Events
01.04.2022
Caring for Ida-Viru? Tracing Frontiers of Shrinkage
We kindly invite you to the exhibition and final grading of Urban Studies and Interior Architecture Urban Models studio tutored by Kristi Grišakov & Keiti Kljavin. Please join us 1st of April, 15:00 in the EKA courtyard. The exhibition has been collectively curated by students of urban studies, architecture and urban planning and interior architecture.
Urban decline in East-Estonia presents itself in a state of flux: it is tied to the area’s contested past but also allows a peek into the future. Multiple facets of shrinkage manifest in landscapes of extractivistic production, where the line between nature and man-made environment is increasingly difficult to draw. Although urban shrinkage is often associated with deteriorated buildings, abandoned and fragmented urban environments, if we choose to look through another lens there are multiple layers of phenomenologically dense experiences of decline that can provide acceptance and perseverance. Whether shrinking cities are distressing cities is a point of contention that urges us to rethink why cities are only ever received positively and linearly through growth, and whether or why shrinkage is seen as the opposite of growth. Should it be?
The Urban Models studio and its final project Caring for Ida-Viru? Tracing Frontiers of Shrinkage explores various questions related to tangible and intangible aspects of habitation in Ida-Viru county. Urban districts and towns of Ahtme, Järve and Kiviõli, where changing policies and approaches in urban governance aim to respond to the surplus of housing caused by the outmigration of people are in focus. Students of urban studies, architecture and interior architecture collaborated in exploring, reinventing and rethinking approaches towards shrinkage, adaptation and re-use. Some try to trace the stories that are subsumed in the industrially toxic air of Ida-Virumaa. Others attempt to take a peek into the everyday life that has somehow frozen in time. The students’ used relevant literature and explored case studies with experimental media and techniques in order to deliver final projects challenging the condition of shrinkage in Eastern Estonia.
Students: Paula Veidenbauma, Ljudmila Funika-Müür, Kush Badhwar, Augustas Lapinskas, Karen Isabel Talitee, Kelli Puusepp, Nabeel Imtiaz, Luca Liese Ritter, Julia Freudenberg, Kristiina Puusepp, Paul Simon, Christian Hörner, Hannah Mühlbach, Loviise Talvaru, Khadeeja Farrukh, Nora Soo, Jannik Kastrup.
Guest critics: Roland Reemaa (https://www.rloaluarnad.com/), Gregor Taul (EKA), Jüri Kermik (EKA), Johanna Holvandus (TÜ)
——————————————————-
Opposing the Desert
EKA courtyard terrace
an interactive installation by Paula Veidenbauma and Ljudmila Funika-Müür
Shrinking cities are aging cities. Enclosed by panels, slippery roads, railway tracks, and liminal landscape, elderly tend to be tied closely with their homes, not receiving enough soft care from the local municipality. While focusing on the topic of the invisibility of loneliness amongst the retried, the project tackles spatial isolation while looking at it from the perspective of the city district of Ahtme. It investigates public space in relation to a private space once inhabited by a senior teacher living in Ahtme’s Sõpruse street Soviet panel building. The installation tackles the findings revealed through critical geography, in parallel exploring the state of social services in Ahtme. How many borders does one have to overcome in order to be cared for? Can public space enable caring relationships between people, place, and materials, towards a city interested in investing resources beyond growth?
———————————————————
Ida
EKA library
illustrated children’s book presentation and readings by Kush Badwahr, Augustas Lapinskas and Karen Isabel Talitee
Ida (meaning ‘east’ in Estonian but also referring to the ancient Germanic root ‘id’ meaning ‘labor, work’) is an eight year old resident of Ida-Virumaa asking herself what she would like to do when she grows up. On her way home from school, she has various interactions – with a soon to retire army officer, a group of young boys, a bird, her visiting aunt and an ex-miner – that relate to their life and work in the region in which they live. The interactions Ida has and the illustrations that make up the book are based on interviews and research exploring the nature of work, unemployment and retirement and its connections to issues of shrinkage and de-growth in the area. Ida is both a metaphor of the contemporary state of the region and a children’s book that makes these topics accessible through an illustrated narrative form.
Underneath the layers
@ the EKA spiral staircase
panorama installation by Kelli Puusepp and Nabeel Imtiaz
As the stones burned in the beginning of the 20th century, the towns in the East of Estonia started to grow. As the terrain in the backdrop was being dug deep, people moved in – families with all their personal belongings. Children played in the parks and their familiarity brought households closer. Memories of good times were made – over on the sidewalks and alleys, behind and in between the walls of Kohtla-Järve homes. As the underground sphere expanded, the mines got deeper, consequently developing the life on the surface. Though the estates grew denser, their expansion was halted by the end of the century. It all fell back inwards, imploding into themselves, throwing the community into an uncertainty. What was left were the remnants of the spaces once inhabited.
The story traces the history of socio-spatial formations and disintegration of the society that once formed Kohtla-Järve.
——————————————————
Nothing Power: where absent matter matters
A-500
exhibition by Luca Liese Ritter and Julia Freudenberg
In Ida-Virumaa, shrinkage refers to the complex consequences of going away, becoming less, fading into thin air. People move, things disappear, services close, concrete panels decay and houses are demolished. What remains in those places that were inhabited by heterogeneous matter is a void. But this emptiness is not empty in the sense of a nothingness, a nirvana; rather, it continues to be quasi-present, conceivably retaining many of its material aspects and thus its place in the fabric of socio-material relations that shape the experience of living in and coping with urban shrinkage.
Our project explores the affective flows between what is gone and what remains, and seeks to highlight the complicated intertwining of cause and effect that residents and policymakers must navigate as they confront the challenges of population loss and subsequent over-provision of housing infrastructure.
—————————————————-
…so we can keep on watching eesti laul in the future
A-400
house by Kristiina Puusepp and Paul Simon
In the future, Ida-Virumaa will see rapid transformation. The excavation of oil shale, one of the main social and economic pillars of the region, is not in keeping with the reality of the climate crisis. The concept of a ‘just transition’ demands a change-over satisfying both workers rights and environmental care. Originally being required by labor- and environmental activists, the term is meanwhile used by different governmental actors. In Ida-Virumaa, the EU supports the endeavor of a just transition with 340 Million Euros. While the funding will not directly finance housing, by striving for a future-oriented industry, it is the base structure for securing homes for local residents. Despite attempts for widespread participation of just transition, the transformation is mostly directed by demands and plans from external groups and higher institutions. By thematizing the ambiguous relationship between this ‘outside’ and the local population, the project raises the question how we should position ourselves in the process of transition.
—————————————————–
The Last Layer, the Next Layer? Signs for those who choose to stay
B-205
video installation by Christian Hörner and Hannah Mühlbach
When exploring the abandoned flats of Kohtla-Järve, we came across an outstanding phenomenon of personal expression and appropriation of space: through its multiple colors, patterns and layerings, wallpaper became the collage-like visual theme of our experience as explorers of Ida-Virumaa shrinking cities’ interiors. Inspired by the creativity and self-expression of those who have left the area, our search for shrinkage re-centered around the idea of creating something for those who still live in the cities that de-grow. We began to play with the idea of decorating facades of abandoned buildings with wallpaper in a graffitti-like manner, as a vehicle of intention, resistance and visibility. This next layer on Ida-Virumaa loses the fatality of linear decline until disappearance and points to an alternative future where abandoned buildings become monuments of persistence rather than unwanted obstacles for liveability. Our installation represents the hypothesis that people, when provided with the means to care for their cities, can re-frame narratives of shrinkage and create an optimistic outlook on Ida-Virumaa’s future.
