SUNDAY, 22 November
FOKU | 13:00–15:00
13:00–13:15 – Introduction and welcome
By Tuukka Kaila, artist, publisher and educator at the Estonian Academy of Arts and curator of the current exhibition The motorway is clearly audible even with the curtains drawn.
13:15–14:00 – Talk: “What If the Sea Were Gone? The Poetics of Disappearance in Shrinking Spaces”
By Karolina Rybačiauskaitė (LT), researcher, writer and philosopher at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Drawing on contemporary art practices and personal experiences of grief, the talk explores how disappearance is sensed in space – from public and private spaces to the space within one’s own body, and even exhibition spaces.
14:15–15:00 – Panel discussion
With artists Miklos Gaál and Mirjam Varik, moderated by Tuukka Kaila.
EKA Auditorium | 16:00–18:00
16:00–16:15 – Introduction and welcome
By Tuukka Kaila.
16:15–16:30 – Introduction by Miklos Gaál
16:30–18:00 – Film screening: “Separate Realms at the Same Spot”
A moving image work in progress by Miklos Gaál (FI/NL), artist and doctoral researcher at the Kuva Academy of Fine Arts.
The collage film brings together appropriated fragments from fiction films, documentaries and online stock footage. Through audiovisual narration, it explores the intersections of reality, abstraction, language, fiction and common sense.
MONDAY, 23 November
16:00-17:00, room A302 – Presentation of doctoral research by Miklos Gaál – “Romantic irony and visual art”
According to romantic irony, art speaks both critical distance and places itself compassionately to the position of another. The dissertation compares this historical description* of art with contemporary artistic practices. Can one be romantic and ironic at the same time?
* Romantic irony is a 1790s philosophy of art by Jena romanticism (Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis & al). It described the work of art as a capacity of combining both emotional and conceptual apprehension.
About the guests
Karolina Rybačiauskaitė (LT) is a researcher and writer working at the intersection of ecological theory and contemporary art. She teaches aesthetics and contemporary art theories at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and critical space philosophy at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her research explores ecological projects in post-Marxist and posthumanist thought and their relevance to artistic practices.
Miklos Gaál (FI/NL) is a visual artist and doctoral researcher in fine arts. His practice combines photography, film, text and printed matter, exploring the subjective nature of experience and challenging habitual distinctions between reality and fiction.
Mirjam Varik (EE) is an artist whose practice focuses on seemingly insignificant moments that have a lasting impact on human development. Through photography, video and installation, she explores childhood experiences, identity, memories and places.