Academic Calendar

On Friday, August 30th, starting at 12:00, the opening ceremony of the 2024/25 academic year will be held. The ceremony takes place in the main hall (A101) and lasts approximately 1.5 hours.

 

The 1980s and 1990s were marked by events around the world that radically changed the political order, people’s beliefs and attitudes, and the entire cultural and intellectual orientation of much of the globe. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War stand out as the most important changes, in the shadow of which the events in Yugoslavia and important changes elsewhere are often overlooked by European commentators. These events, taken as a whole, have been seen as part of broader processes of democratization, even as, at the same time, this period was also marked by outbreaks of extreme nationalism and radical religious ferment.

The planned conference invites participants to reflect on the following questions:
– In what ways does democracy manifest itself in the culture of the transitional period of the 1990s?
– What are the common features and differences of the transition period in different post-socialist countries?
– What different theoretical frameworks can be used to analyze the culture of this period?
– What are the new forms of cultural negotiation between different cultural traditions and elements?
– How might we describe the way cultural imaginaries and experiences of temporality have changed?
– Which transgressive tendencies arose to challenge the narrative of imaginary unity between different cultural spheres?
– How is one to describe the dynamic of the forces at play in the transition between the mentality of social collectivism and the new liberal individualism?
– How, if at all, has the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 altered understandings of the transition period and its narratives?

Organizing Committee:
Virve Sarapik, Estonian Academy of Arts
Epp Annus, Tallinn University
Luule Epner, Tallinn University
Regina-Nino Mion, Estonian Academy of Arts
Jaak Tomberg, University of Tartu
Piret Viires, Tallinn University

The conference is being organized by the Research Group of Contemporary Estonian Culture, which unites scholars from the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn University and the University of Tartu. The research is funded by the project PRG636 “Patterns of Development in Estonian Culture of the Transition Period (1986–1998).”

On Friday, September 1, starting at 12:00, the opening ceremony of the 2023/24 academic year will be held. The ceremony lasts approximately 1.5 hours.

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

3pm – graduates of Faculties of Architecture, Art Culture, Fine Arts and Doctoral School

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.

SCHEDULE OF DEFENSES

Defenses will take place at EKA, Põhja pst 7

Live streaming in EKA TV

room A501

 

Urban Studies Master’s Thesis Defense

29. May 

 

10.00-11.15 DARIA KHRYSTYCH (In)Visible Care: Civilian Volunteerism in Wartime Ukraine.

11.20-12.20 NABEEL IMITIAZ  The Infrastructure of Border Regime: Neocolonial Subjugation of Life in Modern Democratic Societies.

12.45-13.45 OLEKSANDR NENEKO Mapping Out The Dual Crisis of War and Housing in Dnipro, Ukraine. 

13.45-14.45 KHADEEJA FARRUKH. Towards The Everyday of Transnational Lives: From Sonnenallee in Neukölln to The Globalization In Question. 

 

Juhendajad: Sean Tyler ja Keiti Kljavin.

 

 

Arhitektuuri ja linnaplaneerimise magistritööde kaitsmised 

30. ja 31. May EKA, room A501

 

30. mai

 

9.00-9.45 MARK ALEKSANDER FISCHER Taskukohase linna arendamine. Kopli kaubajaam, viimane pusletükk Põhja-Tallinna sotsiaalsel maastikul.

Juhendajad Andres Alver, Douglas Gordon, Eik Hermann.

9.45-10.30 OLARI PAADIMEISTER Tihendamine kui ruumiline töövahend tuleviku linnade probleemide lahendamisel.

Juhendajad Andres Alver, Douglas Gordon, Eik Hermann.

10.30-11.15 JOHAN HALLIMÄE Helidega planeeritud linn.

Juhendajad Andres Alver, Douglas Gordon, Eik Hermann.

 

11.15 – 11.30 kohvipaus

 

11.30-12.15 KRISTOFER SOOP Avang 59°39’ N, 25°42’ E, Loksa sadama, Loksa ja Lahemaa piirideülene ruumikäsitlus Läänemeremaade kontekstis.

Juhendajad Andres Alver, Douglas Gordon, Eik Hermann.

12.15-13.00 ANETT GRIFFEL Katkestustest ühendusteks. Kopli lahe kallasrada.

Juhendajad Katrin Koov, Kadri Klementi, Eik Hermann.

13.00-13.45 KATARIINA MUSTASAAR Tööstusjärgne meremaastik. Paljassaare sadama taimtervendamine. 

Juhendajad Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Eik Hermann.

 

13.45 – 14.45 lõuna

 

14.45-15.30 KADI PIHLAK Rattateede võrgustiku planeerimise ja hindamise metoodika.

Juhendajad Martin Melioranski, Raul Kalvo, Eik Hermann.

15.30-16.15 ANNA RIIN VELNER Camino de igapäev.

Juhendajad Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Eik Hermann.

16.15-17.30 SIIM TANEL TÕNISSON Linna ühendamine. Bastionivöönd kui linna sidusstruktuur.

