Open Lectures

As part of the design theory course at the Faculty of Design, professor Alison J. Clarke will give a public lecture The Politics of Design on Tuesday, 19 October at 9:30AM at the EKA hall.

This lecture draws on the themes of the speaker’s recent publication Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World (MIT Press 2021) and the co-curated exhibition The Politics of Design (with Vitra Design Museum, Germany) exploring the origins of the social design movement and its attempts to consciously decolonise design. Unpicking the contradictions of designers’ gestures to transform the material and social worlds of the ‘excluded’ and ‘under-represented’ – the talk casts a critical eye on how attempts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to build cultural difference into design practice and theory.

The lecture will be held at the EKA hall. EKA students and staff are asked to follow the general EKA COVID-19 safety rules. Guests are kindly asked to follow all COVID-19 rules and prove their infection safety. There is no on-site testing. The lecture will be held in English, and it will be streamed on EKA TV platform live, however, the lecture will not be recorded.

Professor Alison J. Clarke, author of Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design (MIT Press 2021) and Design Anthropology: Object Cultures in Transition (Bloomsbury 2018), explores the intersection of design, material culture and anthropology. A design historian (Royal College of Art London) and trained social anthropologist (University College London), she joined the University of Applied Arts Vienna from the Royal College of Art, London to become chair of the department of Design History and Theory and founding director of the Papanek Foundation: she is convener of the biennial Papanek Symposium exploring the ethics and futures of contemporary design. Recipient of major international grants and fellowships (including the Smithsonian; Arts and Humanities Research Council; Austrian Science Fund; Graham Foundation), she acts as an expert advisor and jury member for numerous academic bodies including the Danish Independent Research Council and the German Research Foundation (DfG) program, Clusters of Excellence.

Clarke is a regular media broadcaster, curator and international speaker in the field of design; her monograph Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s American was optioned for an Emmy-nominated documentary. She is co-editor of the anthology Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture and co-founder of the leading academic journal Home Cultures: The Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space. She has recently curated, with Vitra Design Museum, Germany, the international travelling exhibition Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design (2017-2020). Her latest book project, for MIT Press, explores the historical origins and legacies of the intertwining of social science and industrial design.

Presentation of workshop results and talk on the potential of urban interventions.

“Reports from the field” is a presentation of the workshop results of the MA Urban Studies students from the Estonian Academy of Arts and a talk on creating urban interventions as a research method, but also as a civic exercise and public right.

The presented projects will review and reflect the process of constructing vernacular interventions and their reception in Tallinn. Topics included in the presentation concentrate on infrastructure, public space, care, maintenance and social responsibility on the examples of the T1 mall, unpaid female labor in Majaka, private security in public space and new cycling lanes among others. There will also be a presentation about EKKM’s role in public space and a display of the interventions. 

You are very welcome to take part in this talk and contribute to the discussion on the role and responsibility of urban intervention. The event is in English.

The authors are: Kush Badhwar, Yu-Li Anne Boonen, Khadeeja Farrukh, Timothée Girault, Christian Hörner, Nabeel Imtiaz, Marie Lucet,  Agota Maziliauskaitė, Dorothea Müller, Luca Liese Ritter, Zeno Schnelle, Paul Simon, Nora Soo, Akvilė Stundytė, Katrin Tomiste, Paula Kristiāna Veidenbauma, Friederike Zängl.

Studio lead: Mattias Malk

As part of the Open Lectures series of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design of EKA, architectural critic and urbanist Konstantin Budarin will take the stage in the hall of EKA on October 14, 6 pm with a lecture “Infrastructure of Care: The Past, Present, and Future of Soviet Leisure Heritage”.

This fall, all the lectures in the series revolve around the issue of healing in one way or another. Let’s look at whether architecture as a process can be therapeutic and in what way inhabiting space could be restorative, Simultaneously, whether and how architects can contribute to the healing of the construction world. However, some of the lectures in the series – as well as the October 14 lecture – look directly at the architecture created especially for landscape of care.

Konstantin Budarin is a member of the architectural collective Kultura and one of the initiators of the research project Sanatorium Premium – the focus of the latter is on the Soviet-era recreational infrastructure and the development of its possible uses today. The sanatorium architecture of the so-called Eastern Bloc has become a social media hit in recent years, viewed as an archaic curiosity with aesthetic pleasure, without delving into the role of sanatoriums in the operation of large-scale industry, or how a recreational machine worked to oil the human cogs of a production machine. The spatial programme of any sanatorium was led by prescription procedures, and Budarin asks – what procedures and what space would we need today to stimulate exhausted bodies and burned out minds? Do we have anything to learn from the sanatorium system in the Eastern Bloc?