——————————————————
The Other side of the Coin: Must Shrinkage be Only Tormenting?
A-200
mixed media by Loviise Talvaru and Khedeeja Farrukh
Emptiness becomes even more emptier because of our need to define society through community. Kiviõli, one of the many mining towns in Ida-Virumaa, is categorized as an example of urban shrinkage, where dilapidated conditions of facades, rustic reminders of laundry lines, empty apartment buildings, sounds of sea gull penetrating the otherwise silent urbanity urges an outsider to call this environment tormenting. But is that really so?
Must shrinkage be only tormenting? Why is shrinkage antagonistic to growth? Isn’t growth also tormenting? Through this project, a process of personal experiences, of how we perceived shrinkage and how our experience changed it, is depicted. There came a point in our research where we realized that this top-down trajectory of perceptions is quite acute and that urbanity is not an abstraction only to be lived on papers, rather it is an everyday experience. So, we went back to Kiviõli. For good. And for surprises.
Our approach is not an end-point, but a device of researching, where our visits to Kiviõli enabled an important aspect of experimentation and co-creation, transforming our approach towards shrinkage.
——————————————————
Help yourself with Energy
B-205
video and installation by Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup
The electricity meter operates between the public and the private realm. Subject to regular control, it softly breaks their boundaries. In economically deprived regions like Ida-Virumaa its reading frequently decides the fate of the inhabitants, pressuring those who are financially incapable to upgrade to more efficient devices.
Tampering with the electricity meter is therefore a common disruptive practice.
However in the spheres of en vogue online life coaching, energy is portrayed as a personal property that can be manipulated according to spiritual practices, detached from economic and political circumstances. Does it mean that anyone can achieve anything being only restricted by imaginary boundaries? Paradoxically, the imaginaries of inhabitants in Ida-Virumaa are limited in a situation of energy poverty. Within this dichotomy of energy as a contested public good and as an individualized spirituality lies one of the challenges of neoliberal capitalist societies. The (video) installation plays with diverging concepts of energy by audiovisually overlapping and rearranging these distinct narratives.
Caring for Ida-Viru? Tracing Frontiers of Shrinkage
Friday 01 April, 2022
We kindly invite you to the exhibition and final grading of Urban Studies and Interior Architecture Urban Models studio tutored by Kristi Grišakov & Keiti Kljavin. Please join us 1st of April, 15:00 in the EKA courtyard. The exhibition has been collectively curated by students of urban studies, architecture and urban planning and interior architecture.
Urban decline in East-Estonia presents itself in a state of flux: it is tied to the area’s contested past but also allows a peek into the future. Multiple facets of shrinkage manifest in landscapes of extractivistic production, where the line between nature and man-made environment is increasingly difficult to draw. Although urban shrinkage is often associated with deteriorated buildings, abandoned and fragmented urban environments, if we choose to look through another lens there are multiple layers of phenomenologically dense experiences of decline that can provide acceptance and perseverance. Whether shrinking cities are distressing cities is a point of contention that urges us to rethink why cities are only ever received positively and linearly through growth, and whether or why shrinkage is seen as the opposite of growth. Should it be?
The Urban Models studio and its final project Caring for Ida-Viru? Tracing Frontiers of Shrinkage explores various questions related to tangible and intangible aspects of habitation in Ida-Viru county. Urban districts and towns of Ahtme, Järve and Kiviõli, where changing policies and approaches in urban governance aim to respond to the surplus of housing caused by the outmigration of people are in focus. Students of urban studies, architecture and interior architecture collaborated in exploring, reinventing and rethinking approaches towards shrinkage, adaptation and re-use. Some try to trace the stories that are subsumed in the industrially toxic air of Ida-Virumaa. Others attempt to take a peek into the everyday life that has somehow frozen in time. The students’ used relevant literature and explored case studies with experimental media and techniques in order to deliver final projects challenging the condition of shrinkage in Eastern Estonia.
Students: Paula Veidenbauma, Ljudmila Funika-Müür, Kush Badhwar, Augustas Lapinskas, Karen Isabel Talitee, Kelli Puusepp, Nabeel Imtiaz, Luca Liese Ritter, Julia Freudenberg, Kristiina Puusepp, Paul Simon, Christian Hörner, Hannah Mühlbach, Loviise Talvaru, Khadeeja Farrukh, Nora Soo, Jannik Kastrup.
Guest critics: Roland Reemaa (https://www.rloaluarnad.com/), Gregor Taul (EKA), Jüri Kermik (EKA), Johanna Holvandus (TÜ)
——————————————————-
Opposing the Desert
EKA courtyard terrace
an interactive installation by Paula Veidenbauma and Ljudmila Funika-Müür
Shrinking cities are aging cities. Enclosed by panels, slippery roads, railway tracks, and liminal landscape, elderly tend to be tied closely with their homes, not receiving enough soft care from the local municipality. While focusing on the topic of the invisibility of loneliness amongst the retried, the project tackles spatial isolation while looking at it from the perspective of the city district of Ahtme. It investigates public space in relation to a private space once inhabited by a senior teacher living in Ahtme’s Sõpruse street Soviet panel building. The installation tackles the findings revealed through critical geography, in parallel exploring the state of social services in Ahtme. How many borders does one have to overcome in order to be cared for? Can public space enable caring relationships between people, place, and materials, towards a city interested in investing resources beyond growth?
———————————————————
Ida
EKA library
illustrated children’s book presentation and readings by Kush Badwahr, Augustas Lapinskas and Karen Isabel Talitee
Ida (meaning ‘east’ in Estonian but also referring to the ancient Germanic root ‘id’ meaning ‘labor, work’) is an eight year old resident of Ida-Virumaa asking herself what she would like to do when she grows up. On her way home from school, she has various interactions – with a soon to retire army officer, a group of young boys, a bird, her visiting aunt and an ex-miner – that relate to their life and work in the region in which they live. The interactions Ida has and the illustrations that make up the book are based on interviews and research exploring the nature of work, unemployment and retirement and its connections to issues of shrinkage and de-growth in the area. Ida is both a metaphor of the contemporary state of the region and a children’s book that makes these topics accessible through an illustrated narrative form.
Underneath the layers
@ the EKA spiral staircase
panorama installation by Kelli Puusepp and Nabeel Imtiaz
As the stones burned in the beginning of the 20th century, the towns in the East of Estonia started to grow. As the terrain in the backdrop was being dug deep, people moved in – families with all their personal belongings. Children played in the parks and their familiarity brought households closer. Memories of good times were made – over on the sidewalks and alleys, behind and in between the walls of Kohtla-Järve homes. As the underground sphere expanded, the mines got deeper, consequently developing the life on the surface. Though the estates grew denser, their expansion was halted by the end of the century. It all fell back inwards, imploding into themselves, throwing the community into an uncertainty. What was left were the remnants of the spaces once inhabited.
The story traces the history of socio-spatial formations and disintegration of the society that once formed Kohtla-Järve.
