Open Lectures

The honorary doctor Griselda Pollock will give an open lecture “From Alain Resnais’s Van Gogh (1948) to Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate (2018): Why are we still Loving Vincent (2017)?”

Griselda Pollock about the lecture:
“The first exhibition I ever saw, I think, was of the work of Vincent van Gogh in 1961. I forgot about that first encounter until 1990, when, at a conference on the centenary of his death, I delivered a deconstructionist paper tracing the construction of ‘Van Gogh’ over the twentieth century. My research into his exhibition history revealed that the show in Toronto in 1961 was part of a specific post-war series of exhibitions when VG’swork was sent around the world, ensuring this artist’s spectacular place in the twentieth century’s cultural imagination as ‘the modern artist’. I also realized that this buried memory of an exhibition visited in 1961 with my art-loving mother, who died three years later, may have been the unconscious prompt for my choice, in 1972, of Van Gogh as my PhD dissertation topic.

Over my fifty-years, I have struggled against ‘the myth of Van Gogh’ in many publications and exhibition projects. In this lecture, I will return to one of the earliest films made about the artist by French documentarist Alain Resnais in black and white in 1948 and to the animated film Loving Vincent and the American painter Julian Schnabel’s personal homage, At Eternity’s Gate. What are the different concepts of art and artist this mythic ‘Vincent’/’Van Gogh’ has mirrored? What are the art histories I have tried to create to challenge their potency, affect, and dangers? Why does this myth and image persist and entrance?”

Tuesday, 22nd of October at 17.00 the artist Anne Pöhlmann will hold a public presentation of her artistic practice in room A501 at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Anne Pöhlmann (b.1978) is a Düsselforf based contemporary artist, who’s work reflects the ever-changing conditions of the medium of digital photography.

She researches, among other things, the influence of software formulating photographic images, as well as the way we see photographs on monitors. The material translation of digital images into photo prints is a conceptual matter in Anne Pöhlmann’s practice. Her photographs range from urban architecture and natural landscapes to portraits and abstract compositions. They manifest as architecture-related installations of posters or banners that she prints on textiles. In these installations, the architectural space functions both as a spatial screen and layout location.

More recently, Pöhlmann prints her photos on various materials, like silk or cotton. The prints are subsequently sewn together with other prints into photo-fabrics and often combined with vintage textiles from the artist collection.

In works such as Japan Room (2019), Anne Pöhlmann presents folded photographs and photo-fabrics as fluid architectural formations, where the printed image merges with its carrier. Parallel Anne Pöhlmann has developed photographic works that represent an artistically subjective approach to the documentation of works of art and exhibition architecture. The artist published the resulting photographic series or sequences in the form of photo essays. In 2012 together with Diango Hernández, she founded the artist platform Lonelyfingers. Her work has received several awards and has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions. From 2018 to 2019, she has held a position as a visiting professor for photography at Art Academy (HBK) Braunschweig, Germany. Before that, she worked as a visiting lecturer at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. She regularly participates in workshops, lectures, and conferences at various international institutions.

Anne Pöhlmann was invited to Tallinn on behalf of the Department of Photography of Estonian Academy of Arts. During 21.–25th of October, she is giving a workshop in the Photography Department.

The lecture is in English.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/681705208987400/
For more info about Anne Pöhlmann: http://www.annepoehlmann.net/

Tomorrow, October 22nd at 6PM artists and graphic designers Josse Pyl, Eloise Harris and Jungmyung Lee will hold public presentations at the Department of Graphic Design room C305.

All presentations will be about their practice and projects.

Jungmyung Lee practices intimate relations between type design, typography, visual art, and writings through Jung-Lee Type Foundry (Amsterdam, NL) by exploring the life of typefaces and their emotions. She also publishes Real-Time Realist, which is a unique type specimen that experiments the aforementioned relations based on Wheel of Emotions.
http://jung-lee.nl

Eloise Harris is an independent graphic designer based in Berlin, collaborating with artists and institutions on a range of projects creating visual identities, art directing, designing for print, image making, and she quest teaches graphic design play at UE in Berlin. Before that, Eloise graduated from Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem and LCC in London.
http://www.eloiseharris.com/

Josse Pyl lives and works in Amsterdam. He was an artist in residence (2017–2018) at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam) and has completed a Master of Visual Arts (2014–2016) at Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem) and a Master (2013-2014) and Bachelor (2010-2013) of Visual Arts at KASK School of Arts (Ghent). He recently had solo presentations at 019 (Ghent), Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam) and the Brakkegrond (Amsterdam) and participated in group shows at Nest (The Hague), Dash Gallery (Kortrijk), The Belgium Biennial (Ghent) and Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana).
http://www.jossepyl.com/

Josse Pyl, Eloise Harris and Jungmyung Lee are invited to Tallinn on behalf of the Department of Graphic Design of Estonian Academy of Arts to give workshops at the department October 21 through 25.

