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Category: Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
25.03.2024
Public Seminar: Uncomfortable Herstories. The cases of Hella Wuolijoki and Asja Lācis
Contemporary Art
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.
Posted by Anu Vahtra — Permalink
Public Seminar: Uncomfortable Herstories. The cases of Hella Wuolijoki and Asja Lācis
Monday 25 March, 2024
Contemporary Art
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.
Posted by Anu Vahtra — Permalink
26.10.2023
Open lecture: Frédéric Ogée
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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.
Posted by Mari Laaniste — Permalink
Open lecture: Frédéric Ogée
Thursday 26 October, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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.
Posted by Mari Laaniste — Permalink
16.10.2023
Conference “An Apparition on the Border: The Passion of an Eastern European. Emil Tode’s ‘Border State’ 30 Years Later”
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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.
Posted by Mari Laaniste — Permalink
Conference “An Apparition on the Border: The Passion of an Eastern European. Emil Tode’s ‘Border State’ 30 Years Later”
Monday 16 October, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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.
Posted by Mari Laaniste — Permalink
03.10.2023 — 05.10.2023
Making a Difference: Sustainability in the Artworld and Museums
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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).
The programme involves lectures, workshops, study visits to museum funds and exhibition tours. Lecturers include: Margit Keller (University of Tartu), Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa (LLRRLLRR), Arnita Melzoba and Kārlis Melzobs (GAISS), Darja Jefimova (Art Museum of Estonia), VarjeÕunapuu (Estonian Academy of Arts), Hilkka Hiiop (Estonian Academy of Arts), Maria Muuk and others.
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)
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
Making a Difference: Sustainability in the Artworld and Museums
Tuesday 03 October, 2023 — Thursday 05 October, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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).
The programme involves lectures, workshops, study visits to museum funds and exhibition tours. Lecturers include: Margit Keller (University of Tartu), Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa (LLRRLLRR), Arnita Melzoba and Kārlis Melzobs (GAISS), Darja Jefimova (Art Museum of Estonia), VarjeÕunapuu (Estonian Academy of Arts), Hilkka Hiiop (Estonian Academy of Arts), Maria Muuk and others.
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)
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
27.09.2023
Open Lecture: Cecilia Alemani
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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)
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
Open Lecture: Cecilia Alemani
Wednesday 27 September, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
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)
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
14.09.2023 — 15.09.2023
Conference: Rethinking Cultures of Environmentalism in Eastern and Northern Europe
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
A new wave of scholarly writing on the histories of environmentalism has significantly broadened our understanding of the ways of being environmentally aware, demonstrating the wide dissemination of diverse environmental practices and ideas across different societies and regimes, ideologies and belief systems, practices, discourses and genres.
This conference asks how recent scholarly discussions and creative practices have changed the perspective on intersections of culture and environmentalism in Eastern and Northern Europe. What does the new research on these regions have to add to the broader discussions? We are aiming at creating occasions for transnational and transdisciplinary comparisons that will create connections between different cultures and genres (visual, literary etc.), and extend beyond methodological nationalism. How did knowledge and practices transfer between regions and across socio-political regimes? In the face of the current wave of decolonisation, how do we conceptualise the relationships between the East and the West, as well as Nordic and Eastern European relations to indigenous peoples?
The two-day conference is divided into eight panels in which scholars and art practitioners from different fields examine such topics as global histories, environmentalism and activism, indigeneity, slow technologies, gender, and the role of artistic, literary and cultural practices in these areas.
Organisers: Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn University (research project Estonian Environmentalism in the Long Twentieth Century) and Estonian Academy of Arts Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
Organising committee: Maria Arusoo, Linda Kaljundi, Ulrike Plath, Elle-Mari Talivee, Eda Tuulberg and Kadri Tüür
Coordinators: Magdaleena Maasik and Annika Toots
_____________________
The conference will take place in the Kumu Art Museum auditorium on 14 September and at Tallinn University on 15 September.
The conference will take place in the Kumu Art Museum auditorium on 14 September and at Tallinn University on 15 September.