——————————————————
Nothing Power: where absent matter matters
A-500
exhibition by Luca Liese Ritter and Julia Freudenberg
In Ida-Virumaa, shrinkage refers to the complex consequences of going away, becoming less, fading into thin air. People move, things disappear, services close, concrete panels decay and houses are demolished. What remains in those places that were inhabited by heterogeneous matter is a void. But this emptiness is not empty in the sense of a nothingness, a nirvana; rather, it continues to be quasi-present, conceivably retaining many of its material aspects and thus its place in the fabric of socio-material relations that shape the experience of living in and coping with urban shrinkage.
Our project explores the affective flows between what is gone and what remains, and seeks to highlight the complicated intertwining of cause and effect that residents and policymakers must navigate as they confront the challenges of population loss and subsequent over-provision of housing infrastructure.
—————————————————-
…so we can keep on watching eesti laul in the future
A-400
house by Kristiina Puusepp and Paul Simon
In the future, Ida-Virumaa will see rapid transformation. The excavation of oil shale, one of the main social and economic pillars of the region, is not in keeping with the reality of the climate crisis. The concept of a ‘just transition’ demands a change-over satisfying both workers rights and environmental care. Originally being required by labor- and environmental activists, the term is meanwhile used by different governmental actors. In Ida-Virumaa, the EU supports the endeavor of a just transition with 340 Million Euros. While the funding will not directly finance housing, by striving for a future-oriented industry, it is the base structure for securing homes for local residents. Despite attempts for widespread participation of just transition, the transformation is mostly directed by demands and plans from external groups and higher institutions. By thematizing the ambiguous relationship between this ‘outside’ and the local population, the project raises the question how we should position ourselves in the process of transition.
—————————————————–
The Last Layer, the Next Layer? Signs for those who choose to stay
B-205
video installation by Christian Hörner and Hannah Mühlbach
When exploring the abandoned flats of Kohtla-Järve, we came across an outstanding phenomenon of personal expression and appropriation of space: through its multiple colors, patterns and layerings, wallpaper became the collage-like visual theme of our experience as explorers of Ida-Virumaa shrinking cities’ interiors. Inspired by the creativity and self-expression of those who have left the area, our search for shrinkage re-centered around the idea of creating something for those who still live in the cities that de-grow. We began to play with the idea of decorating facades of abandoned buildings with wallpaper in a graffitti-like manner, as a vehicle of intention, resistance and visibility. This next layer on Ida-Virumaa loses the fatality of linear decline until disappearance and points to an alternative future where abandoned buildings become monuments of persistence rather than unwanted obstacles for liveability. Our installation represents the hypothesis that people, when provided with the means to care for their cities, can re-frame narratives of shrinkage and create an optimistic outlook on Ida-Virumaa’s future.
——————————————————
The Other side of the Coin: Must Shrinkage be Only Tormenting?
A-200
mixed media by Loviise Talvaru and Khedeeja Farrukh
Emptiness becomes even more emptier because of our need to define society through community. Kiviõli, one of the many mining towns in Ida-Virumaa, is categorized as an example of urban shrinkage, where dilapidated conditions of facades, rustic reminders of laundry lines, empty apartment buildings, sounds of sea gull penetrating the otherwise silent urbanity urges an outsider to call this environment tormenting. But is that really so?
Must shrinkage be only tormenting? Why is shrinkage antagonistic to growth? Isn’t growth also tormenting? Through this project, a process of personal experiences, of how we perceived shrinkage and how our experience changed it, is depicted. There came a point in our research where we realized that this top-down trajectory of perceptions is quite acute and that urbanity is not an abstraction only to be lived on papers, rather it is an everyday experience. So, we went back to Kiviõli. For good. And for surprises.
Our approach is not an end-point, but a device of researching, where our visits to Kiviõli enabled an important aspect of experimentation and co-creation, transforming our approach towards shrinkage.
——————————————————
Help yourself with Energy
B-205
video and installation by Nora Soo and Jannik Kastrup
The electricity meter operates between the public and the private realm. Subject to regular control, it softly breaks their boundaries. In economically deprived regions like Ida-Virumaa its reading frequently decides the fate of the inhabitants, pressuring those who are financially incapable to upgrade to more efficient devices.
Tampering with the electricity meter is therefore a common disruptive practice.
However in the spheres of en vogue online life coaching, energy is portrayed as a personal property that can be manipulated according to spiritual practices, detached from economic and political circumstances. Does it mean that anyone can achieve anything being only restricted by imaginary boundaries? Paradoxically, the imaginaries of inhabitants in Ida-Virumaa are limited in a situation of energy poverty. Within this dichotomy of energy as a contested public good and as an individualized spirituality lies one of the challenges of neoliberal capitalist societies. The (video) installation plays with diverging concepts of energy by audiovisually overlapping and rearranging these distinct narratives.
28.03.2022
Ukraine Solidarity ONLINE Screening #10 / “War Note”, Roman Liubyi
Ukraine Solidarity ONLINE Screening #10 / “War Note”, Roman Liubyi
Monday 28 March, 2022
02.04.2022
Look mom, with hands!
Join us from 12:00 till 19:00 on Saturday 2nd to discuss Tangible Interactions and enjoy tangible drinks at the Gallery Cafe in Rotermanni.
How would your smartphone apps look like if there was no touchscreen interface? Which senses would they need to stimulate in order for your interactions to be effective and purposeful? See, hear, touch, smell, taste – senses that can go far beyond from what screens are capable of delivering to us.
Interaction Design students from EKA are presenting you with their look on how to make bad interfaces and interactions better by making them more tangible.
Look mom, with hands!
Saturday 02 April, 2022
Join us from 12:00 till 19:00 on Saturday 2nd to discuss Tangible Interactions and enjoy tangible drinks at the Gallery Cafe in Rotermanni.
How would your smartphone apps look like if there was no touchscreen interface? Which senses would they need to stimulate in order for your interactions to be effective and purposeful? See, hear, touch, smell, taste – senses that can go far beyond from what screens are capable of delivering to us.
Interaction Design students from EKA are presenting you with their look on how to make bad interfaces and interactions better by making them more tangible.
05.04.2022 — 10.04.2022
festival…showcase
“festival…showcase” 5.—10.04 at EKA Gallery
Saara Liis Jõerand, Gregor Kulla, Riin Maide, Nele Tiidelepp, Henri Särekanno, Mattias Veller
The exhibition is open on 6.—9. April at 3—7 pm.
Opening: 5. April at 6 pm
In the course of six days, there will be actions, performances and presentations. This is a festival.
Six young authors share a platform to create and experiment. Tis is a showcase.
“festival…showcase” is an exhibition and a cluster of performances that takes place on 5—10 April in EKA Gallery. The cycle begins with a performative opening night on the 5th of April and ends with a Sunday afternoon presentation on the 10th of April. The days in between will be filled with ever-changing performances, including video screenings, sound works, and duration and short performances for both body and voice.
“festival…showcase” is an integration project of mediums with a focus on collaboration. Artists from different creative disciplines juxtapose their artistic tools with those of others, borrowing resources from them. The works flow across the borders of conventional media, using the fragility and uncertainty of the situation as an input. The subject of the works seen in the gallery originates from the moments spent together, it analyzes the mutual relations and draws on each other’s skills.
