Events

Thu, 28.03 – Sat, 30.03

Light and sound installations

The light and sound installations made by the students of EKA under the umbrella title “Time as Light” provide access to the lighted spaces uniting scenarios of the past and future. The students’ installations were created under the guidance of sculptor Elo Liiv. In addition to the scenic sunsets, in Noblessner one can enjoy a wonderful show of light and shadows at dawn during TMW.

Students: Silvia Ilves, Henri Kaarel Luht, Merilin Põldsam, Kati Masonry, Elis Rumma, Rebeka Vaino, Eliise Saar, Klarika Mäeots-Uustal, Mati Uust, Elisabeth Juusu, Joonas Timmi, Moonika Mällo, Johanna Põldemaa, Annika Ülejõe, Karl Kristian Kits.

There is opportunity to meet students and artists at the opening of the exhibition on March 28 at 21:00. The light installations remain open only on three nights, and on Sunday, Noblessner’s port city is all the same.

Join us for the opening on Friday, March 29, at 6 PM, with a special performance by the EKA Choir at 6:15 PM.

We are all born with a knowing pain in our soul, and this innate understanding is loneliness: a deep ache for another to fill the cavity we cannot otherwise fill, sincere desperation that seamlessly moves from the emotional and psychological to the physical.  It is an agonizing progression: painful in the utter dissection of the self with each invitation and rejection, each a beautiful and grounded humiliation where we no longer even recognize ourselves as we wholly long for someone to alleviate the paralyzing fear of dying alone.

When the other, it seems, is and has always been absent, the suffocation of loneliness becomes far more than a feeling – it becomes an insanity of our own making.  We are driven mad by an endless and relentless pursuit for a chosen other with a bittersweet and intoxicating need that is simultaneously exciting and devastating, loving and heartbreaking.  And it is this longing, this intense and unforgiving emotion, that will slowly and decidedly kill us.

Erinn M. Cox is a jewellery artist from the United States, currently residing in Tallinn, Estonia.   She holds a BFA in sculpture and photography from Florida State University, an MFA in sculpture and installation from the Memphis College of Art and is currently pursuing an MA degree in Jewellery at the Estonian Academy of Arts.  Erinn is a published writer on contemporary art and design, an adjunct professor of Fine Arts and Art History, and is the founder and writer for the online journal Louise & Maurice (www.louiseandmaurice.com) 

For more about the artist, visit www.erinnmcox.com

Erinn will give a personal tour of the exhibition on Tuesday, April 16 at 5:30 pm.

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Phantom Graphics” on March 22nd at 5 PM at EKA Billboard Gallery. The gallery is located outside on the building wall on Kotzebue street.

The exhibition is the result of Mirjam Reili’s workshop with EKA first-year graphic design students. A week-long investigation into vision and perception, where students at EKA explore how images construct ocular illusions, and how these could be presented.

Mirjam Reili is an Estonian graphic designer based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Research combined with drawing and puns often determines the outcome of her self-initiated and commissioned work. Mirjam has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts and Rietveld Academie Department of Graphic Design and is currently a participant of Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem.

Participants: Kristi Jaago, Marje Kask, Martin Kipper, Eliisabet Kuslap, Ellen Loitmaa, Ilja Moltšanov, Cristopher Rogotovski, Klara Magdalena Rozpondek, Sonia Ruus, Pavel Salmin, Birgita Siim, Natasha Sotti, Mirjam Varik, Agnes Isabelle Veeno, Ingel-Kristen Veevo, Aaro Veiderpass, Johannes Veike

The exhibition is opened until April 18th.

February 15 and 16, at 6–8PM in EKA Gallery

Kaspar Aus: “On two days I will pass on what I know about body, mind and movement. We listen, catch up and let life through ourselves. For example just like you could place one small seed cell into a human anus and from there grows the plant through and out of us. That the body becomes non-existent and the manifestation of everything that is.”

To get involved, you need comfortable clothes, shoes for running and dancing around, an effort to be opened and together. You do not need to have any specific skills in dance and body movement beforehand. There are a changing room and a shower. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience. Free of charge!

About the artist: kasparaus.wixsite.com/artist

Public lecture by Raine Vasquez will be held today(17.01) at 5pm in room nr A301

In an informal conversation Raine Vasquez will discuss his complicated and frustrated relationship with art, his exodus into philosophy, and his continued work at the Museum of Impossible Forms and other art-centric organizations. He will discuss some points of his forthcoming “anti-art” manifesto, contemplate arts’ role as a technology of late-capitalism, and whether it really has the power to disrupt that it is so often claimed to possess. He will wonder about the ethics of continuing to make art, and speak about disappointment, hopelessness, and self-exile.

http://www.raine–vasquez.com

The EKA Design Showcase presents the results of collaborations between the Estonian Academy of Arts Faculty of Design and various enterprises and will take place on 15 January at 13.00 in the EKA main auditorium (A101). Concepts, prototypes and final results for innovative products and services will be presented, featuring new developments in the space, transport and package delivery industry and other fields. All enterprises, EKA’s present and future cooperation partners, and enthusiasts of innovative design are kindly invited to attend the event! The presentations will be given in English. At the end of the design day, the winner of the Abakhan Creative Award will be announced.