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
Conference: Rethinking Cultures of Environmentalism in Eastern and Northern Europe
Thursday 14 September, 2023 — Friday 15 September, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
A new wave of scholarly writing on the histories of environmentalism has significantly broadened our understanding of the ways of being environmentally aware, demonstrating the wide dissemination of diverse environmental practices and ideas across different societies and regimes, ideologies and belief systems, practices, discourses and genres.
This conference asks how recent scholarly discussions and creative practices have changed the perspective on intersections of culture and environmentalism in Eastern and Northern Europe. What does the new research on these regions have to add to the broader discussions? We are aiming at creating occasions for transnational and transdisciplinary comparisons that will create connections between different cultures and genres (visual, literary etc.), and extend beyond methodological nationalism. How did knowledge and practices transfer between regions and across socio-political regimes? In the face of the current wave of decolonisation, how do we conceptualise the relationships between the East and the West, as well as Nordic and Eastern European relations to indigenous peoples?
The two-day conference is divided into eight panels in which scholars and art practitioners from different fields examine such topics as global histories, environmentalism and activism, indigeneity, slow technologies, gender, and the role of artistic, literary and cultural practices in these areas.
Organisers: Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn University (research project Estonian Environmentalism in the Long Twentieth Century) and Estonian Academy of Arts Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
Organising committee: Maria Arusoo, Linda Kaljundi, Ulrike Plath, Elle-Mari Talivee, Eda Tuulberg and Kadri Tüür
Coordinators: Magdaleena Maasik and Annika Toots
_____________________
The conference will take place in the Kumu Art Museum auditorium on 14 September and at Tallinn University on 15 September.
The conference will take place in the Kumu Art Museum auditorium on 14 September and at Tallinn University on 15 September.
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
23.05.2023
Film Screening: Zum Vergleich. Harun Farocki, 2009
Architecture and Urban Design
Film Screening
Title: Zum Vergleich / In Comparison
Harun Farocki (2009)
x Project Presentation Building Information: Kadambari Baxi, Klaus Platzgummer, Lennart Wolff (2022-)
Description
Bricks are the resonating foundations of society. Bricks are simply very long-playing records. Like records, they appear in series, but every brick is slightly different – not just another brick in the wall. Bricks create spaces, organise social relations and store knowledge about social structures. They resonate in a way that tells us if they are any good. Bricks form the basic sound of our societies, but we haven’t yet learned to listen to them.
Farocki’s film lets our eyes and ears consider different traditions of brick production in comparison – and not in competition, not as a clash of cultures. Farocki shows us various brick production sites in their colours, movements and sounds.
Farocki shows sites of brick production in their colours, movements and sounds. Brick burning, brick carrying, bricklaying, bricks on bricks, no voice-over. 20 inter-titles in 60 minutes tell us something about the temporality of brickmaking processes. The film shows us that certain modes of production require their own duration and that differences between cultures can be shown in brick time.
(Ute Holl)
Credits
Original title: Zum Vergleich. Director Harun Farocki; Script Harun Farocki, Matthias Rajmann; Cinematographer Ingo Kratisch; Sound Matthias Rajmann; Editor Meggie Schneider; Drawings Andreas Siekmann; Collaboration Antje Ehmann, Anand Narayan Damle, Michael Knauss, Regina Krotil, Iyamperumal Mannankatti, Mamta Murthy, Markus Nechleba, Jan Ralske, Yukara Shimizu, Isabelle Verreet.
Format 16mm, col. Length 61 min. Year 2009
“Bricks create spaces, organise social relations and store knowledge about social structures. […] Bricks form the basic sound of our societies, but we haven’t yet learned to listen to them. Farocki’s film lets our eyes and ears consider different traditions of brick production in comparison […]” (Ute Holl)
Harun Farocki’s film In Comparison (2009) opens up a global perspective on the conditions of the production of bricks and compares their modes, ranging from full automation to manual labour. The film screening serves as a point of departure for a discussion on today’s labour processes in architecture.