Outside of creative manifestations, the exhibition is an installation environment that reflects the preparation and the leftover. The spatial situation constantly alternates between festal and adjuratory, installation and performance. The space is shared with material and props of previous and subsequent works that will come to life in EKA Gallery.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
TUESDAY, 5.04
18:00
Exhibition opening ceremony
Overalls
Mattias Veller
Performance for six figures
40′
WEDNESDAY, 6.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT I: relief
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
30’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative survey where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’
THURSDAY, 7.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT II: intaglio (sort of)
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
150’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
20:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’
FRIDAY, 8.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT III: silk
Performance; mostly printing
20’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phone calls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
What to do to feel good
Nele Tiidelepp
A performance for six performers with myself and others, about talking over, along with and behind someone’s back
60’
SATURDAY, 9.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT IV: continuations/summaries
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
40’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
Showcase…festival inside the “festival…showcase”
open platform / togetherness / party / festival / showcase
Evening in open form, where you can take part in or miss out on different acts and performances. Works in every medium from uncountable performers, including the “festival…showcase” team and unknown others, that can last anywhere from one second to 10 minutes.
EKA baar is open at the event!
SUNDAY, 10.04
15:00
Exhibition finissage
Print presentation
Riin Maide
Publication presentation, printed during performances PRINT I, PRINT II, PRINT III and PRINT IV
60’
Short bios:
Saara Liis Jõerand (1999) studies general linguistics at the University of Tartu. She is interested in the area between thought and its expression. Jõerand has a bachelor’s degree in semiotics and culture theory, has published literary and theatre criticism and has been engaged in several theatre and art projects.
Gregor Kulla (2000) is a composer, writer and critic who studies composition with professor Tõnu Kõrvits and Helena Tulve in the Estonian Music and Theatre Academy. Previously, he has finished H. Eller Tartu Music College in oboe and composition and studied sustainable art in the Novi Sad EU School of Participation 2021. For his work in the cultural field of Tartu, Kulla has been named the Young Culture Carrier of the year 2020. Last year he earned the title of laureate of cultural magazine Sirp and he currently holds the Erkki-Sven Tüür scholarship.
Riin Maide (1997) is an artist and scenographer who has graduated from the graphic arts department of the Estonian Academy of Arts and educated herself in scenography and alternative theatre in DAMU Prague. Maide’s art focuses on noticing and playfully deconstructing spatial situations both on- and off-stage. She has organised and taken part in group exhibitions and different theatre projects in Tallinn, Tartu, Prague and Brussels. In 2020 she was awarded the Young Artist prize and the Edmund Valtman scholarship for young graphic artists.
Nele Tiidelepp (1998) is a freelance artist and a 2020 graduate of the installation and sculpture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts whose practice draws inspiration from spontaneous reactions to the environment and materials. She often expresses spontaneous and chaotic flow of thought in mediums like text, video, sound, installation and performance. Tiidelepp has won the Young Tartu competition in 2021, the Young Artist award in 2020, SIIL Prize and Millenium Prize in 2019, and has participated in art events in Estonia, Basel, Rovaniemi, Riga, Brussels, Stuttgart, Venice and Moscow.
Henri Särekanno (1999) is a freelance art worker and cinephile. He has studied art history and philosophy. In his creative practice he works with audiovisual media and is mainly interested in the border between documentary and fiction. Särekanno is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays guitar and violin.
Mattias Veller (1998) studies in the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts but consistently cheats on painting with all other possible creative practices. In his interdisciplinary activity, he has touched upon the themes of physical labour and the relation between humans and material and has worked on paintings and objects with absurd and excessive precision. Veller is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays the guitar and sings.
festival…showcase
Tuesday 05 April, 2022 — Sunday 10 April, 2022
“festival…showcase” 5.—10.04 at EKA Gallery
Saara Liis Jõerand, Gregor Kulla, Riin Maide, Nele Tiidelepp, Henri Särekanno, Mattias Veller
The exhibition is open on 6.—9. April at 3—7 pm.
Opening: 5. April at 6 pm
In the course of six days, there will be actions, performances and presentations. This is a festival.
Six young authors share a platform to create and experiment. Tis is a showcase.
“festival…showcase” is an exhibition and a cluster of performances that takes place on 5—10 April in EKA Gallery. The cycle begins with a performative opening night on the 5th of April and ends with a Sunday afternoon presentation on the 10th of April. The days in between will be filled with ever-changing performances, including video screenings, sound works, and duration and short performances for both body and voice.
“festival…showcase” is an integration project of mediums with a focus on collaboration. Artists from different creative disciplines juxtapose their artistic tools with those of others, borrowing resources from them. The works flow across the borders of conventional media, using the fragility and uncertainty of the situation as an input. The subject of the works seen in the gallery originates from the moments spent together, it analyzes the mutual relations and draws on each other’s skills.
Outside of creative manifestations, the exhibition is an installation environment that reflects the preparation and the leftover. The spatial situation constantly alternates between festal and adjuratory, installation and performance. The space is shared with material and props of previous and subsequent works that will come to life in EKA Gallery.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
TUESDAY, 5.04
18:00
Exhibition opening ceremony
Overalls
Mattias Veller
Performance for six figures
40′
WEDNESDAY, 6.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT I: relief
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
30’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative survey where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’
THURSDAY, 7.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT II: intaglio (sort of)
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
150’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Veller and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
20:00
relief
Gregor Kulla
Performance and electroacoustic composition that deals with defining interval ratios through tension
30’
FRIDAY, 8.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT III: silk
Performance; mostly printing
20’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phone calls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
What to do to feel good
Nele Tiidelepp
A performance for six performers with myself and others, about talking over, along with and behind someone’s back
60’
SATURDAY, 9.04
15:00-19:00
The exhibition is open
I’ll be filming now
Henri Särekanno
An audiovisual experiment, in which the camera and the video image are co-creating the space
juhan
Henri Särekanno
Documentary about artist residency at Juhani farm
My words I
Saara Liis Jõerand
Continued writing during the exhibition
15:00
PRINT IV: continuations/summaries
Riin Maide
Performance; mostly printing
40’
16:00
My words II
Saara Liis Jõerand
A performance where abstract words are concretized into a suitable form for the exhibition
20’
17:00
Wrestling
Mattias Velleri and Henri Särekanno
Audio-collage and sport-performance
15’
18:00
Phonecalls about theatre
Mattias Veller
Qualitative questionnaire where the artist is challenging himself physically
20’
19:00
Showcase…festival inside the “festival…showcase”
open platform / togetherness / party / festival / showcase
Evening in open form, where you can take part in or miss out on different acts and performances. Works in every medium from uncountable performers, including the “festival…showcase” team and unknown others, that can last anywhere from one second to 10 minutes.
EKA baar is open at the event!
SUNDAY, 10.04
15:00
Exhibition finissage
Print presentation
Riin Maide
Publication presentation, printed during performances PRINT I, PRINT II, PRINT III and PRINT IV
60’
Short bios:
Saara Liis Jõerand (1999) studies general linguistics at the University of Tartu. She is interested in the area between thought and its expression. Jõerand has a bachelor’s degree in semiotics and culture theory, has published literary and theatre criticism and has been engaged in several theatre and art projects.
Gregor Kulla (2000) is a composer, writer and critic who studies composition with professor Tõnu Kõrvits and Helena Tulve in the Estonian Music and Theatre Academy. Previously, he has finished H. Eller Tartu Music College in oboe and composition and studied sustainable art in the Novi Sad EU School of Participation 2021. For his work in the cultural field of Tartu, Kulla has been named the Young Culture Carrier of the year 2020. Last year he earned the title of laureate of cultural magazine Sirp and he currently holds the Erkki-Sven Tüür scholarship.
