Category: Faculty of Art and Culture

Presenters: Jaana Kokko, Andris Brinkmanis
Respondents: Anu Allas, Airi Triisberg 
Moderators: Margaret Tali, Ieva Astahovska

The political past, like the present, is often uncomfortable. In this public seminar we will revisit the lives and artistic work of two politically active women in order to rethink how we could open the discomfort their lives introduce and unpack it by focusing on two herstories, those of Hella Wuolijoki (1886–1954) and Asja Lācis (1891–1979). Our aim is to think through how we could turn this discomfort into a starting point. We will inquire whether a comparative perspective on these artists’ lives and works could help shift the view of their left-wing ideas and related engagements, asking how can we reengage with their uncomfortable and marginalized intellectual and creative legacies, allowing for a richer and more complex view of the circumstances and transnational connections. How can we understand and contextualize the discomfort and threats they faced during their careers? Could understanding the connections between their lives and art offer more nuanced and connected ways of grasping, on the one hand, the long and porous 20th century, and on the other, new ways of understanding artistic practice today? 

Hella Wuolijoki (born Ella Murrik) was an active figure in Finnish cultural, economic, and political life. Born in Helme in Estonia into an upper-class family in 1886, she moved to Finland in 1904 to study at the University of Helsinki, which had enabled university education for women from 1901. Internationally, Wuolijoki’s most well-known literary work is the play Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti, which she co-authored with Berthold Brecht in 1940. Her autobiographical trilogy, which includes Schoolgirl in Tartu and Student Years in Helsinki, which were written at Katajanokka prison in 1944, where she was held as a traitor. In these texts, Wuolijoki describes violent moments in her parents’ garden in Valga after the 1905 revolution; witnessing the purge that followed sparked her interest in class equality and historical materialism. As an artist Jaana Kokko is particularly interested in this change and the related intense personal experiences. 

Asja Lācis (or Anna Lāce) was a Latvian theater director, actress, pedagogue, theorist, tireless seeker, and experimenter who went on to become an intermediary between the German, Latvian, and Russian avant-garde cultures. The topography of her life connects all the focal points of early 20th-century Europe. With her experience, vivid personality, and broad knowledge, she collaborated with and inspired Brecht and Walter Benjamin, among many others. Almost forgotten and sometimes deliberately omitted, the work of Lācis became better known in the west in the 1960s. She is recognized internationally for her innovative work with homeless children as well as for her approach to and methods for working with children’s film and theater, proletarian theater, and amateur actors. She has published German Revolutionary Theater (1935) and Children & Cinema (1928, in collaboration). Lācis’ archival materials, curated by Andris Brinkmanis, were exhibited in Documenta 14 (2017) in Kassel, Germany. 

Everyone is welcome to join us and contribute to the discussion!

Jaana Kokko is an artist, filmmaker, and teacher based in Helsinki, whose background is in arts and economics. She is interested in the languages and places/spaces of individuals in which the singularity of experience opens onto the collective and its historicity in ways that allow us to reflect on the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of not only self-representation but also life itself as something shared. Currently, she is working on two films, both located on the peripheries, where she is trying to shift the gaze to the outskirts of the seen and heard. 

Andris Brinkmanis is an art critic and curator, born in Riga and based in Brunate and Milan. He is a Senior Lecturer and the Course Leader of the BA in Painting and Visual Arts at NABA in Milan and Visiting Professor for the Art Academy of Latvia Curatorial Course. In 2021, he curated and edited the book Asja Lācis. L’agitatrice rossa. Teatro, femminismo, arte e rivoluzione (Meltemi, 2021).

The seminar and workshop take place in the framework of Communicating Difficult Pasts (2019–2024) and are organized in collaboration of MACA and Institute of Art History and Visual Culture.

On March 15 at 14.30-15.30 the peer review event of Triin Reidla’s exhibition “Bold and Beautiful. Estonian private houses from the 1980s” will take place in Estonian Museum of Architecture (seminar room). Triin Reidla is a PhD student in cultural heritage and conservation. The exhibition is part of her doctoral thesis that investigates postmodern residential architecture.

Supervisors: Dr. Maris Mändel (EKA) and Dr. Ingrid Ruudi (EKA)
Reviewers: Prof. Andres Kurg (EKA) and Prof. Marija Dremaite (Vilnius University)

The exhibition is open at the Museum of Architecture (Ahtri 1, Tallinn) from November 29, 2023 to May 12, 2024.
The exhibition “Bold and Beautiful: Estonian private houses from the 1980s” offers insights into the stories of private houses from the 1980s. The exhibition seeks answers to the following questions:
● In which (architectural) historical context do these houses fit?
● Where were postmodern residential buildings planned?
● How did historical peculiarities influence the construction of these buildings?
● What does a postmodernist home look like? What are the floor plans of these houses?
● What has become of these houses today?
● What do architects and owners think of postmodernist houses in the present day?