It will be introduced by Kadambari Baxi, Klaus Platzgummer, and Lennart Wolff, and accompanied by a presentation of their ongoing research and exhibition project Building Information (2022 -). Their project addresses labour processes in architecture in the context of digital ecosystems, structuring relationships among human and non-human actors. It was exhibited at the Architekturmuseum of the TU Berlin and led to a series of events in collaboration with ARCH+.
Posted by Tiina Tammet — Permalink
Film Screening: Zum Vergleich. Harun Farocki, 2009
Tuesday 23 May, 2023
Architecture and Urban Design
Film Screening
Title: Zum Vergleich / In Comparison
Harun Farocki (2009)
x Project Presentation Building Information: Kadambari Baxi, Klaus Platzgummer, Lennart Wolff (2022-)
Description
Bricks are the resonating foundations of society. Bricks are simply very long-playing records. Like records, they appear in series, but every brick is slightly different – not just another brick in the wall. Bricks create spaces, organise social relations and store knowledge about social structures. They resonate in a way that tells us if they are any good. Bricks form the basic sound of our societies, but we haven’t yet learned to listen to them.
Farocki’s film lets our eyes and ears consider different traditions of brick production in comparison – and not in competition, not as a clash of cultures. Farocki shows us various brick production sites in their colours, movements and sounds.
Farocki shows sites of brick production in their colours, movements and sounds. Brick burning, brick carrying, bricklaying, bricks on bricks, no voice-over. 20 inter-titles in 60 minutes tell us something about the temporality of brickmaking processes. The film shows us that certain modes of production require their own duration and that differences between cultures can be shown in brick time.
(Ute Holl)
Credits
Original title: Zum Vergleich. Director Harun Farocki; Script Harun Farocki, Matthias Rajmann; Cinematographer Ingo Kratisch; Sound Matthias Rajmann; Editor Meggie Schneider; Drawings Andreas Siekmann; Collaboration Antje Ehmann, Anand Narayan Damle, Michael Knauss, Regina Krotil, Iyamperumal Mannankatti, Mamta Murthy, Markus Nechleba, Jan Ralske, Yukara Shimizu, Isabelle Verreet.
Format 16mm, col. Length 61 min. Year 2009
“Bricks create spaces, organise social relations and store knowledge about social structures. […] Bricks form the basic sound of our societies, but we haven’t yet learned to listen to them. Farocki’s film lets our eyes and ears consider different traditions of brick production in comparison […]” (Ute Holl)
Harun Farocki’s film In Comparison (2009) opens up a global perspective on the conditions of the production of bricks and compares their modes, ranging from full automation to manual labour. The film screening serves as a point of departure for a discussion on today’s labour processes in architecture.
It will be introduced by Kadambari Baxi, Klaus Platzgummer, and Lennart Wolff, and accompanied by a presentation of their ongoing research and exhibition project Building Information (2022 -). Their project addresses labour processes in architecture in the context of digital ecosystems, structuring relationships among human and non-human actors. It was exhibited at the Architekturmuseum of the TU Berlin and led to a series of events in collaboration with ARCH+.
Posted by Tiina Tammet — Permalink
16.05.2023
War on Monuments: Debates over Russian/Soviet Heritage in Eastern and Central Europe since 2022
Cultural Heritage and Conservation
Online roundtable
Since February 2022, many Russian Imperial and Soviet statues and symbols have been removed from public space, accompanied by heated discussions in the local (social) media. The nature of the actions varies, but in several countries political rather than expert decisions have been the guiding force, with an immediate effect on the actual monuments of art, architecture and other cultural artefacts.
The international audience, at the same time, even in the neighbouring regions, has access to very few of those local debates – each country in Eastern and Central Europe has been handling similar kinds of issues on their own. To analyse these developments in more depth, a comparative approach and a longer historical perspective is needed. The situation is changing quickly, and new monuments are lost almost daily. Rather than the monuments themselves, this round table, firstly, seeks to document the local-level discussions, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the current situation as well as its broader contexts. Secondly, we want to learn from each other by gathering successful examples of artistic and other transdisciplinary interventions to safeguard or reinterpret those monuments.