Riin Maide (1997) is an artist and scenographer who has graduated from the graphic arts department of the Estonian Academy of Arts and educated herself in scenography and alternative theatre in DAMU Prague. Maide’s art focuses on noticing and playfully deconstructing spatial situations both on- and off-stage. She has organised and taken part in group exhibitions and different theatre projects in Tallinn, Tartu, Prague and Brussels. In 2020 she was awarded the Young Artist prize and the Edmund Valtman scholarship for young graphic artists.
Nele Tiidelepp (1998) is a freelance artist and a 2020 graduate of the installation and sculpture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts whose practice draws inspiration from spontaneous reactions to the environment and materials. She often expresses spontaneous and chaotic flow of thought in mediums like text, video, sound, installation and performance. Tiidelepp has won the Young Tartu competition in 2021, the Young Artist award in 2020, SIIL Prize and Millenium Prize in 2019, and has participated in art events in Estonia, Basel, Rovaniemi, Riga, Brussels, Stuttgart, Venice and Moscow.
Henri Särekanno (1999) is a freelance art worker and cinephile. He has studied art history and philosophy. In his creative practice he works with audiovisual media and is mainly interested in the border between documentary and fiction. Särekanno is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays guitar and violin.
Mattias Veller (1998) studies in the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts but consistently cheats on painting with all other possible creative practices. In his interdisciplinary activity, he has touched upon the themes of physical labour and the relation between humans and material and has worked on paintings and objects with absurd and excessive precision. Veller is a founding member of the vocal-instrumental ensemble SEAPUTS in which he plays the guitar and sings.
21.03.2022
Ukraine Solidarity ONLINE Screening #9 / “Heat Singers” on elektron.art
Screening #9 / “Heat Singers”, Nadia Parfan
On Monday, 21.03 at 20:00 (EET) we warmly invite you for the ninth online screening of the documentary “Heat Singers” by Ukrainian filmmaker Nadia Parfan. All the raised funds are transferred directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine.
For many years, Ivan Vasyliovych has been the trade union leader at Ivano-Frankivsk TeploKomunEnergo, a municipal heating company in western Ukraine. His magnum opus is the trade union choir for mechanics, repairmen, dispatchers, book-keepers and other employees. Ivan Vasyliovych is very proud of their creative achievements, but is also keen to point out that “the heating comes first – and only then do we sing!”. The rehearsal schedule must be organised around the “heating season”. As the collective is trying to fix the old pipelines, customers are bombarding the hot-line service. Is it possible to warm up their cold radiators with the power of Ukrainian folk song?
Nadia Parfan was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Western Ukraine. She graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv and the Central European University in Budapest. She is a curator and co-founder of “86” Festival of Film and Urbanism. She is also a producer of the independent documentary “Love Me” (2014) by Jonathon Narducci. In 2014-2015, she studied documentary directing at the Andrzej Wajda School. “Heat Singers” is a director’s debut and was world-premiered at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel.
Tickets (put your own price, min 5 EUR; all of the funds will be redirected directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine): https://fienta.com/parfan
Link for a Facebook-event – https://www.facebook.com/events/3062516497324364
Ukraine Solidarity ONLINE Screening #9 / “Heat Singers” on elektron.art
Monday 21 March, 2022
Screening #9 / “Heat Singers”, Nadia Parfan
On Monday, 21.03 at 20:00 (EET) we warmly invite you for the ninth online screening of the documentary “Heat Singers” by Ukrainian filmmaker Nadia Parfan. All the raised funds are transferred directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine.
For many years, Ivan Vasyliovych has been the trade union leader at Ivano-Frankivsk TeploKomunEnergo, a municipal heating company in western Ukraine. His magnum opus is the trade union choir for mechanics, repairmen, dispatchers, book-keepers and other employees. Ivan Vasyliovych is very proud of their creative achievements, but is also keen to point out that “the heating comes first – and only then do we sing!”. The rehearsal schedule must be organised around the “heating season”. As the collective is trying to fix the old pipelines, customers are bombarding the hot-line service. Is it possible to warm up their cold radiators with the power of Ukrainian folk song?
Nadia Parfan was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Western Ukraine. She graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv and the Central European University in Budapest. She is a curator and co-founder of “86” Festival of Film and Urbanism. She is also a producer of the independent documentary “Love Me” (2014) by Jonathon Narducci. In 2014-2015, she studied documentary directing at the Andrzej Wajda School. “Heat Singers” is a director’s debut and was world-premiered at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel.
Tickets (put your own price, min 5 EUR; all of the funds will be redirected directly to the film team who are currently helping on the ground in Ukraine): https://fienta.com/parfan
Link for a Facebook-event – https://www.facebook.com/events/3062516497324364
24.03.2022 — 15.04.2022
Collaborative exhibition “Where is the body?”
Collaborative exhibition of EKA and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna “Where is the body?” is the first part opens in Vienna on Thursday, March 24, at 4 pm, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor).
This is a collaborative exhibition between Daniel Richter and Nazim Ünal Yilmaz, students of the Chair of Painting at EKA and the instructors of the extended painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The curators of the exhibition are Lilian Hiob from Estonia and Julius Pristauz from Austria.
Artists: Eero Alev, Ina Ebenberger, Daniel Silva Flandez, Yigit Gönlügür, Loora Kaubi, Jakob Kolb, Olev Kuma, Lisette Lepik, Sigrid Mau, Amar Priganica, Brenda Purtsak, Ramsko, Alfred Rottensteiner, Denisa Stefanigova, Magdalena Schwaiger, Mattias Veller Curated Lilian Hiob ja Julius Pristauz
The group exhibition Where is the body? arises from a collaboration between the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Estonian Academy of Arts, bringing together a variety of emerging artists, currently studying in the painting departments of the two academies.
Where is the body? gathers assumptions, statements and questions regarding different forms of (self-)embodiment. Questions as to how the body is currently situated in terms of its representation in the students’ practices are central to the curatorial concept of the exhibition. The exhibition presents different depictions and notions of the body in an ever quickly spinning world, opening up space for discussions surrounding it.
Depictions of fantastical bodies fuse into questions about hierarchies between different species. Loosening up borders, tissues, and deadlocked positions, we find a variety of expressions ranging from more playful approaches to very serious and intense dissections towards the topic.
Sketches for possible skeletons of the medium of painting and thoughts about material manifestations of bodily gestures within it go alongside introspections and reflections on the anatomy of the self. The artists comment on bodies in use, their capabilities and boundaries, extreme situations and the body as a tool for manipulation and power play.
The works negotiate body politics and within those relationships of gender, identity and representation.
Themes such as deconstruction and decay, performance, dependency and co-dependency can be found as opposed to abstract and hybrid images with transformational potential.
From traditional depiction to the changing stance of the body over time the works can help to position and define how and where the body finds a home in young contemporary artists’ practice.
The display and architecture of the exhibition expand on these ideas further, with its rhizomatic structure making for a spatial experience with different stations.
Examining matters connected to belonging, visibility, and desire, Where is the body? helps us to map various narratives that are socially, historically and culturally interwoven and take bodies, in a broader sense, as their starting point.