Triin Reidla is a cultural heritage specialist, architectural historian, editor, and lector, currently pursuing her doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her research focuses on architecture in the 1980s.

The exhibition brings together three different, yet equally sensitive artistic visions. Through the lens of a camera, the photographers Peeter Tooming (1939–1997) and Endel Veliste (1930–2001) and the visual artist Hedi Jaansoo (b 1989) recorded points of intersection between human beings and nature.

Their photographic series exemplify how the camera may amplify the distance from the surrounding environment, lend voices to stones, plants and water, and make the intrinsic interlacing of natural and artificial environments visible.

In the context of current environmental issues, this exhibition creates a poetic dialogue between photographic series by two Soviet-era photographers and a modern-day visual artist. It urges viewers to think about the relationship between nature and people and about the mediating role of technology in that relationship.

“You, River” is the exhibition that reopens the Project Room, which is part of the permanent Soviet Estonian art display. The purpose of Project Room exhibitions is to expand and complement the range of topics and artists included in the permanent exhibition, to contribute to creating trans-temporal and transnational dialogues, and to correlate with the primary research and exhibition projects of Kumu.
Curator Annika Toots on the exhibition:
The title of the exhibition You, River has been borrowed from Peeter Tooming’s photo series devoted to a body of water and its surrounding natural environment. Created in the 1970s, it stands out as being poetic and fragile, and is associated with the environmental topics that entered Estonian art in those days. Endel Veliste’s series View Through the Car Window dates from the same decade. Veliste’s eye follows and captures the surrounding environment through a double barrier: the camera lens and the car window.

The 21st-century visual artist Hedi Jaansoo enters into dialogue with Tooming’s and Veliste’s photos from the second half of the 20th century. She does not set up an opposition between the natural environment and the artificial environment, but rather tries to capture points of intersection between the two realms. Jaansoo’s photos feature carefully composed human-made and natural compositions located in areas where borders are blurred and personal and public environments blend into one.

The display is part of the permanent exhibition “Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940–1991) ” on the 4th floor of the Kumu Art Museum.

Team
Curator: Annika Toots
Artists: Hedi Jaansoo, Peeter Tooming and Endel Veliste
Exhibition design: Villu Plink
Graphic design: Tuuli Aule
Coordinator: Anastassia Langinen

On 21 December Mariann Raisma, a PhD candidate at Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Cultural Heritage and Conservation, will defend the thesis „The Power of the Museum. Shaping Collective Memory in Estonia during the Turning Points of the 20th Century“ („Muuseumi võim. Muuseum kollektiivse mälu kujundajana Eestis 20. sajandi murranguperioodidel“).

Public defence will be held on 21st of December 2023 at 11.00 at EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A101.

Supervisors: Prof. Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts), Dr. Anneli Randla (Estonian Academy of Arts)

External reviewers: Dr. Anu Kannike (Estonian National Museum), Dr. Marleen Metslaid (Estonian National Museum)

Opponent: Dr. Anu Kannike (Estonian National Museum)

The defense will be held in Estonian.

Over the past two centuries, museums have played a pivotal role in shaping societies’ understanding of the past. They guide our perceptions of history, determine the delicate balance between forgetting and remembering, and influence the hierarchy of values associated with heritage.

This dissertation critically examines the power and influence of museums as mediums of cultural memory, with a focus on the Estonian museum field. Given that our identity is intricately tied to what we remember and what we choose to forget, it is crucial to understand the reasons and processes behind the shaping and shifting of collective memory throughout historical periods. This research focuses on the history of the Estonian museum in the 20th century, examining three periods which saw significant historical turning points: 1919–1925, 1940–1941/1944–1953 and 1987–1994.

The history of Estonian museums offers insights into how the core principles, values and canons for constructing cultural memory changed during these periods of social and political upheaval. These changes encompassed the nature and interpretation of ideologies, themes and how they were represented, museums as institutions, their hierarchy and nomenclature, the dynamics of the relationship between power and the institution, and the capacity, intent and ability of museums to shape society’s collective memory.

