Category: Doctoral School

On 20 January at 15:00 Risto Paju will defend his thesis “The Art of Late Medieval Stone Carving in Tallinn: Fragments – History and Interpretation” (“Tallinna hiliskeskaegne raidkivikunst. Fragmendid – ajalugu ja tõlgitsemine”).

The public defence will be held in EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A501. The defence will be broadcast on EKA TV.
The defence is in Estonian.

Supervisor: Dr. Anneli Randla (Estonian Academy of Arts)
External reviewers: Prof. Kersti Markus (Tallinn University), Dr. Erki Russow (Tallinn University)
Opponent: Dr. Erki Russow

Thesis is available HERE.

There are works of art and architecture that draw attention with their exceptional state of preservation, but there are also many that have survived only as fragments. This thesis examines the 15^th– and 16^th-century carved stone fragments from Tallinn, which are located in the collections of the Tallinn City Museum and the Tallinn City Urban Planning Department, as well as in situ within the city.

The main body of the thesis consists of published articles, each focusing on a selected fragment and aiming to reconstruct its original whole based on existing data, and place it into its historical context. The final part of this thesis discusses the exhibition of fragments in the Carved Stone Museum, which opened in 2016 under the Tallinn City Museum, and suggests approaches for future exhibitions. The analysis is based on the studies by Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Cesare Brandi concerning the relationship between the fragment and the whole.

Defence Committee: Prof. Hilkka Hiiop (Head of the Committee), Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Krista Kodres, Prof. Juhan Maitse, Prof. Kurmo Konsa

On December 11, the public review of the third doctoral project by the art and design doctoral student Maria Kapajeva will take place. Peer-review event is based on a book that Maria Kapajeva, published with OPA! Publishing in May 2024.
The event will take place at 14.00-15.30 via zoom.
Zoom LINK (Meeting ID: 989 0757 9603, Passcode: 803718)

Reviewers are Dr. Ingrid Ruudi (Estonian Academy of Arts) and Dr. Malin Arnell (Umeå University)
Supervisors of doctoral thesis are: Dr. Redi Koobak (University of Strathclyde) and Dr. Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff (University of Gothenburg)

“a year-long scream”, OPA! Publishing, 2024

A collection of texts by Maria Kapajeva that she wrote in Russian and English. She started writing the book on February 24, 2022 – the day the full-scale war in Ukraine began. The book is written in a personal style and deals with themes of identity, collective and individual responsibility and guilt, language and belonging, feminism, and the stories of some of the Ukrainian refugees that the author encountered during the year.

The book is published in three languages as individual copies: Estonian, English and Russian.

Graphic design: Kersti Heile
Estonian language translator: Katrin Hallas
English translation proof-reading: Inese Strupule
Edition of 200 copies per language
The book is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Estonian Academy of Arts

The books in all three languages are available at EKA Library.
They can also be purchased at Rahvaraamat and Apollo bookshops or with a direct order from the publisher via email info@opapublishing.com.

Mental Vitamin Week is back and happening next week! From November 18–22, we will host various exciting activities to bring some fun and relaxation to the long and tiring school days.

**MONDAY, 18.11.2024**

– Morning run at 8:00 (meeting in front of the school)
– Fruit in exchange for your phone
– 12:00–18:00 Sauna in the school courtyard
– Gaming in A300

**TUESDAY, 19.11.2024**

– Morning run at 8:00 (meeting in front of the school)
– Health shots
– 12:00–18:00 Sauna in the school courtyard
– Gaming in A300
– Scream room in the ÜE tower
– 19:00 EKAAJU quiz (in the atrium, registration required)

**WEDNESDAY, 20.11.2024**

– Morning run at 8:00 (meeting in front of the school)
– Gaming in A300
– Confession room and worry box (5th floor box)

**THURSDAY, 21.11.2024**

– Morning run at 8:00 (meeting in front of the school)
– Gaming in A300

**FRIDAY, 22.11.2024**

– Final morning run of the week at 8:00 (meeting in front of the school)
– Gaming in A300

Design Issues: Hasso Krull’s Talk “Earth Thought: sentipensar con la tierra Arturo Escobar and the Cosmovisions of the Relational Ontology” on Tuesday, November 19 at 4:00 PM, in room A501 at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA).