Presentations will be in English.

Open Lecture by:
Rolf Hughes, Professor of Artistic Research, Estonian Academy of the Arts/Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

&

Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

This lecture describes the framework and strategies for engaging an age of uncertainty through artistic and design-led research. The presentation will ask how we will be inhabiting and making spaces at times of radical change. Hughes and Armstrong will provide examples from architectural research, address the value of creating transdisciplinary networks, the role of the architectural thinker within such networks, and the need to protect the artistic integrity of goal-based research projects.

Rolf Hughes has been at the forefront of developments in artistic research in Scandinavia and Northern Europe from its inception. He is currently Director of Artistic Research for the Experimental Architecture Group at Newcastle University (UK), Visiting Professor for the Estonian Academy of the Arts and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. He has supervised and examined PhD dissertations across architecture, art, craft, design, photography and the performing arts since 2000, including for the Bartlett, University of Westminster, Middlesex University, KU Leuven, Royal Institute of Technology, Oslo School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm University of the Arts, and elsewhere. He has published widely, and is in demand internationally as an expert on artistic research.

Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (UK). Her work explores how our buildings can incorporate some of the properties of living systems to become ‘living architectures’. She was coordinator for the FET Open Living Architecture project (April 2016-June 2019) and coordinates the EU Innovation Fund ALICE project. She is a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016) and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. She is also a Member of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University and Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG) whose work has been published and exhibited internationally.

On this Wednesday, 16th October at 4 PM in room A501 takes place the 7th Open Seminar of the Faculty of Fine Arts. This time we are visited by Canadian multimedia artist Tyler Tekatch. The seminar will be held in English.

Hamilton-based artist Tyler Tekatch creates work in film, video and installation that explores perception and the religious imagination. Influenced by Canadian filmmaker/artists such as Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Jack Chambers and Bruce Elder, Tekatch takes an experimental approach to media. He has expanded his practice to combine film and video with emerging technologies, such as projection mapping and interactivity. He has held two solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Ottawa Art Gallery, and has screened films at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Canadian National Film Board, and internationally.

https://tytekatch.com

October 9, at 16.00, room A101

Open Lecture by Jan van Boeckel
Art and Sustainability Education in an Age of Uncertainty and Climate Fear

Jan van Boeckel will give a presentation on fostering attention through arts-based open-ended approaches in an age of ecological emergency and radical uncertainty. If we are to respond adequately to the rapid and deep changes taking place in the world in our current times, we may need to envisage a very different type of education. Not one that is predominantly based on knowledge transfer, but a kind of teaching and learning that foregrounds engaging with radical uncertainty. In more open-ended modalities of education, learners tend not to know on forehand what the outcomes and expected deliverables will be. Such approaches may cause a sense of unease because of a presumed lack of control, of missing framing guidelines and clear target objectives. It is exactly in this space of vulnerability that it is essential that learners feel that their educational experience is safely contained and held by teachers and facilitators. A way of achieving this may be through employing arts-based approaches. Through such practices of artful exploring (for example together with a group of students) a sense of excitement, of curiosity and wonder may be prompted.

One of Van Boeckel’s key areas of interest is in educational activity as primarily and fundamentally an open-ended process. The outcome is not given, though the participants follow certain sequential steps which frame the process. Through teaching and hands-on doing, it aims to promote understanding of interconnected systems – both biological and cultural. Van Boeckel contextualizes this form of arts-based environmental education by valuing it as a form of ‘poor pedagogy’, as articulated by Jan Masschelein. Such practice is expressive of a view on education that is not about the transmission of knowledge but rather is a way of attending to things (Tim Ingold). It is also ‘weak pedagogy’, in which is foregrounded what Gert Biesta regards as ‘the educational imperative’: to arouse in another human being the desire to exist as subject, in dialogue with the world. For him this means being ‘in the world without occupying the centre of the world’, trying to exist in dialogue with what and who is other.

Exactly because artistic activities and research, as part of this kind of education, aren’t prima facie linked to urgent themes such as climate change – that they may lend possibilities, affordances, to take up such subjects in new ways. For, on a meta-level, they can also be seen as exercises in facing complexity, uncertainty, not-knowing, and of discovering and forging new relationships between phenomena and processes, in ways that are often far from obvious. Van Boeckel suggests that it is precisely this element of sustainable education (Stephen Sterling) we need, if we are aiming to equip new generations with skills to live in ‘postnormal times.’

Jan van Boeckel is an artist and art educator who has worked for many years on the intersections of art, education and ecology. He was professor in art pedagogy at EKA from 2015 until 2018. Before he was a teacher at the Iceland University of the Arts and other places. In academic year 2018-2019 Jan worked as senior lecturer in art education at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and as visiting lecturer and teacher on the themes of art, sustainability and climate leadership at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS) in Uppsala, also in Sweden.
More info: www.janvanboeckel.wordpress.com

The lecture is in English, attendance free.