The exhibition takes place in two chapters.
Chapter One in Vienna:
24.03 – 15.04
Academy of Fine Arts, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor)
The second part of the exhibition will open on May 6 at the Narva Art Residency (NART) Gallery.
07-28.05
Art Residency, Joala 18, Narva
Curators: Lilian Hiob and Julius Pristauz
Collaborative exhibition “Where is the body?”
Thursday 24 March, 2022 — Friday 15 April, 2022
Collaborative exhibition of EKA and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna “Where is the body?” is the first part opens in Vienna on Thursday, March 24, at 4 pm, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor).
This is a collaborative exhibition between Daniel Richter and Nazim Ünal Yilmaz, students of the Chair of Painting at EKA and the instructors of the extended painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The curators of the exhibition are Lilian Hiob from Estonia and Julius Pristauz from Austria.
Artists: Eero Alev, Ina Ebenberger, Daniel Silva Flandez, Yigit Gönlügür, Loora Kaubi, Jakob Kolb, Olev Kuma, Lisette Lepik, Sigrid Mau, Amar Priganica, Brenda Purtsak, Ramsko, Alfred Rottensteiner, Denisa Stefanigova, Magdalena Schwaiger, Mattias Veller Curated Lilian Hiob ja Julius Pristauz
The group exhibition Where is the body? arises from a collaboration between the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Estonian Academy of Arts, bringing together a variety of emerging artists, currently studying in the painting departments of the two academies.
Where is the body? gathers assumptions, statements and questions regarding different forms of (self-)embodiment. Questions as to how the body is currently situated in terms of its representation in the students’ practices are central to the curatorial concept of the exhibition. The exhibition presents different depictions and notions of the body in an ever quickly spinning world, opening up space for discussions surrounding it.
Depictions of fantastical bodies fuse into questions about hierarchies between different species. Loosening up borders, tissues, and deadlocked positions, we find a variety of expressions ranging from more playful approaches to very serious and intense dissections towards the topic.
Sketches for possible skeletons of the medium of painting and thoughts about material manifestations of bodily gestures within it go alongside introspections and reflections on the anatomy of the self. The artists comment on bodies in use, their capabilities and boundaries, extreme situations and the body as a tool for manipulation and power play.
The works negotiate body politics and within those relationships of gender, identity and representation.
Themes such as deconstruction and decay, performance, dependency and co-dependency can be found as opposed to abstract and hybrid images with transformational potential.
From traditional depiction to the changing stance of the body over time the works can help to position and define how and where the body finds a home in young contemporary artists’ practice.
The display and architecture of the exhibition expand on these ideas further, with its rhizomatic structure making for a spatial experience with different stations.
Examining matters connected to belonging, visibility, and desire, Where is the body? helps us to map various narratives that are socially, historically and culturally interwoven and take bodies, in a broader sense, as their starting point.
The exhibition takes place in two chapters.
Chapter One in Vienna:
24.03 – 15.04
Academy of Fine Arts, Lehargasse 8, Mehrzwecksaal (2nd floor)
The second part of the exhibition will open on May 6 at the Narva Art Residency (NART) Gallery.
07-28.05
Art Residency, Joala 18, Narva
Curators: Lilian Hiob and Julius Pristauz
22.03.2022 — 31.03.2022
Guide Tours at the Jubilee Exhibition “Perspectives” in the gallery at Põhjala Factory
Guided tours at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Department of Accessory Design “Perspectives” in the gallery of Põhjala Factory with Stella Runnel.
22.03 Tuesday 5.30–7 pm
24.03 Thursday 4.30–6 pm
25.03 Friday 5 –7 pm
30.03 Wednesday 6–7 pm
31.03 Thursday 5–7 pm
Please register first
Guide Tours at the Jubilee Exhibition “Perspectives” in the gallery at Põhjala Factory
Tuesday 22 March, 2022 — Thursday 31 March, 2022
Guided tours at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Department of Accessory Design “Perspectives” in the gallery of Põhjala Factory with Stella Runnel.
22.03 Tuesday 5.30–7 pm
24.03 Thursday 4.30–6 pm
25.03 Friday 5 –7 pm
30.03 Wednesday 6–7 pm
31.03 Thursday 5–7 pm
Please register first
23.03.2022
Fine Arts Movie Night 1
and suddenly it all blossoms | Synopsis
The film “and suddenly it all blossoms” is a journey through the complexities of our time, shifting between hopes, desires, and doubts around our present moment. It follows a voice whose perspective on our disconcerting global situation unfolds as a meditation, guided and prompted by the exhibition’s artworks. The set itself – a Tarkovskian ecosystem of a decommissioned power station, an abandoned paintball field, warehouses, bird colonies, cruise ships and railway lines amongst empty lots and wastelands – exists as a metaphor for the ruptures of Soviet ideals and capitalist hopes. Presented as one continuous shot, the film is a reflection of standing on thresholds in a world suspended between old and new times. The drifting narrative remains tied closely to its setting, learning and growing from the Latvian and Baltic context, where ‘worlds have ended’ many times over through centuries of occupations, wars and economical upheavals, rebirths, and reinventions.
and suddenly it all blossoms, 2021, Latvia, 1 h 14 min
Directors: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, Dāvis Sīmanis
Director of photography: Andrejs Rudzāts
Script: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
Sound: LAFAWNDAH
Language: English (with English, Latvian, Russian, French or German subtitles)
Produced by Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Fine Arts Movie Night 1
Wednesday 23 March, 2022
and suddenly it all blossoms | Synopsis
The film “and suddenly it all blossoms” is a journey through the complexities of our time, shifting between hopes, desires, and doubts around our present moment. It follows a voice whose perspective on our disconcerting global situation unfolds as a meditation, guided and prompted by the exhibition’s artworks. The set itself – a Tarkovskian ecosystem of a decommissioned power station, an abandoned paintball field, warehouses, bird colonies, cruise ships and railway lines amongst empty lots and wastelands – exists as a metaphor for the ruptures of Soviet ideals and capitalist hopes. Presented as one continuous shot, the film is a reflection of standing on thresholds in a world suspended between old and new times. The drifting narrative remains tied closely to its setting, learning and growing from the Latvian and Baltic context, where ‘worlds have ended’ many times over through centuries of occupations, wars and economical upheavals, rebirths, and reinventions.
and suddenly it all blossoms, 2021, Latvia, 1 h 14 min
Directors: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, Dāvis Sīmanis
Director of photography: Andrejs Rudzāts
Script: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
Sound: LAFAWNDAH
Language: English (with English, Latvian, Russian, French or German subtitles)
Produced by Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art.
16.03.2022
Online discussion: Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine
Online discussion “Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine”
On 16 March at 18:00—20:00 EEST
The discussion will be live streamed on Facebook.
Join us for an online discussion, where artists, curators and researchers from Ukraine will talk about their works dealing with the entanglements of past and present, memory and cultural decolonization.
Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev, Nikolay Karabinovich, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Kateryna Botanova.
Moderators: Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi
Since 24 February, the world has desparately followed the war started by Russian president Putin in Ukraine justifying his aggressive invasion of the neighboring country with the need to “defend itself”, “denazify” Ukraine and “protect people who have been subject to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv”. In his hour-long televised speech announcing the attack, Putin manipulated notions of 20th century and especially WWII history, denied that Ukraine has ever had “real statehood,” and stated that the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” The falsification of history used to invade an independent state, assert power, and justify his imperial megalomania, has suddenly transformed war in Europe from a thing of the past into an urgent catastrophe of unprecedented scale for millions of people in the 21st century.