The speakers include Linda Kaljundi, Riin Alatalu and Kristina Jõekalda (all Estonian Academy of Arts), Sofia Dyak, Iryna Sklokina (both Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv) and Mykola Homanyuk (Kherson State University, Ukraine), Maija Rudovska (independent scholar/curator, Latvia), Oxana Gourinovitch (Belarus/RWTH Aachen University), Olga Juutistenaho (Finland/Technical University of Berlin), Stephanie Herold (Technical University of Berlin, Germany), Dragan Damjanović, Patricia Počanić and Sanja Delić (all University of Zagreb, Croatia), Nini Palavandishvili (independent scholar/curator, Georgia), Małgorzata Łukianow (University of Warsaw, Poland), Linara Dovydaitytė (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania) and Ivo Mijnssen (independent scholar/journalist, Austria).
The online roundtable can be followed via live video stream on the Facebook page of the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, Estonian Academy of Arts on Tuesday, 16th May 2023, from 14.00 to ca. 19.00 (Tallinn time, EEST).
If you wish to get involved as a discussant and receive a Zoom link, please let us know here by 15th May.
More information: Kristina Jõekalda (kristina.joekalda@artun.ee), Linda Kaljundi (linda.kaljundi@artun.ee).
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
War on Monuments: Debates over Russian/Soviet Heritage in Eastern and Central Europe since 2022
Tuesday 16 May, 2023
Cultural Heritage and Conservation
Online roundtable
Since February 2022, many Russian Imperial and Soviet statues and symbols have been removed from public space, accompanied by heated discussions in the local (social) media. The nature of the actions varies, but in several countries political rather than expert decisions have been the guiding force, with an immediate effect on the actual monuments of art, architecture and other cultural artefacts.
The international audience, at the same time, even in the neighbouring regions, has access to very few of those local debates – each country in Eastern and Central Europe has been handling similar kinds of issues on their own. To analyse these developments in more depth, a comparative approach and a longer historical perspective is needed. The situation is changing quickly, and new monuments are lost almost daily. Rather than the monuments themselves, this round table, firstly, seeks to document the local-level discussions, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the current situation as well as its broader contexts. Secondly, we want to learn from each other by gathering successful examples of artistic and other transdisciplinary interventions to safeguard or reinterpret those monuments.
The speakers include Linda Kaljundi, Riin Alatalu and Kristina Jõekalda (all Estonian Academy of Arts), Sofia Dyak, Iryna Sklokina (both Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv) and Mykola Homanyuk (Kherson State University, Ukraine), Maija Rudovska (independent scholar/curator, Latvia), Oxana Gourinovitch (Belarus/RWTH Aachen University), Olga Juutistenaho (Finland/Technical University of Berlin), Stephanie Herold (Technical University of Berlin, Germany), Dragan Damjanović, Patricia Počanić and Sanja Delić (all University of Zagreb, Croatia), Nini Palavandishvili (independent scholar/curator, Georgia), Małgorzata Łukianow (University of Warsaw, Poland), Linara Dovydaitytė (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania) and Ivo Mijnssen (independent scholar/journalist, Austria).
The online roundtable can be followed via live video stream on the Facebook page of the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, Estonian Academy of Arts on Tuesday, 16th May 2023, from 14.00 to ca. 19.00 (Tallinn time, EEST).
If you wish to get involved as a discussant and receive a Zoom link, please let us know here by 15th May.
More information: Kristina Jõekalda (kristina.joekalda@artun.ee), Linda Kaljundi (linda.kaljundi@artun.ee).
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
30.01.2023
Exhibition Histories and the Roles of Documentation: Writing Ukrainian Art History from Scratch
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
This event will bring together current research on writing Ukrainian art history of the 20th century from scratch, since an art historical canon has not yet been produced for this period. Focusing on the Soviet and post-soviet eras, art historians Lizaveta German, Olga Balashova and Svitlana Biedarieva will present their ongoing research and reflect on how museums, exhibitions and artists have conceptualized these periods in art history writing until now. How has the National Art Museum of Ukraine—which is currently closed due to war—written and presented 20th-century Ukrainian art history? What can we learn from histories of exhibitions? What could parallels with other former post-Soviet countries, such as the Baltic States, contribute to revisiting this period? How is Ukraine to rewrite its art history after the war? Artist and researcher Andrij Bojarov will act as a respondent and Margaret Tali will moderate.This hybrid event will be hosted by the Institute of Art History in the Estonian Academy of Arts.