Konstantin Budarin is the author of numerous publications on architecture and urbanism published in Strelka Mag, Calvert Journal, Project Baltia, and others. He is an alumnus of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design 2014/15.

In order to minimize the risk of the virus spreading, we will broadcast the lecture on EKA TV and it can be viewed along with all previous lectures at www.avatudloengud.ee. However, the lecture can also be attended in-person – we do ask you to carry your COVID vaccination certificate or proof of having had COVID; there will be no on-site testing. Academy students are subject to the usual in-house rules. NB! You can’t ask questions via EKA TV, so it’s worth coming to the hall to participate in the discussion! The lecture is free and in English.

This lecture takes place in cooperation with the Estonian Museum of Architecture and is part of the Future Architecture programme 2021. Future Architecture is the first pan-European platform uniting architectural museums, festivals and other development organisations in the field, bringing the public closer to both the cities and the future of architecture. The lecture is supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.

Curators: Sille Pihlak and Johan Tali.

The season of open lectures is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Event in Facebook

Read more about the project: https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/fb47b9a7-2d22-44fb-ae41-c292af573953/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanatorium_premium/?igshid=2vsox2u8jewe

Estonian Academy of Arts
Graphic Design Department presents

Åbäke
ENTER FATIMA, or what happened at Tel Aviv Airport when the custom officer scanned my luggage and saw body parts

Wednesday, 29 September, 7om
Narva Art Residency (NART)
Joala 18, Narva, Estonia
or online at tv.artun.ee

The Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of EKA will bring a number of exciting architects and urban planners, both theoreticians and practitioners from all over the world, to the Open Lectures series in Tallinn this autumn. This semester lecture series will be opened by Erika Henriksson, who will take the stage in the hall of EAA on Thursday, September 30 at 6 pm with a lecture “Architherapy”.

The lecture will be broadcast on EKA TV and it can be watched later together with all previous lectures on the website www.avatudloengud.ee.

Guests of EAA are asked to follow all Covid safety rules and be prepared to prove their infection safety. There is no on-site testing.

Erika Henriksson is a building architect and practice-based researcher working in an intersection between architecture, craft and art.

Her field is altering practices of architecture and reoccurring themes in her work are social and material relations, ethics of care and ways to spatially engage with speculations of life itself.

During the lecture Erika will be presenting the practice and concept of Architherapy which been given form through a four year long explorative and performative process of transforming an old and abandoned building standing next to a rehabilitation clinic in a small rural locality called Järvsö in Sweden

At the moment Erika is finalising her practice based PhD-thesis, Performing Architherapy – About crafting a building practice for caring relations and working on a site-specific spatial installation in the forest of Rena, Norway

The Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated 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 and free

https://www.erikahenriksson.com

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

The lecture takes place in cooperation with the Estonian Museum of Architecture and is part of the Future Architecture platform 2021. Future Architecture is the first pan-European platform of architecture museums, festivals and producers, bringing ideas on the future of cities and architecture closer to the wider public.

Funded by European Union Creative Europe Programme.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

EKA Textile Department presents:
‘Folding as a Language of Design’

Paul Jackson’s ZOOM lecture on THIS LINK

The presentation will describe how folding is used by designers and how it can play an important role in our sustainable future.

“All designers fold. That is, all designers fold, crease, bend, pleat, wrinkle, drape, twist and knot flat, 2-D materials to create 3-D forms. This process of transformation from 2-D to 3-D is one of the most fundamental and common languages of design, yet it is also one of the least understood.” P.J.

Paul Jackson has been a professional paper artist, designer writer and educator for almost 40-years.  He has been a folding consultant for Nike, Disney, Tetra Pak and many other companies, taught folding as a language of design in 80 Schools of Design in 11 countries, written more than 40 books and exhibited his artworks worldwide.  He says, ‘It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.’

Mark Gottdiener’s public lecture “Postmodern semiotics” will take place on September 15th as part of the Training School seminar “Local Stories and Visual Narratives”.

The lecture will take place 15.09.2021 at 18.00–20.00 via Zoom and is open to the public in the lobby (A101).

Mark Gottdiener (b 1943) is a professor of sociology at University at Buffalo, specialising in urban sociology. He is called one of the most important Urban Sociologist in U.S.

Training School Local Stories and Visual Narratives for international PhD students will take place on September 15th – 16th in Estonian Academy of Arts. It is organised by EU COST action CA18126 Writing Urban Places.

The action proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness by narrative methods. It particularly focuses on the potential of narrative methods for urban development in European medium-sized cities. This COST action has 35 European countries as participants.

The Training School in EAA will focus on local urban stories, taking the city of Tallinn as an example. Participants will engage in site visits, analysis workshops, discussions and lectures. Participants will discuss historical, semantical and archetypal settings of the narratives.