The identity and institutions of the Estonian museum field underwent significant changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning with self-definition rooted in European culture, museums transitioned to embracing ‘Heimat’ before evolving to value ethnicity. This evolution culminated in ideas for large national museums, which eventually diversified into various specialised museums during the 20th century. The regional discourse of the early 20th century gave way to a national narrative, followed by a Soviet-Marxist perspective. In the final decade of the century, national cultural memory underwent a revival. This sequence of ideas was also reflected in history-themed permanent exhibitions: the 1920s witnessed the legitimisation of popular culture as elite; the 1940s established a normative approach to historical materialism; and from the late 1980s, nationalism triumphed once again, ushering in new museological approaches. While analysing all these changes, this dissertation emphasises the hybridity of Estonian museum history and its interweaving with different cultural spaces and paradigms.

Throughout the three periods of upheaval discussed, museums were at the forefront of the shaping of a new cultural memory canon. Correspondingly, these turning points have contributed to the formation of Estonia’s own unique museum field.

The thesis is available HERE.

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

David K. Ross and Rebecca Duclos (EKA Visiting Lecturers, MACA, Museum Studies) recently travelled across northern Ukraine to visit 8 arts schools in Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv. 

David will be showing images from this trip and discussing some of the pressing issues facing arts eduction in Ukraine at this moment.

English landscape design, landscape art and the Anthropo(s)cenic (1750–1850)

On October 26th, the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture is hosting an open lecture by Frédéric Ogée.

The growing importance of ecological concerns and its transcription into the new discipline of eco-criticism have identified the first half of the 19th century as a possible starting point for the Anthropocene, a period when the profound effects of the two Industrial Revolutions could be felt and seen, when man’s imprint upon Nature became primordial, essential and irreversible.

With their new ‘landscape garden’ and the subsequent rise of picturesque tourism and landscape painting, the British developed a new, empirical exploration of man’s frictional inscription within Nature. The natural world seemed no longer considered as man’s ‘environment’, something peripheral surrounding man’s central presence, in their works Nature IS the center, and is somehow restored as the source of knowledge and truth. Yet this revolution is ambivalent when we know that the main patrons of these English landscapists were also the main actors of the industrial revolution and colonial expansionism, which consisted primarily in commodifying and ‘exploiting’ both nature and man.

Frédéric Ogée is Professor of British Literature and Art History at Université Paris Cité. His main publications include two collections of essays on English artist William Hogarth, as well as ‘Better in France’? The circulation of ideas across the Channel in the 18th century (Lewisburg, 2005), Diderot and European Culture (Oxford, 2006), J.M.W. Turner, Les Paysages absolus (Paris, 2010) and Jardins et Civilisations (Valenciennes, 2019). In 2006-07, he curated the first-ever exhibition of Hogarth for the Louvre. He is currently working on a series of monographs on 18th and 19th-century British artists – Thomas Lawrence, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth – to be published by Cohen & Cohen (Paris). The first one, Thomas Lawrence – Le génie du portrait anglais came out in December 2022. The next one, on Turner, will be published in the fall of 2024. From 2014 to 2017 he was a member of Tate Britain’s Advisory Council, and since 2014 of the City of Paris Scientific Council. In 2018-19 he was a Kress Fellow in the Literature of Art at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and also a Neilson Professor at Smith College, Massachusetts. Next summer he will be a visiting lecturer in Beijing, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the University of International Business and Economics.

The 17th conference from the series Studies in Contemporary Culture, dedicated to one of the key Estonian literary works from the transition era, Emil Tode’s groundbreaking novel Border State, will take place on October 16th, 2023, at the Writers’ House in Tallinn (Harju 1).

The conference is organized by the Research Group of Contemporary Estonian Culture (EKA KVI, TLÜ TÜHI and TÜ) in collaboration with the Estonian Writers’ Union, and funded by Estonian Research Council (grant PRG636), Cultural Endowment of Estonia and EKA’s Research Foundation.

Tallinn, October 3-5, 2023

Organisers: Kumu Art Museum and Estonian Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art

With the support of the Nordic Culture Point 

Venues: Estonian Academy of Arts, Kumu Art Museum

The climate crisis has developed into the defining crisis of our time, interlinked with the military, socio-political, and humanitarian conflicts and inequalities across the globe. The artworld must inevitably reevaluate its priorities. A major part of rethinking art in the age of the anthropocene centers around creating and adapting more sustainable practices. The global lack of resources, issues of environmental justice – and possibly also careful visions of post-extractivist futures – make art workers think through circularity and sustainability.

This workshop calls to discuss the art world’s green transition in a creative and at the same time critical manner and explore it across disciplines – inviting professionals and students from art and design, conservation, curating and museology and related fields.

