the thesis briefly explores a recent but growing counter-hegemonic contestation against Erdoğan and his Kanal İstanbul, posed by the mayor of İstanbul. The thesis does not give a final verdict but explores whether or not this challenge proposes an alternative to authoritarian neoliberalism.

 

Examined by Dr Cemal Burak Tansel (Newcastle University) and Mattias Malk (EKA)

 

15:30-16:30 (EEST)

Deniz Taskin

Architecture as a Practice of Care: Case Studies of Women’s Care-Based Architecture Practices

 

Care as a concept is becoming more crucial in architecture and urban practice as a result of

the COVID-19 pandemic’s unpredictable spatial, social, and political circumstances. The

attitude of urbanized capitalism towards contemporary urban problems and its refusal to

acknowledge the urgency of the climate crisis result in uncaring urban practices. The

important position of architecture as a measure for assessing our place in the ecosystem and

the role of architects and related disciplines in determining with whom we live together

requires them to reconsider the values and priorities that drive their practice.

This thesis unpacks care as a concept and ethical practice through a feminist lens by

focusing on the notion of “configuration of care,” which refers to how architects express their

ethical and political objectives by arranging human and nonhuman materials to achieve

caring relationships in urban spaces. (Suchman 2012). It does so by focusing on the practices

of women from the field of architecture and related disciplines whose contemporary practice

foregrounds care and employs feminist care ethics: Careful Mapping by Spolka, Performing

Architherapy by Erika Henriksson, Mutfak (Kitchen) by Merve Bedir, The Blind Alley by

Elin Strand Ruin. The thesis explores certain commonalities and recurring patterns of thought

in how the practitioners’ encounter and apply feminist care ethics. Finally, it discusses the

potential and limits of incorporating feminist care ethics into architecture practice, as well as

the potential for architectural practice to become care practice.

 

Examined by Agata Marzecova (EKA) and Henriette Steiner (University of Copenhagen)

Artists: Brit Kikas, Jakub Tulinger, Nora Schmelter, Viktor Kudriashov
Curator: Katarina Nyyssönen
Graphic Design: Oliver Long

On Thursday, May 26 at 6 pm EKA students invite you to join with a critical run, we take over and question the existence of a man-made mound of soil and look at what such a natural buffer zone in the middle of the city symbolizes. A critical run is an art format created by Thierry Geoffroy/Colonel and will be used to open a discussion, to reflect and debate during the run. We will end the run to enter an exhibition platform where traces already exist and can be actualized. To what extent of interaction do we see this platform still as a part of nature? This exhibit brings into interest human connections between nature and artificial.

“People’s natural need to spend time in nature has not disappeared: instead of being amused, they like to chill…” – Juhan Hint, Sirp 2019 

EXTENSION
Skoone bastion

Do you think differently when you run?
Is reconstruction constant?
Human shelter, a form of forgotten space?
Can we give structure to nature?
Do you leave traces?
Will traces become permanent?
Or permanent become nature?
Are we creating our own models of nature by leaving traces?
Do we perceive an intervention as artificial?
Or is it becoming part of the existing ecosystem?
With losing its functionality?
Artificial nature, a created image excluding reality?

A long forgotten green space in the middle of the city, shows the mankinds attitude towards the environment and what surrounds us. Even the protection that the underground tunnels have provided in the past has been forgotten, despite the current state of the world.

Start: Critical Run, 26.05.2022 at 18:00 (Meeting point in front of EKA) 

End: Skoone bastioni, Rannamäe tee, Entrance to the tunnels

Supported by: Estonian Academy of Arts, Sveta Bar

Additional information:
Katarina Nyyssönen
katarina.nyyssonen@artun.ee
+372 53021657

 

June 6-7 at EKA Library

Portfolio Café is structured around one on one meetings that take place between local and international fine arts field professionals and EKA BA and MA level students. Each meeting takes place about 45 minutes. During Portfolio Café sessions students introduce themselves and their work and experts share their observations, provide recommendations, ask questions etc. After the first scheduled conversation student moves on to the next selected expert they have signed up for. 

All Portfolio Café meetings are in English.

Registration:  Portfolio Café invites all fine art students from the BA and MA level to participate. The spots are limited and participants will be chosen according to the provided portfolios. 

 

To apply, please fill out this registration form before June 3 and upload your portfolio.  

 

EXPERTS

Ulla Marquardt is a German artist and educator whose work revolves around people’s aspirations and determination to leave behind often dire working and living conditions and come a little closer to their hopes and dreams. In her photographic series and her mostly site-specific video installations, the different parts play together to form a complex visual experience that enables a dialogue – both within the different parts of the installation and between the artwork and the viewer. The second aspect in her works is the exploration of the phenomena of beauty and transience in nature.

www.ulla-marquardt.com

Lilian Hiob (b. 1991) is a curator, gallerist and art agent. She is a manager at Temnikova & Kasela gallery, also a founder of an independent gallery located in her basement, Hoib gallery. Together with Siim Preiman she is hosting a monthly radio show Vitamin K at IDA radio, dedicated to contemporary art.

Anna Zača (b. 1984) – curator, programmer and project manager in the field of animated and short film. Anna studied Art History and Theory in Latvia and Animation in Estonia. She has been the creative director of 2ANNAS ISFF and one of the founders of Riga International Film Festival, in 2015 she founded SHORT RIGA a section dedicated to short and artist film within Riga International Film Festival. Since 2016 Anna has been the Head of the Latvian Animation Association and since 2018 she is one of the Board Members at the European Animation Awards.

Audrius Pocius (b. 1991) is a curator and a philosopher currently based in Vilnius. In his curatorial practices he is mainly focused on conceptual and performative aspects of art and their potency for social and cultural critique. Audrius has been a curator and educator at CAC Vilnius up until he co-founded Swallow space for contemporary art together with his co-conspirators. He is also lecturing on various topics related to philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary culture at Vilnius University, Vilnius Academy of Art and Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

www.swallow.lt

Siim Preiman (b. 1992) works as a curator at Tallinn Art Hall and runs a mobile art platform gallery gallery. He is characterised by a strong awareness of the environment and a desire for a more equal society. Preiman’s curatorial projects sprout from the personal and, with the help of co-creators, grow into collective platforms that address various generational pain points. The exhibitions he has convened have addressed among other issues  the expanded sense of self, changing Eastern Europeanism, the ethics of art-making and the national landscape. More recently, he has been reflecting on hospitality, gender, violence and living as a whole. 

Major projects include the group exhibition “Mändfulness” at Tallinn City Gallery (2021), the temporary project space March 1 in Tallinn Old Town (2021), the group exhibition “The Art of Being Good” at Tallinn Art Hall (2019) and the durability project/mobile platform gallery gallery (2016 – …).

www.galeriigalerii.ee

 

Portfolio Café is supported by the European Regional Development Fund EKA LOOVKÄRG (2014-2020.4.01.20-0288).

 

This year’s Graduation Ceremonies will be held on June 21th in the EKA gallery and main hall (room A101, Põhja puiestee 7, Tallinn).

11am – graduates of Faculties of Design and Art Culture

3pm – graduates of Faculties of Architecture and Fine Art

NB! Dear graduate, please come to the EKA gallery 15 minutes earlier, so we can lead you to your place. Guests can sit in the hall or watch the ceremonies in the lobby on the screens or online on EKA TV.