Organising team:

Klaske Havik (TU Delft), Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere University), Jüri Soolep, Andres Ojari, Irene Hütsi, Tiina Tammet (EAA Tallinn)

The event is supported by the European Regional Development Fund

The registration to the PhD Vitamin consultations and workshop is open! (link below)

The second PhD Vitamin at the Estonian Academy of Arts will take place this year on June 15-17 via ZOOM. The event consists of public lectures, consultations and a workshop for drafting a doctoral thesis. The event will once again bring together experts in creative research with those interested in entering doctoral studies in art and design.

All interested parties are welcome to participate in public lectures by creative research experts June 15-16:

Tuesday, 15.06. 14:00-15:00 – Mick Wilson

Mick Wilson is an artist, educator, and researcher. He is currently Professor of Art and Director of Doctoral Studies at HDK-Valand Academy of Art & Design, University of Gothenburg. He has been actively involved in developing and promoting artistic research on the academic, institutional, and public levels. His current research deals with questions of art as public culture; political community with the dead; exhibition-making as inquiry; and the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict and symbolic violence. His co-edited volumes include: How Institutions Think (2017) and The Curatorial Conundrum (2016), both MIT and with Paul O’Neill and Lucy Steeds, and SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education (2013), ELIA with Schelte van Ruiten. Wilson is currently involved in projects like PARSE On the Question of Exhibition (2020-2021), Open Up (2019-2023), and Public Art Research Report II (2020-2022).

In his lecture entitled “Meeting Friends and Parting Ways,” Mick Wilson will give a personal exploration of the potentials and tensions of the artistic research field based on his collaborative experience as an artist, writer, researcher, and organizer.

Tuesday, 15.06. 17:00-18:00 – Britta Benno

Britta Benno is a Tallinn-based artist who specializes in drawing and printmaking. She is interested in various hybrid techniques and materials that open up new perspectives. In recent years Benno has been working on a series depicting posthuman urban landscapes. Her conceptual keywords include memory, power, and loss of meaning (ruins), imagination (worlding), printmaker’s tools of thought (thinking in layers), and posthuman philosophy.

Since 2018 Benno is a doctoral student on the EKA art and design doctoral curriculum. Her practice-based research focuses on thinking in layers and imagining in layers inherent to her medium: posthuman landscapes in the field of extended drawing and printmaking. In her lecture, she will present her research, shed light on how it has evolved and changed during the studies, and how the academic and artistic practices work together.

Wednesday, 16.06. 16:00-17:30 – Thomas Markussen & Eva Knutz

Thomas Markussen is associate professor and co-founder of the Social Design Research Unit at the University of Southern Denmark. In his work, Markussen focuses on how design can be used as a political and critical aesthetic practice, notably in social design, design activism, and design fiction.

Eva Knutz is an artist and designer, an associate professor within practice-based design research, and co-founder of the Social Design Research Unit at the University of Southern Denmark. The group works on participatory design processes leading to social value for the individual and society at large, with particular attention to marginalized or vulnerable groups in society. Knutz has a developed number of prototypes (games) and research artifacts (probes, self-aid kits, tools) focusing on two large public sectors, healthcare, and criminal care.

Markussen’ and Knutz’ shared lecture is titled “Practice-based research in art and design – an introduction”.

Consultations and Workshop: June 16-17

In addition to the lectures, individual consultations take place within the framework of the PhD Vitamin on June 16. They offer the opportunity to talk about artistic work and ideas for a doctoral thesis with an expert of your choice. To register for a consultation, please provide your portfolio with the registration form (see below).

On June 17, the workshop about ideation and preparation for one’s PhD proposal with Thomas Markussen and Eva Knutz will take place. To take part in the workshop, please provide a 1-pager of your idea. Instructions can be found on the registration form.

To participate in the consultation or the workshop, register HERE. [Registration for consultations and the workshop is closed. Please join the open lectures instead: no registration is required for that.]

We encourage artists and designers, alumni, and graduates of the Estonian Academy of Arts and other universities working with creative research methods to register. Registration is open until 11.06.2021. The exact consultation times will be sent directly to the provided e-mail addresses. Be quick – the number of free spots for the consultations is limited!

The lectures and consultations will take place in digital environments.

If you have any questions, please contact madis.luik@artun.ee

PhD Vitamin was first initiated in 2020 by the Faculty of Fine Arts. In 2021, it is being organized as a collaboration between the faculties of fine art, design and the EKA doctoral school.

PhD Vitamin is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

The Urban Studies studio “Preservation: Architecture, Nature and Politics” will conclude with a public presentation of student projects on the 12 of May at 14.00 (EEST).

