Spatial Dimensions of Heritage | Creative Research Capacities 2026
Join us for the upcoming T4EU Transforming Heritage Conference “Spatial Dimensions of Heritage | Creative Research Capacities”, organized by EKA on 27–28 January 2026 in Tallinn. This convergent event delves into the complexities of heritage preservation and embodied knowledge, from the tangible layers of paint on walls and canvases to the intangible realms of conceptual techniques or digital multidimensionality enriched with metadata.
The conference aims to bridge diverse disciplines, encouraging contributions from architecture, art, design, digital humanities, history and beyond. It will explore how ephemeral site-element-context relationships impact cultural heritage and emerging technologies—like AR, VR, and 3D modeling—can enhance preservation efforts.
The conference welcomes diverse perspectives with sessions to address participants across disciplines, including the arts, humanities, and sciences, with an emphasis on two main topics: spatial and artistic research in the context of heritage. The topics are meant to connect advanced research concepts with practice-based conceptual applications aiming to foster interdisciplinary dialogue. Inviting insights from varied academic and professional backgrounds to deepen our understanding of both cultural heritage and artistic research.
The conference itinerary is available as a PDF at the end of this article.
Register as a listener HERE.
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Day 1: Spatial Dimensions of Heritage
Keynote speaker: Pascal Bronner, GB/DE, architect and artist.
“Confessions of a Dying Tree”
The lecture uses the image of a dying tree as a metaphor for creative confinement and conformity. Drawing on my concept of the Droame – a metaphysical space entered through artistic creation – it questions our urge to hone a style. It frames mental nimbleness as our greatest heritage, championing multiplicity and resistance to the illusion that fulfilment lies in becoming one perfected thing – otherwise, we might as well be trees.
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Day 2: Artistic Research Capacities
Keynote speaker: Steinunn Knúts-Önnudóttir, IS, performance maker and artistic researcher.
From Observation to Encounter
“Entangled Relations: Sensing Heritage Through Relation-Specific Performance Practice“
This keynote explores how relation-specific performance practices shift heritage from something observed at a distance to something encountered through the body. By foregrounding presence, tactility, and sensory attention, these practices reveal heritage as an ongoing, entangled process that is co-created between people, places, and more-than-human forces.
Drawing on embodied artistic methods, I examine how performances can cultivate affective bonds with environments and spatial histories, allowing heritage to be felt rather than simply represented. Such approaches emphasise situated participation, slow attention, and reciprocal listening, acknowledging that each encounter with a site is unique and emergent. In doing so, artistic experience becomes a mode of knowing that complements and expands conventional heritage methodologies
The keynote invites a reconsideration of how we sense, interpret, and care for places today, proposing that embodied, relational practices are essential not only for artistic research but for navigating a world increasingly out of touch with its own material and ecological foundations.
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More information and inquiries: hanna-britt.augasmagi@artun.ee
The event will take place under the auspices of the Transform4Europe Alliance — a collaborative network of 11 European universities focused on climate change, digitalisation, and social challenges — and is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