The war in Ukraine began in 2014 with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine. Already at that time, cultural resistance played an essential role alongside political protests. “What the artists did next to the barricades, sandwiches, hospitals, and Molotov cocktails was also a form of survival art, careful and scrupulous, often anonymous documentation of day-to-day activities. It was the art of action, of intervention in the physical and political reality to affect the symbolic one,” writes Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer Kateryna Botanova. “Artistic practices engaged and laid the ground for a different kind of society based on a common fight and, at the same time, care and solidarity.”
After the Maidan Uprising (2013), many contemporary Ukrainian artists continued to work with difficult, debated and traumatic issues, among them searches for identity, memory wars, changing geopolitical affiliations, “documenting and empowering the voices of the other, telling the stories of those unseen and disempowered, articulating history not as a politically curated linear narrative serving the purpose of nation-building but as a layered and conflicting array of forgotten stories.” Collecting, accumulating, and articulating these issues of society’s blind spots, these artists have been building a critical mass of knowledge that are essential in building “a political nation capable of embracing multiple identities, on the foundations of traumatic experiences of the Soviet collectivity and post-Soviet aggressive individuality, colonial recasting of identities and post-colonial national take-over, Soviet totalitarianism and post-Soviet authoritarianism,” as Kateryna Botanova sums up.
The discussion is part of the project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Postcolonialism in the Baltics”, which analyses the imprints of post-socialism and post-colonialism in the region. The programme is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum, and it is curated by Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi.
The event is supported by the Nep4Dissent Research Network, an EU COST Action Association.
ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS
Olia Mykhailiuk, “rememberMINT”
“rememberMINT” is a subjective multidimensional collage of poetic lines, documentary interviews, and photo/video essays from Donechchyna and Luhanshchyna, and performance. It is an attempt to explore the mechanisms of memory. When there are no more words, movements remain. When movements stop — smell remains. When people die — grass sprouts.
Many people find it difficult to forget times of hardship. But my memory, with no effort made, does not return me to where it was scary. In August 2014, I happened to be in the occupied Alchevsk for a while. There grew a lot of mint in the yard. When the world narrowed down to one backyard… we brewed mint tea. Sometimes a sunbeam fell through the window in the ceiling into the glass cup. Mint helps some to calm down and reconcile with their own memories, while it helps others, those who tend to forget, to recall. But I do not aim to cure everyone. Everyone has his own grass.
Olia Mykhailiuk lives and works in Kyiv. In 2007, teamed up with other like-minded people and founded ArtPole Agency in order to unite artists working in various areas—painters, musicians, performers, writers. Developed the concepts and initiated several notable multidisciplinary projects, both Ukrainian and international. She continues to work on the development of interaction between various art disciplines, particularly performance, music, literature and video art. In performance, she often tries to study the primal senses of words by referring to her own system of emotional signs and symbols.
Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev
Cultural decolonisation in our practice
In our practice, we have been consistently working on establishing a discursive space that would enable the recontextualisation of cultural and historical processes in the context of the decolonisation of Ukrainian culture from the dominant external imperial narrative. We will show several examples of our works that use these optics while looking at the Ukrainian past and present.
Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev are artists from Ukraine, currently based in Poznań, Poland.
Lia is also cultural anthropologist and essayist. The primary areas of her research are trauma, post-memory and agency of vulnerable groups. She works in a wide range of media, including photography, installations and textile sculptures, and has exhibited her works in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.
Andrii is also photography researcher and curator. He has degrees in IT and Graphic Design. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma and identity—both personal and collective. He works in various media and has exhibited his works in Ukraine, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.
Lada Nakonechna,
“Disciplined Vision”
“Disciplined Vision” is the title of an exhibition of Lada Nakonechna in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU). Looking at artifacts of the Socialist Realist tradition from the NAMU’s archives, library, and collection as testimony, it proposes examining the role of art in shaping judgments about history. For they are the shared aspect of culture that determines the present.
The paradox of the visual culture of the Soviet Union lies in the implicit violence in the affirmative, positive images that spring from general humanist values (emancipation, mutual respect, love for one’s native land, etc.). Expositions of Ukrainian Museums mainly continue chronological unfolding of the history of art that played a role in constructing unyielding logic of history. Disciplined Vision examines how the representation of Ukraine in Socialist Realist tradition still forms the consciousness of people.
Lada Nakonechna is an artist and researcher. In addition to her personal practice, she is involved in a number of group projects and collectives. She is a member of the R.E.P. group (since 2005), part of the curatorial and activist union Hudrada (since 2008), cofounder of Method Fund (2015) and co-curator of its educational and research programs. In 2016 she also joined the new editorial board of the Internet journal of art, literature and politics Prostory.net.ua. Nakonechna’s artworks, which often take the form of installations incorporating drawing, photographs and text, call attention to methods of recognition and reveal the internal aspects of visual and verbal structures. Her latest artistic investigations are based on artistic and archival materials related to the art of Socialist Realism—understood as a “method” and institutional and educational system. In 2014 she received the Kazimir Malevich Art Award.
Nikolay Karabinovych, “In the beginning there was the rhythm”
Brief history of Ukraine 1991–2021.
A few stories, few videos and 3 artworks.
Nikolay Karabinovych lives and works in Kyiv and Brussels. The artist works in a variety of media, including video, sound, text, and performance. In 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Special Prize. From 2019 he is studying at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2017, Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odessa Biennale. His work has been shown at M HKA, Antwerp, PinchukArtCentre Kyiv, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, Odessa.
Svitlana Biedarieva
Viewing postcolonial entanglements in Ukraine through Latin American lens: Beyond “At the Front Line”
My presentation will focus on linking points between Ukrainian and Mexican art scenes. It will explore the notions of ambiguity and hybridity in the two regional contexts and will take on two different models of colonial and decolonial processes. I will compare the questions of (post)memory, memory wars, violence, and historical trauma in the discussion of art projects.
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator with an interest in Eastern European and Latin American art. Her edited books include “Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021” (ibidem Press 2021), “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020, co-edited with Hanna Deikun). Biedarieva’s papers have been published by, among other outlets, Space and Culture (SAGE), Art Margins Online (MIT Press), and Revue Critique d’Art (University of Rennes 2). She obtained her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 2020.
Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and is an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival. She was a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art, in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on art and culture.
Online discussion: Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine
Wednesday 16 March, 2022
Online discussion “Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine”
On 16 March at 18:00—20:00 EEST
The discussion will be live streamed on Facebook.
Join us for an online discussion, where artists, curators and researchers from Ukraine will talk about their works dealing with the entanglements of past and present, memory and cultural decolonization.
Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev, Nikolay Karabinovich, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Kateryna Botanova.
Moderators: Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi
Since 24 February, the world has desparately followed the war started by Russian president Putin in Ukraine justifying his aggressive invasion of the neighboring country with the need to “defend itself”, “denazify” Ukraine and “protect people who have been subject to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv”. In his hour-long televised speech announcing the attack, Putin manipulated notions of 20th century and especially WWII history, denied that Ukraine has ever had “real statehood,” and stated that the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” The falsification of history used to invade an independent state, assert power, and justify his imperial megalomania, has suddenly transformed war in Europe from a thing of the past into an urgent catastrophe of unprecedented scale for millions of people in the 21st century.