(Not) permanent exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine
Olga Balashova
At the time of the gallery’s closure, the exhibition on the second floor of the National Art Museum in Kyiv was dedicated to 20th-century Ukrainian art. In the absence of a written history of art, we were always referring to this second floor for an up-to-date understanding of this history. Despite this influential role, however, the second-floor exhibition responded to the influence of external contexts, with the core museum team changing it three times during the past 20 years. The first non-Soviet exhibition had a strong national idea behind it, with a central narrative built around the Ukrainian Academy of Art, created in 1917 in the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and artists who were looking for peculiarities of the “Ukrainian style.” In the second exhibition, created after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the narration was more open for international interpretation, with a central focus on the avant-garde. The most recent change took place in 2020, just months before Covid-19 hit, with the narration dedicated to the idea of Modernism. The exhibition contained not only positive storytelling but also critical views of historical events and related art movements. After the war, the second-floor exhibition should change again. So far, it is difficult to say in which direction it will unfold, but it needs to include expertise from previous exhibitions and to consider the new post-war context.
We learn what we exhibit what we learn: Looking at art history from the perspective of exhibitions
Lizaveta German
Offering another perspective on how a particular art historical narrative can be (re)written, this presentation will focus on exhibition history as a method and elaborate on cases from two periods in Ukraine: the 1960s and the 1990s. Based on long-term research on both periods, Lizaveta will discuss how one can navigate through gaps in knowledge and lack of physical material, as well as how (and if) apocrypha can stimulate an alternative view of art history.
From this perspective, the former period—namely, the unofficial art of the so-called Ukrainian Sixtiers generation—can be roughly described as a period known through works which could never have been exhibited under the political circumstances of their time. Nor could they have been acquired for museum collections or entered the private art market, which generally didn’t exist in the USSR. As a result, monographic collections of the works of a number of the generation’s key artists have been well preserved in family estates and can be accessed for research. Yet, they have never been seen as subjects of a shared public discourse and have never been viewed as particles of the same space of artistic thought and vision by an external audience. While a good number of artworks from the 1990s—the period inaugurating the recent history of state independence—have long been scattered across anonymous public collections inside and outside Ukraine, others have physically disappeared due to their ephemeral nature or have remained beyond public and scholarly physical reach. Yet, there are somewhat chaotic but curious private documentary archives that cover the first curatorial endeavors to exhibit 1990s art in various non-institutional contexts. Today, this period can be interpreted through the way the art was presented rather than through the actual works.
Documenting Russia’s war on Ukraine in art, 2014–2022
Svitlana Biedarieva
The tensions related to the political changes and the war in Ukraine have provided an important background for a shift towards documentary practices in Ukrainian art after 2014, including film, video work, reportage, artist’s diaries and photography. The presentation will focus on the processes of documentation and creation of artistic archives following the beginning of the war through the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia from 2014. The presentation explores the changes in documentation practices with the recent escalation of violence and the simultaneous transformation of artists’ perspectives on war atrocities, historical memory, trauma and decoloniality. The presentation draws on the interdisciplinary approaches of the film researcher Erika Balsom, the curator Okwui Enwezor and the artist Hito Steyerl to analyze the transformative role of documentary art as a form that emerges in a state of war-related violence and mirrors the effects of the political and economic crisis. It is based on research conducted for the book Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, edited by Biedarieva (ibidem Press, 2021). This recently published text is the first comparative volume to focus on the reflections of postcolonial transformation, contested history and resistance in Ukraine and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), examining how these topics have been documented and interpreted in the art of these countries.
Olga Balashova is an art historian, curator and critic and the head of the Museum of Contemporary Art NGO in Kyiv.
Lizaveta German is a curator and art historian as well as a co-founder of The Naked Room, Kyiv, and co-curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennial.