Open lecture „becoming [in]determinate: from specificity to responsiveness, from site to situation” by JAMES CAREY, artist and lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University on Monday, 9 September 4 pm (A300). 

James Carey’s creative research practice explores process-based interventions within decommissioned buildings and gallery spaces. This presentation will discuss James’ practice and how it shifted during his PhD candidature; from one that was defined by himself and others as site-specific and spatial practice, to one that explores and manifests the concept of duration through a practice that is temporal, material and spatial. Furthermore, James will also discuss his ongoing creative research practice, particularly in the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck, USA and his project as part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.

Biography:

James Carey is an artist and a Lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University. James is also an artistic director at BLINDSIDE gallery, and he lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. 

James has an inherent curiosity to notions of process, time and duration. His practice is one of mark making, marking time, making time, and time making; foregrounding duration and marking an occurrence. His technique is one of working responsively, allowing particular temporal conditions to surface within specific situations. His marks materialise immateriality and allow the residue of particular processes to be assembled as collections of materialised and spatialised time. 

Recent projects and exhibitions include interruptions Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton 2018, future interior with staff and PhD candidates Interior Design, School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT as part of Melbourne Design Week 2019, and ! 金! curated by Dr Kent Wilson and La Trobe Art Institute, as part of the Castlemaine State Festival, Australia 2019. In June and July 2019, James returned to Detroit, USA for continuing research, and he will also participate in the Oslo Architecture Triennale, whose provocation explores the concept of degrowth within contemporary cities and cultures.

In cities everywhere in the world, new complex and high density large-scale urban transformation projects are initiated and implemented, like La Defense in Paris, HafenCity in Hamburg, West-Kowloon in Hongkong or Marina Bay in Singapore. These enormous undertakings represent today an established form of practicing urbanism aiming to reconfigure or extend major urban centralities.

These projects, however, tend to behave quite unpredictably. Their long realisation periods often induce changing programmes or building ensembles, political and economic constraints influence their successful completion and, very importantly, their far-reaching impact on the local and global context is mostly not effectively assessed. Therefore, these urban transformations asks for a strategic approach, where phasing, adaptability and adjustment to the context are constantly monitored in order to inform their proper operation.

This is what professor Kees Christiaanse will be discussing during his open lecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, as part of the Unfinished City research programme. The lecture will take place on Thursday, 6 June 6 pm in auditorium A101.

Kees Christiaanse studied architecture and urban planning at TU Delft. In 1980 he joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and was appointed partner in 1983. In 1989 he founded his own company, now KCAP Architects&Planners, in Rotterdam. In 1990 he co-founded ASTOC Architects and Planners in Cologne and was partner until 2002.

Kees focuses in his work on urban assignments in complex situations and on guiding of urban processes. He is an expert in the development of university campuses and in the revitalisation of former industrial, railway and harbour areas and is a supervisor of several international urban developments. Throughout his career Kees has always combined teaching and research with his professional work within KCAP, which has generated fruitful cross-fertilisations.

***
Unfinished City is a three-year large-scale research project conducted by the Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Architecture in cooperation with the City of Tallinn. The research project asks what could be a good and livable city in the 21st century and how this could be reflected in the urban development of Tallinn. The project focuses on exploring Tallinn’s urban design visions and spatial future scenarios. The research will be carried out thanks to the support from the real estate company Kapitel, which contributes almost half a million euros to the project over three years.

This Thursday, June 6 at 6pm you are kindly invited to take part in a series of lectures by the German conceptual artist Mischa Kuball, Danish artist and experimental designer Charles Michalsen and Spanish born, Brussels and Berlin based artist-filmmaker Alex Reynolds.

Location: Estonian Academy of Arts 5th floor, room A501.

Approximate schedule:
18:00–18:45 Charles Michalsen „Every good idea consists of good material“
18:45–19:30 Alex Reynolds
19:30–20:15 Mischa Kuball „What do we expect when we go public?“

For more info:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19mRR2A_sr804dY-9MyXmZI4LwVJsf8x_?usp=sharing

Charles Michalsen https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/157215/157216
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/475017/475018

Alex Reynolds
http://www.alexreynolds.net/

Mischa Kuball
http://www.mischakuball.com/
http://www.public-preposition.net/

Public lectures are a part of the event Portfolio Café held at the Estonian Academy of Arts Library from June 6 to 7. All the presenting artists belong to this year’s group of experts who have been invited to, within these two days, give feedback to the graduates at the Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Fine Arts and Design.

Portfolio Café is supported by the European Union European Regional Development Fund, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Goethe-Institut Estland and Erasmus +.