Timetable and registration.

The event will be opened with a presentation by Ott Vatter, Deputy Director of the e-Residency programme, who will introduce the project that is being carried out in cooperation with EKA interaction designers and focuses on improving the user experience of the e-residency service.

The core of the day is made up of twelve presentations on cooperation projects that the EKA Faculty of Design and the EKA and TalTech Design & Technology Futures joint programme have been working on over the last two years. One of the showcased projects is in collaboration with the Swiss Space Center and it offers solutions for making living conditions during long space missions more human-friendly. How can astronauts avoid mental health problems on long missions during which their 24h rhythm has been turned upside down? What are new ways of engaging in sports in space for training in weightlessness? According to Janno Nõu, one of the project leaders and a teaching staff member at TalTech, the space centre is very satisfied with the innovative solutions the project has provided, as they give a completely different approach to the space industry. The technology for the lunar outpost will be developed based on the astronauts’ needs, which is one of the key elements during longer space missions. The high point of the project will come in Switzerland this summer when the project will present engineered technical solutions.

The EKA Design Showcase will also feature a new type of rental vehicle that leaves more space for people and makes the growth of major urban areas more sustainable. Together with Cleveron, which was named Company of the Year at the 2018 Estonian Entrepreneurship Awards, a drone-attached package delivery module was developed that allows for aerial delivery system, as well as other creative solutions for various enterprises. According to EKA Collaboration Coordinator Ingela Heinaste, approximately 200 collaboration projects with various enterprises and institutions have been carried out in the 10 years of the EKA Research and Development Office. “Using a specific problem statement as the starting point, we play out innovative solutions, many of which are later realised. We create products and services under the supervision of teaching staff members who are internationally renowned specialists in their field. We design future visions, develop never-before-seen solutions and test new technologies,” said Heinaste who highly recommends that companies contact her to discuss collaboration opportunities.

At 16.30 after the presentations, the winner of the Abakhan Creative Award will be announced followed by the exhibition of nominees.

We would like to thank EKA’s collaboration partners: Swiss Space Center, Santa Monica Networks AS, Cleveron AS, Emergency Response Centre, Good Deed Foundation, Atlas Partners OÜ, Welement AS, Taltech.

Event takes place as EU Industry Days 2019 event and under the umbrella of Cumulus.

Additional information:

Ingela Heinaste
Collaboration Coordinator
ingela.heinaste@artun.ee
Tel 521 9187

Mart Vainre
Communications Specialist
mart.vainre@artun.ee
Tel 626 7111

Inclusive City and Street Commerce: the Hidden Structure of Retail Location Patterns and Vibrant Sidewalks – Lectures by Lily Song & Andres Sevtsuk

Lily Song (Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design and Senior Research Associate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design) and Andres Sevtsuk (Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design) and will give lectures on Friday, 21st of December at 4 pm in the mail hall of Estonian Academy of Arts, looking into Tallinn’s challenges and opportunities in exploring urban planning and policy interventions that promote sociospatial equity and inclusion and how “good” street commerce is part and parcel of building inclusive, diverse, and vital local economies. Both lectures open for architecture students from across Estonia as well as field professionals, city officials, and general public interested in the future of Tallinn urban centre. The lectures will be in English.

***Lily Song. Inclusive City***

Amidst growing income and wealth inequality in many countries, the urban and spatial dimensions of this issue remain less investigated and understood. This talk will consider Tallinn’s challenges and opportunities in exploring urban planning and policy interventions that promote sociospatial equity and inclusion.

Lily Song is a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design and Senior Research Associate with the Transforming Urban Transport-Role of Political Leadership (TUT-POL) project at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.Her research focuses on the relations between urban sustainability and livability initiatives, sociospatial inequality, and race and class politics in American cities and other postcolonial contexts. Her projects— which topically span building energy retrofits, sustainable urban transport, and informal street vending among others— are motivated by the common question of how historically marginalized and disenfranchised urban inhabitants and communities can drive transformative urban policy and governance in collaboration with differently situated and abled partners. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, where her dissertation, entitled “Race and Place: Green Collar Jobs and the Movement for Economic Democracy in Los Angeles and Cleveland,” focused on the analysis of two community-based green economic and workforce development projects aiming to build shared wealth and stabilize poor, inner city neighborhoods. The research partly explored how progressive urban coalitions might use race as a diagnostic and dialogic tool in undertaking transformative economic programs towards realization of the “just city.”

***Andres Sevtsuk. Street Commerce: the Hidden Structure of Retail Location Patterns and Vibrant Sidewalks***

“Good” street commerce is part and parcel of building inclusive, diverse, and vital local economies, convivial neighborhoods, and sustainable built environments. However, cities and communities will only realize such gains and benefits if they proactively plan and regulate street commerce.