Juhendajad Martin Melioranski, Raul Kalvo, Eik Hermann.

 

31. May

 

9.00-9.45 LINDA LI ARRO Linnaga sidusa tööstuskvartali arendamine. Laki kvartali potentsiaalid rohepöördes.

Juhendajad Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Eik Hermann.

9.45-10.30 CAROLINA REIDMA Parkimismajade taasmõtestamine Maakri asumi näitel.

Juhendajad Toomas Tammis, Tarmo Teedumäe, Eik Hermann.

10.30-11.15 ART BOGDANOVICS Tartu Ülikooli Keskus.

Juhendajad Toomas Tammis, Tarmo Teedumäe, Eik Hermann.

11.15-12.00 UKU JULIAN TARVAS Kohaldatavad korterelamud väikeasulas. Palivere aleviku näitel. 

Juhendajad Toomas Tammis, Tarmo Teedumäe, Eik Hermann.

 

12.00 – 13.00 lõuna

 

13.00-13.45 KATRIN LANG Hüljatud hoonete kasutuselevõtu strateegia ja lahtivõetavate hoonete iseehitamise manuaal.

Juhendajad Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Eik Hermann

13.45-14.30 LOORA ORAV Tööstuskanepi rakendamine arhitektuurse materjalina ehitussektori keskkonnamõju vähendamiseks Eestis.

Juhendajad Martin Melioranski, Raul Kalvo, Eik Hermann.

14.30-15.15 KERTU JOHANNA JÕESTE Vastastikusel toel põhinevad puitstruktuurid.

Juhendajad Martin Melioranski, Raul Kalvo, Eik Hermann.

15.15-16.00 DELIJA THAKUR Materjali kui ressursi elu pikendamine. Liivalaia kohtumaja juhtum.

Juhendajad Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Eik Hermann.

 

On Friday, September 2, starting at 12:00, the opening ceremony of the 2022/23 academic year will be held. The ceremony lasts approximately 1.5 hours.

Roemer van Toorn, external PhD candidate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning, will defend his thesis „Making Architecture Politically. From Fresh Conservatism to Aesthetics as a Form of Politics“ on 7th of September 2022 at 15.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defence can be followed in EKA TV  tv.artun.ee.

External reviewers: Prof. Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere University of Technology), Prof. Arie Graafland (Delft University of Technology).

Opponent: Prof. Arie Graafland

The defense will be held in English.

Making Architecture Politically opens with an analysis of the current conjecture of Neoliberalism through the concept of the Society of the And, opposing an understanding of our condition through modes of Eitherorism. It is a voyage, travelling along the many interdependencies of the revolutionary conservatisms of Fresh Conservatism and Progressive Neoliberalism today — parallel to the arrival of a new phase of global modernisation with a special and elaborated focus on the role of contemporary architecture in Dutch society from the 1990s — while its second chapter moves beyond Fresh Conservatism; towards a possible third of emancipation in architecture with its plea for an Aesthetics as a Form of Politics towards a cosmopolitical outlook.

Chapter one, entitled Fresh Conservatism critically addresses how the much-celebrated Superdutch movement in architecture paved the way of an upcoming Neoliberal phase of capitalism. The problem for many was not to make political architecture, on the contrary, its innovative practices — without being too conscious about the political — affirmed what later was called the post-political. With Aesthetics as a Form of Politics of chapter two, exemplary alternative horizons of possibility are being discerned; ones that make architecture politically through their aesthetic regime. It has everything to do with how freedom can be created with constraints, how one can dance with enmeshment, can move beyond limiting adversary, and dare to create lives of sustained optimal wellbeing and joy through the redistribution of the sensible. By grappling with making architecture politically, finding it wanting through critical analysis, observing the exemplary and often a-political role contemporary Dutch architecture played in the 90s and onward, it turns out the problem is not to make political architecture — all architecture is political — but how to make architecture politically.

Making architecture politically is about the creation of running room; a sense of polity — an aesthetic regime redistributing the sensible — that allows for a multiplication of connections and disconnections that reframe the relations between people, the world they live in, and the way they are supposed to act and behave. Such a field of possibility concerns a multiplicity of folds and gaps in the fabric of the common experience of the human and non-human that change the cartography of the perceptible, the imaginative and the feasible. As such, it allows for new modes of political construction of common objects and emancipatory possibilities of collective and private enunciation. Instead of slipping into paternalism or control, the idea of such a radical openness is characterized by indeterminacy, nuance, incommensurability, dissensus and the multitude of encounters it could generate. It is about a becoming that breaks open the conventional way space is experienced, thought and distributed, one that displaces the binary dialectics of colonizer and colonized, the one against the other by introducing a third (And) that belongs to both the one and the other while opening alternative horizons.

Members of the Defence Committee: Dr. Jüri Soolep, Dr. Anu Allas, Dr. Renee Puusepp, Prof. Maros Krivy, Prof. Andres Kurg, Prof. Klaske Havik, Prof. Claus Peder Pedersen.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE.

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

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)