How to make art institutions, art and exhibition production more sustainable? What are the other ways in which arts and culture can contribute to transforming the extractivist mindset? What is the role of artists, designers and other art workers in fulfilling the climate aims set by governments and politicians? What is the relationship between an artwork and its carbon footprint? How to avoid greenwashing? How to make space for time and effort that goes into experimenting with more sustainable practices and avoid burnout?

Valuing learning from different perspectives, skills and knowledge, the teaching staff includes experts from various fields. The event is designed for art workers, as well as students across disciplines (MA and doctoral, but also motivated BA students).

Organisers:

Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts)

Karin Vicente (Art Museum of Estonia)

How to apply?

Participation is free of charge. Please register here: https://form.jotform.com/231972683642060

Deadline: September 15

In case you need study credits, you can gain 2 ECTS credits by attending all the talks and visits and completing a conference report in the format of a visual essay.

Workshop programme

Day 1 / October 3

Where on earth to begin?

Kumu Art Museum

11:00–11:15

Welcome, introductions and coffee

11:15–12:15

Karin Vicente (Art Museum of Estonia): High Impressions, Low Impact: Reducing the Emissions of an Art Exhibition

12:15–13:15

Group work: How to make a difference? Moderators: Linda Kaljundi and Karin Vicente

13:15–14:15

Lunch

14:15–15:15

Kārlis Melzobs (GAISS architects): Decolonial ecologies

15:30–17:00

Guided tour at the exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene by Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa and Maria Muuk, designers of the exhibition

Day 2 / October 4

Theory into practice

Estonian Academy of Art. Meeting point: 5th floor

10:00–11:00

Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa (LLRRLLRR): Working with material flows

11:00–12:00

Maria Muuk (graphic designer): Sustainable developments in exhibition graphic design

12:00–12:30

Lunch

12:30–13:30

Grete Arro (Tallinn University): How to fit the environment into one’s Umwelt?

13:30–14:30

Siim Preimann (Tallinn Art Hall): Keeping on keeping on: in pursuit of a curatorial approach fitting the times

15:00–17:00

Meeting point: Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

Meeting with curator and a project manager Maria Helen Känd and visiting Jaanus Samma’s exhibition “Iron men”

Day 3 / October 5

Fields in dialogue: from contemporary art to collection to conservation

Kumu Art Museum.

10:00–11:00

Meeting point: painting collections of Art Museum of Estonia;

Darja Jefimova (Art Museum of Estonia): Sustainable practices in collections management

Discussant: Varje Õunapuu (Estonian Academy of Arts)

11:00–12:00

Meeting point: permanent exhibition of Estonian Art in the 1990s (4th floor, B wing)

Hilkka Hiiop (Estonian Academy of Arts): Sustainability in collecting contemporary art: does it exist?

12:00–13:00

Lunch

13:00–14:00

Meeting point: Kumu educational centre

Margit Keller (University of Tartu): Sustainability transitions: complexity and hope

14:30–15:30

Meeting point: Kadriorg Art museum, lobby

Tour at the exhibition “The Art of Adapting” with Triin Metsla and Madli Ehasalu

15:30–16:30

Concluding panel: How to build and sustain dialogues between fields?

Mari-Leen Kiipli (artist), Marju Niinemaa (National Heritage Board), Kaisa-Piia Pedajas (Art Museum of Estonia), Laura Põld (Estonian Academy of Arts)

Moderators: Linda Kaljundi, Karin Vicente

17:00

Presentation of the Model for sustainable exhibition at Kumu (in Estonian)

Cecilia Alemani

“The Milk of Dreams. A journey through the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale”

Cecilia Alemani is one of the most influential curators in the world today. She curated the 59th International Venice Biennale, a much talked about landmark exhibition. The title of the biennale, Milk of Dreams is borrowed from a book by the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, in which she describes a magical world where everyone has the capacity to change, to become something or someone else, a world where there are no limits but which is bursting with possibilities.

In her talk, Cecilia Alemani will speak about the process of organising the most prestigious art exhibition in the world: The Venice Biennale. She will talk about how she developed a theme for the exhibition, how the so-called “Time Capsules” built a foundation for her show, how she selected the artists, worked with the participants on new commissions, the installation, and many other aspects behind the making of such a large scale exhibition. 

Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York. Since 2011, she has been the Donald R. Mullen, Jr Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York. In 2022, she curated The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia. In 2018, Alemani served as Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires. In 2017, she curated the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Currently, she also is working on Anu Põder’s solo exhibition, opening at Muzeum Susch in January 2024. 

The open lecture is organised by the Faculty of Art and Culture of the Estonian Academy of Arts in cooperation with the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art.

The lecture will take place in English.

No registration needed.

More information: Annika Toots (annika.toots@artun.ee)