Andres Sevtsuk is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His research interests include urban design and spatial analysis, modeling and visualization, urban and real estate economics, transit and pedestrian oriented development, spatial adaptability and urban history. Andres has worked with a number of city governments, international organizations, planning practices and developers on urban designs, plans and policies in both developed and rapidly developing urban environments, most recently including those in Indonesia and Singapore. He is the author of the Urban Network Analysis toolbox, which is used by researchers and practitioners around the world to study spatial relationships in cities along networks. He has led various international research projects; exhibited his research at TEDx, the World Cities Summit and the Venice Biennale; and received the President’s Design Award in Singapore, International Buckminster Fuller Prize and Ron Brown/Fulbright Fellowship. He was previously an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Planning at the Singapore University of technology and Design (SUTD), and a lecturer at MIT.

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

Additional information: https://www.artun.ee/en/curricula/architecture-and-urban-design/unfinished-city/

The final speaker of EKA open architecture lecture series’ 2018 autumn semester is Patrik Schumacher, the director of Zaha Hadid Architects. His completed projects include the MAXXI Centre of Contemporary Art and Architecture, Rome, which won the Stirling prize in 2010 and one of the practice’s first completed constructions, the Vitra Fire Station (1992). He is currently involved in several master plan projects, including Kartal Pendik in Istanbul and Singapore One North. In 2017, Zaha Hadid Architects’ proposal titled ‘Streamcity’ was selected as the winner of the international competition to masterplan the revitalization of Port of Tallinn’s Old City Harbour area. The lecture will take place at the EKA main hall on Thursday, 13 September at 6 pm.

Patrik Schumacher is principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and has been leading the firm since Zaha Hadid’s passing in March 2016. He joined ZHA in 1988 and was seminal in developing

Zaha Hadid Architects to become a 400 people global architecture and design brand. Schumacher studied philosophy, mathematics and architecture in Bonn, Stuttgart and London and received his Diploma in architecture in 1990. He has been a partner since 2003

and a co-author on all projects. In 2010, Patrik Schumacher won the Royal Institute of British

Architects’ Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture together with Zaha Hadid, for MAXXI, the

National Italian Museum for Art and Architecture of the 21st century in Rome. He is also Member of the Academy of the Berlin Academy of Arts.

In 1996 he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association in London

where he continues to teach. In 1999 he completed his PHD at the Institute for Cultural Science,

Klagenfurt University. Patrik Schumacher is lecturing worldwide and is currently a guest

professor at Harvard’s GSD. During the last 20 years he has contributed over 100 articles to

architectural journals and anthologies. In 2008 he coined the phrase Parametricism and has

since published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for

the 21st century. In 2010/2012 he published his two-volume theoretical opus magnum “The

Autopoiesis of Architecture”. Patrik Schumacher is widely recognized as one of the most

prominent thought leaders within the fields of architecture, urbanism and design.

Architect Sille Pihlak, one of the curators of the Architecture Open Lecture series, says that

both Zaha Hadid ja Patrik Schumacher were highly inspirational throughout her studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna: “When giving feedback to students’ projects they didn’t merely cover the full design scale from a city to a furniture, but also always pushed you to pay attention to the sociopolitical, technological, economical and culture innovation tendencies. Patrik – in his statements often antagonistic and objectionable in the eyes of the wider architecture community – is currently one of the most important practitioner, whose statements pull architects out of their comfort zone, pushing us to argue our actions in a constructive and context-sensitive manner. This kind of approach towards the art of building and acknowledgment of wider context is essential for our students to witness.”

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee

https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:

Pille Epner

E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee

Tel. +372 642 0071

On 27th of November at 5pm artist Johann Arens will give a public talk about his art practice at EKA Sculpture department’s monumental studio.

Johann Arens (b.1981) is an artist based in London. He received his MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since then he was awarded the Fellowship in Contemporary Art by the British School at Rome and has been resident at Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Space London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Last year he received the Prize for Young Art by the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. Recent exhibitions include ‘These Rotten Words’, Chapter Arts, Cardiff (2017); Anxiety Impress, Neuer Aacherer Kunstverein, Germany (2016); ‘Somatic Matter’, Le Foyer, Zürich; ’New Acquisitions’, Fondazione Fotografia Modena; ‘Pillar Huggers’, Or Gallery, Berlin (2015); ‘TTTT’, Jerwood Space, London; ‘Emotional Resources’, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2014) and ‘Internet Centre & Habesha Grocery’, Paradise Row, London (2013).

Johann Arens is invited to Tallinn to give a workshop “Sculpting the Moving Image” on November 26-28th at the EKA Installation and Sculpture department. Arens’s public artist talk will also be part of the event program of student-run International Sculpture and Installation Month called SkulpaKuu.