We have been taught that we live in the modern world. The axis of modernity is progress, based on rationality, development and technology. However, we have also learned that modernity is in a perpetual crisis. But why does development always lead to a disaster? Maybe modernity is not a solution, but in itself a problem? If that is the case, we need to redefine it. We need several new cosmovisions and something that Arturo Escobar has called pluriversal politics.
Hasso Krull (b. 1964) is an Estonian poet who has published sixteen books of poetry and nine collections of essays that include literary criticism as well as writings concerning art, cinema and society. During 1990-2017 he was teaching cultural theory at the Estonian Institute of Humanities (special courses on creation myths, oral tradition, continental philosophy and psychoanalysis). From 2019 he has been teaching creative writing in the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The Design Open Lecture series 2024 is part of Sandra Nuut and Ruth-Helene Melioranski’s Design Issues course. It is public and open to all.

On 9 December at 14:00 Hasso Krull will defend his thesis “Cosmic Trickster in Estonian Mythology” (“Kosmiline trikster eesti mütoloogias”).

The public defence will be held in EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A501.
The defence will be broadcast on EKA TV.
The defence is in Estonian.

Supervisors: Prof. Virve Sarapik, (Estonian Academy of Arts), Dr. Margus Ott (Estonian University of Life Sciences)
External reviewers: Prof. Ülo Valk (University of Tartu), Dr. Jaan Undusk (Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas Literature Centre)
Opponents: Prof. Ülo Valk, Dr. Jaan Undusk

An Estonian mythology, does it really exist? Yes, but only on one condition: it exists, if the Estonian landscape equally exists. Cosmic trickster is the creator of the Estonian landscape. Therefore, the Estonian landscape is a mythical landscape, appearing and becoming visible to us after we have acquired the mythical narrative.

Until today, the Estonian mythology has been described either following a taxonomic or a concentric model. Neither of them should be underestimated. I propose a new concentric model focusing on the cosmic trickster. He often acts as one pole of a creator pair.

Trickster was already active in a primordial creation time, when everything was still in flux and even the stones were soft. Landscape carries many visual signes of his activity: rocks and stones, sources, rivers and lakes, mountains and valleys. This landscape is different from the modern landscape, that is dominated by a homogenuous space without any mythical dimension.

The treatise is divided into four parts. First part analyzes the concept of the trickster. Second part describes the course of mythologial studies in the 19th Century. Third part explores the creation myth, where the central protagonist is the trickster. Fourth part observes the return of the trickster in literature. Finally there is an exodus, outlining a project of a mythical ecology.

The thesis is available HERE.

Defence Committee: Prof. Andres Kurg, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Krista Kodres, Dr. Anneli Randla, Prof. Hilkka Hiiop, Prof. Aigi Rahi-Tamm, Prof. Eneken Laanes

The Sensorial Design group is hosting an event focused on design approaches centered around sensory experiences, addressing themes such as care, well-being, public engagement, and non-sexual intimacy. The event will begin with an open lecture on somatic well-being for individuals with chronic gut diseases by Dila Demir, followed by four Pecha Kucha presentations by sensorial design researchers Nesli Hazal Oktay, Azeem Hamid, Zaur Babayev, and Kristi Kuusk. Join us for an engaging exploration of sensory-driven design practices and insights.

Date: 

November 11

Time: 

16.00–17.50

Location: 

Estonian Academy of Arts, Room: A-101

Registration Link: 

https://forms.gle/HpxPEHL4x8Dz8FkY9

The workshop seeks to break this taboo by reconnecting poop with nature and fostering multi-sensory engagements with biomaterials to explore more-than-human connections.

November 9 – workshop only for people with chronic gut diseases

November 23 – workshop open to everyone

11.00–13.30

Registration Link

On 4 November at 15:00 Ulvi Haagensen will defend her thesis “In the In-Between: Explorations into the Line Between Art and Everyday Life as Seen Through the Eyes of a Practising Visual Artist” (“Vahepealsuses. Uurimusi kunsti ja igapäevaelu vahelisest joonest visuaalkunstniku silmade läbi”).

The public defence will be held in EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A501. The defence will be broadcast on EKA TV.
The defence is in English.

Supervisors: Dr. Liina Unt (University of Tartu), Dr. Jan Guy (University of Sydney)

External reviewers: Prof. Mika Elo (University of the Arts Helsinki), Dr. Rolf Hughes (EIT Culture & Creativity)

Opponent: Prof. Mika Elo

The field of contemporary art with its avant-garde legacy often meets, overlaps and clashes with ordinary everyday life, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. For an artist working within this field the relationship between art and life can be particularly intriguing; sometimes it’s puzzling, and at other times it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other, to know when something is or isn’t art, and is or isn’t life.