Preservation has achieved cultural significance as a lens through which various experts have come to imagine how a socially and environmentally sound future might look like. As an approach, preservation has been applied to disparate phenomena ranging from historic neighborhoods and natural environments to democracy and identity.

Through case studies from different parts of the world around topics such as green extractivism, simulated heritage and cultural marginalizations, students have built on the insight that preservation cannot be neatly delineated from various forms of violence and destruction. Their projects experiment with a variety of mediums, from a traditional essay to video, drawings and collages, to examine conceptualizations, debates and practices of preserving architecture and nature, and to ask the following questions: Who decides what to preserve and what to neglect? Who has the capacity to take on this responsibility? Preservation is political because, as with a fruit preserve, the act of preserving transforms the preserved object into something altogether different.

Guest critics: Ewa Effiom (Manchester School of Architecture, UK) and Jonas Žukauskas (Neringa Forest Residency, Lithuania)

Students: Petra Ďurišková, Johannes Growe, Þórhildur B. Guðmundsdóttir, Janosh Heydorn, Malin Hilding, Daria Khrystych, Oleksandr Nenenko, Mathilde Olivier, Dalma Pszota, Mira Samonig, Fernanda Torres

Tutors: Maroš Krivý, Kaija-Luisa Kurik, Sean Tyler

This virtual presentation takes the form of individual presentations alongside a collaborative website launch and is open to the public.

Join in on ZOOM HERE

This Friday, 30 April there will be an online symposium “Crafting Situations – Conversations exploring public private boundaries in the (present pandemic impacted) city” in four sessions 13:00–17:00. 

Join the symposium here or on the Crafting Conversations platform here.

“Crafting Situations – Conversations exploring public private boundaries in the (present pandemic impacted) city” is an experimental symposium conducted and developed through a collaboration between the projects Crafting Situations of Knowledge Exchange at HDK Valand Academy of Art and Design Gothenburg, SE, and curation of conversations that investigate the different public private boundaries in the city at Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), EE.

 

Schedule of the symposium:

 

13:00–13:45 EET

“weaving urban intersections on the crossroads of nature connections” – A Game of Associations moderated through the “Polledge” format

Guest speaker: Ott Kagovere

“weaving urban intersections on the crossroads of nature connections” – A Game of Associations curated by Louise Borinski, Björn Giesecke, Malin Hilding

Format “Polledge” crafted by Hanna Peterson, Emil Söderberg, Fanny Däldborg, Bekhar Azimov, Malene Valentin

 

14:00–14:45 EET

“Surveillance: Losing Control” discussed “in the Dark”

Guest speaker: Damiano Cerrone

“Surveillance: Losing Control” curated by Nursultan Barun and Bruce Shujun Wang

Format “In the Dark” crafted by Anna Roth, Daniela Kaiser, Shirun Zheng

 

15:00–15:45 EET

“Outsiders” negotiated via “Bread for the Table”

Guest speaker: Marge Monko & Margit Säde

“Outsiders” curated by Francesca Keaveney

Format “Bread for the table” crafted by Lea Wilhelm, Julia Tienvieri, Daniel Palatz, Hannah Simann Ax, Lucrezia Sterrantino, Victor Nilsson

 

16:00–16:45 EET

“A Wish to Meet” via “The Pace”

Guest speakers: Marek Glow & Uku Sepsivart

“A Wish to Meet” curated by Paula Buskevica and Katarina Sarap

Format “The Pace” crafted by Julia Niklasson, John Wattström, Ellen Solding, Katarina Frisö, Gabriella Di Feola

 

About Crafting Conversations

Crafting Conversations is a platform and approach to investigate situations of knowledge exchange as a matter for design. This means, to shift focus from WHAT to HOW knowledge is exchanged, transferred, created and thus shapes/influences WHAT content can be said, perceived, shared and created.

The Symposium “Crafting Situations – Conversations exploring public boundaries in the (present pandemic impacted) city” is the result of a collaboration between the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn and HDK Valand – Academy of Art and Design, Gothenburg. It is conceived and mentored by Sandra Nuut, and Prof. Judith Seng, Berlin/Gothenburg. HDK Valand MFA Design students have developed scores and formats of knowledge exchange and the students of Estonian Academy of Arts have curated topics through the provided formats. The final contributions for the Symposium have been developed through a collaborative rehearsing week in which the relation between HOW and WHAT has been explored by the students.

The Symposium “Crafting Situations – Conversations exploring public boundaries in the (present pandemic impacted) city” takes place as part of the public programme of the exhibition Acting Things VIII – Silent Conversations by Judith Seng and curated by Sandra Nuut at the Tallinn Art Hall, 5 June–1 August, 2021.

 

Symposium is supported by CIRRUS/Nordplus