The war in Ukraine began in 2014 with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine. Already at that time, cultural resistance played an essential role alongside political protests. “What the artists did next to the barricades, sandwiches, hospitals, and Molotov cocktails was also a form of survival art, careful and scrupulous, often anonymous documentation of day-to-day activities. It was the art of action, of intervention in the physical and political reality to affect the symbolic one,” writes Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer Kateryna Botanova. “Artistic practices engaged and laid the ground for a different kind of society based on a common fight and, at the same time, care and solidarity.”
After the Maidan Uprising (2013), many contemporary Ukrainian artists continued to work with difficult, debated and traumatic issues, among them searches for identity, memory wars, changing geopolitical affiliations, “documenting and empowering the voices of the other, telling the stories of those unseen and disempowered, articulating history not as a politically curated linear narrative serving the purpose of nation-building but as a layered and conflicting array of forgotten stories.” Collecting, accumulating, and articulating these issues of society’s blind spots, these artists have been building a critical mass of knowledge that are essential in building “a political nation capable of embracing multiple identities, on the foundations of traumatic experiences of the Soviet collectivity and post-Soviet aggressive individuality, colonial recasting of identities and post-colonial national take-over, Soviet totalitarianism and post-Soviet authoritarianism,” as Kateryna Botanova sums up.
The discussion is part of the project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Postcolonialism in the Baltics”, which analyses the imprints of post-socialism and post-colonialism in the region. The programme is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum, and it is curated by Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi.
The event is supported by the Nep4Dissent Research Network, an EU COST Action Association.
ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS
Olia Mykhailiuk, “rememberMINT”
“rememberMINT” is a subjective multidimensional collage of poetic lines, documentary interviews, and photo/video essays from Donechchyna and Luhanshchyna, and performance. It is an attempt to explore the mechanisms of memory. When there are no more words, movements remain. When movements stop — smell remains. When people die — grass sprouts.
Many people find it difficult to forget times of hardship. But my memory, with no effort made, does not return me to where it was scary. In August 2014, I happened to be in the occupied Alchevsk for a while. There grew a lot of mint in the yard. When the world narrowed down to one backyard… we brewed mint tea. Sometimes a sunbeam fell through the window in the ceiling into the glass cup. Mint helps some to calm down and reconcile with their own memories, while it helps others, those who tend to forget, to recall. But I do not aim to cure everyone. Everyone has his own grass.
Olia Mykhailiuk lives and works in Kyiv. In 2007, teamed up with other like-minded people and founded ArtPole Agency in order to unite artists working in various areas—painters, musicians, performers, writers. Developed the concepts and initiated several notable multidisciplinary projects, both Ukrainian and international. She continues to work on the development of interaction between various art disciplines, particularly performance, music, literature and video art. In performance, she often tries to study the primal senses of words by referring to her own system of emotional signs and symbols.
Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev
Cultural decolonisation in our practice
In our practice, we have been consistently working on establishing a discursive space that would enable the recontextualisation of cultural and historical processes in the context of the decolonisation of Ukrainian culture from the dominant external imperial narrative. We will show several examples of our works that use these optics while looking at the Ukrainian past and present.
Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev are artists from Ukraine, currently based in Poznań, Poland.
Lia is also cultural anthropologist and essayist. The primary areas of her research are trauma, post-memory and agency of vulnerable groups. She works in a wide range of media, including photography, installations and textile sculptures, and has exhibited her works in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.
Andrii is also photography researcher and curator. He has degrees in IT and Graphic Design. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma and identity—both personal and collective. He works in various media and has exhibited his works in Ukraine, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.
Lada Nakonechna,
“Disciplined Vision”
“Disciplined Vision” is the title of an exhibition of Lada Nakonechna in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU). Looking at artifacts of the Socialist Realist tradition from the NAMU’s archives, library, and collection as testimony, it proposes examining the role of art in shaping judgments about history. For they are the shared aspect of culture that determines the present.
The paradox of the visual culture of the Soviet Union lies in the implicit violence in the affirmative, positive images that spring from general humanist values (emancipation, mutual respect, love for one’s native land, etc.). Expositions of Ukrainian Museums mainly continue chronological unfolding of the history of art that played a role in constructing unyielding logic of history. Disciplined Vision examines how the representation of Ukraine in Socialist Realist tradition still forms the consciousness of people.
Lada Nakonechna is an artist and researcher. In addition to her personal practice, she is involved in a number of group projects and collectives. She is a member of the R.E.P. group (since 2005), part of the curatorial and activist union Hudrada (since 2008), cofounder of Method Fund (2015) and co-curator of its educational and research programs. In 2016 she also joined the new editorial board of the Internet journal of art, literature and politics Prostory.net.ua. Nakonechna’s artworks, which often take the form of installations incorporating drawing, photographs and text, call attention to methods of recognition and reveal the internal aspects of visual and verbal structures. Her latest artistic investigations are based on artistic and archival materials related to the art of Socialist Realism—understood as a “method” and institutional and educational system. In 2014 she received the Kazimir Malevich Art Award.
Nikolay Karabinovych, “In the beginning there was the rhythm”
Brief history of Ukraine 1991–2021.
A few stories, few videos and 3 artworks.
Nikolay Karabinovych lives and works in Kyiv and Brussels. The artist works in a variety of media, including video, sound, text, and performance. In 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Special Prize. From 2019 he is studying at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2017, Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odessa Biennale. His work has been shown at M HKA, Antwerp, PinchukArtCentre Kyiv, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, Odessa.
Svitlana Biedarieva
Viewing postcolonial entanglements in Ukraine through Latin American lens: Beyond “At the Front Line”
My presentation will focus on linking points between Ukrainian and Mexican art scenes. It will explore the notions of ambiguity and hybridity in the two regional contexts and will take on two different models of colonial and decolonial processes. I will compare the questions of (post)memory, memory wars, violence, and historical trauma in the discussion of art projects.
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator with an interest in Eastern European and Latin American art. Her edited books include “Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021” (ibidem Press 2021), “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020, co-edited with Hanna Deikun). Biedarieva’s papers have been published by, among other outlets, Space and Culture (SAGE), Art Margins Online (MIT Press), and Revue Critique d’Art (University of Rennes 2). She obtained her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 2020.
Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and is an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival. She was a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art, in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on art and culture.
11.03.2022
Vibmory: Touching Memories
The upcoming Friday at 18hs, in an online event, Yulia Zhiglova and Claudia Diaz Reyes will present “Vibmory: Touching Memories”
Time travel is possible! We do it every day by recollecting past experiences in our minds. Can we also relive those moments and create new forms in the now to represent the past?
It is the outcome of the start.ee arts & science residency, organized by the HCI group at Tallinn University in collaboration with starts.eu.
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Vibmory: Touching Memories
Friday 11 March, 2022
The upcoming Friday at 18hs, in an online event, Yulia Zhiglova and Claudia Diaz Reyes will present “Vibmory: Touching Memories”
Time travel is possible! We do it every day by recollecting past experiences in our minds. Can we also relive those moments and create new forms in the now to represent the past?
It is the outcome of the start.ee arts & science residency, organized by the HCI group at Tallinn University in collaboration with starts.eu.
–