In the In-Between: Explorations into the Line Between Art and Everyday Life as Seen Through the Eyes of a Practising Visual Artist asks what new approaches, methods, techniques it can reveal and what alternative ways of thinking and looking it can contribute to help make sense of the enigmatic relationship between art and life.

The thesis speaks from within an art practice and in close proximity to artistic processes. It incorporates embodied and multisensory experiences, as well as humour and a playful approach that includes informal conversations between three imaginary friends – Thea Koristaja, Olive Puuvill and Artist Researcher. Their contributions allow for shifts in perspective and reveal the various ways that art and everyday life meet and collide as an artist prepares for, makes and installs and then reflects upon the three main exhibitions that form the basis of the thesis, and also in connection to cleaning performances (undertaken mainly by Thea Koristaja), other exhibitions and everyday life.

One of the aims, unfolding through the course of the research, is to reconcile art, art-making, the everyday, and research. The three imaginary friends play a key role in helping to achieve this, as do the ‘tactics of in-betweenness’ and the notion of the bricoleuse, someone who invents, improvises and makes do. Together they help reveal the ideas of ‘blurring’, ‘making strange’, ‘equalising’ and ‘destabilising’, together with ‘object-generated thinking’ as new approaches, methods and concepts that can transform, make sense of and reconcile art with everyday life.

The thesis is available HERE.

Defence Committee: Dr. Jaana Päeva, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Kirke Kangro, Dr. Kristi Kuusk, Prof. Indrek Ibrus, Dr. Varvara Guljajeva

On 11 October 11.30-13.00, the public review of the first creative project of Merike Rehepapp doctoral thesis “Educational design, why and how” will take place in EKA, room A202. The event is in Estonian.

The focus of the thesis is to find the reasons and ways to implement design in educational practice, through a design process and methodology created for this purpose. The practical part of the creative research has been carried out with a variety of collaborators over the last three years.
In her first creative project, Merike seeks to answer the question: what function do educational design process and methodology play in the educational landscape? What does it evoke, both visible and hidden? What kind of work does it actually do?

Supervisor: Dr. Anu Sarv, University of Tartu
Reviewers:
Dr. Kaire Uiboleht, University of Tartu
Martin Pärn, EKA and TalTech

Thanks are due to:
The supervisor and curriculum leaders for their patience and the reviewers for their willingness to contribute. A humble bow goes to Helen Arov, my faithful work partner, and my family support staff.

On 26 September at 09.30-11.00 the peer review of  Taavi Varm’s doctoral project will take place. Taavi Varm is a PhD student in Art and Design programme. The project “Erasmus Workshop 2024: Integrating participatory learning, video game design and psychological well-being” is the 1st artistic research project of his doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Taavi’s artistic doctoral thesis entitled “Designing video games for young adults to improve mental health and psychological well-being” at the Estonian Academy of Arts explores the integration of participatory learning, co-creation and experimental video game design to develop innovative methods and find new perspectives for improving psychological well-being of young adults.

Supervisors:
Dr. Varvara Guljajeva (HUSK)
Dr. Helen Uusberg (University of Tartu)

Project reviewers:
Dr. Liina Unt (University of Tartu, Viljandi Culture Academy)
Dr. Ásthildur Jónsdóttir (Iceland University of the Arts)

Peer review event will take place in Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/95865149077?pwd=dOJbppC0isCyq2QoKPZmxhSgm3xv0d.1

Meeting ID: 958 6514 9077
Passcode: 817972

Mental health issues are a major global concern, especially among young adults. According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety are leading causes of disability worldwide. Especially in Estonia, nearly half of young adults report mental health challenges. Addressing these issues is vital for creating a healthier and more productive future generation.

The workshop, which took place at Tallinna Saksa Gümnaasium, was an artistic educational initiative that aimed to combine video game design with participatory learning and psychological well-being.

The workshop explored the potential positive impact of participatory creative methods on the psychological well-being of young adults. The workshop focused on artistic and experimental game design in a supportive environment. The main methods used were specially developed design toolboxes, the psychological concept of flow theory and participatory design principles.

The aim of this research is to offer creative approaches to addressing mental health issues through an artistic research framework. Emphasizing co-creation, the goal is to foster meaningful dialogue and creative synergy among young adults, artists, and professionals, generating evidence-based solutions in both the creative process and the final game projects.

I would like to thank the partners and supporters:
My supervisors Helen Uusberg and Varvara Guljajeva for continuous support.
Erik Joasaare from Tallinna Saksa Gümnaasium, Lisbon German School, Erasmus+ Art Bridge project, Andero Uusberg from University of Tartu and the Doctoral School of the Estonian Academy of Arts.