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian with a focus on contemporary Ukrainian art, decoloniality and Russia’s war on Ukraine, and is the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021(2021) and At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (2020).
Andrij Bojarov is a Ukrainian Estonian visual artist, independent curator and researcher who has, from the early 2000s, focused on exploring neglected histories of avant-garde art in the central European context, expanding and blending artistic and curatorial work with research practices.
Margaret Tali is an art historian and co-initiator of the project Communicating Difficult Pasts, which has brought together scholars and artists to revisit the 20th-century past in the broader Baltic region.
Lizaveta German and Olga Balashova are currently visiting researchers at EKA with support of the Estonian Research Council.
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
Exhibition Histories and the Roles of Documentation: Writing Ukrainian Art History from Scratch
Monday 30 January, 2023
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
This event will bring together current research on writing Ukrainian art history of the 20th century from scratch, since an art historical canon has not yet been produced for this period. Focusing on the Soviet and post-soviet eras, art historians Lizaveta German, Olga Balashova and Svitlana Biedarieva will present their ongoing research and reflect on how museums, exhibitions and artists have conceptualized these periods in art history writing until now. How has the National Art Museum of Ukraine—which is currently closed due to war—written and presented 20th-century Ukrainian art history? What can we learn from histories of exhibitions? What could parallels with other former post-Soviet countries, such as the Baltic States, contribute to revisiting this period? How is Ukraine to rewrite its art history after the war? Artist and researcher Andrij Bojarov will act as a respondent and Margaret Tali will moderate.This hybrid event will be hosted by the Institute of Art History in the Estonian Academy of Arts.
(Not) permanent exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine
Olga Balashova
At the time of the gallery’s closure, the exhibition on the second floor of the National Art Museum in Kyiv was dedicated to 20th-century Ukrainian art. In the absence of a written history of art, we were always referring to this second floor for an up-to-date understanding of this history. Despite this influential role, however, the second-floor exhibition responded to the influence of external contexts, with the core museum team changing it three times during the past 20 years. The first non-Soviet exhibition had a strong national idea behind it, with a central narrative built around the Ukrainian Academy of Art, created in 1917 in the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and artists who were looking for peculiarities of the “Ukrainian style.” In the second exhibition, created after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the narration was more open for international interpretation, with a central focus on the avant-garde. The most recent change took place in 2020, just months before Covid-19 hit, with the narration dedicated to the idea of Modernism. The exhibition contained not only positive storytelling but also critical views of historical events and related art movements. After the war, the second-floor exhibition should change again. So far, it is difficult to say in which direction it will unfold, but it needs to include expertise from previous exhibitions and to consider the new post-war context.
We learn what we exhibit what we learn: Looking at art history from the perspective of exhibitions
Lizaveta German
Offering another perspective on how a particular art historical narrative can be (re)written, this presentation will focus on exhibition history as a method and elaborate on cases from two periods in Ukraine: the 1960s and the 1990s. Based on long-term research on both periods, Lizaveta will discuss how one can navigate through gaps in knowledge and lack of physical material, as well as how (and if) apocrypha can stimulate an alternative view of art history.
From this perspective, the former period—namely, the unofficial art of the so-called Ukrainian Sixtiers generation—can be roughly described as a period known through works which could never have been exhibited under the political circumstances of their time. Nor could they have been acquired for museum collections or entered the private art market, which generally didn’t exist in the USSR. As a result, monographic collections of the works of a number of the generation’s key artists have been well preserved in family estates and can be accessed for research. Yet, they have never been seen as subjects of a shared public discourse and have never been viewed as particles of the same space of artistic thought and vision by an external audience. While a good number of artworks from the 1990s—the period inaugurating the recent history of state independence—have long been scattered across anonymous public collections inside and outside Ukraine, others have physically disappeared due to their ephemeral nature or have remained beyond public and scholarly physical reach. Yet, there are somewhat chaotic but curious private documentary archives that cover the first curatorial endeavors to exhibit 1990s art in various non-institutional contexts. Today, this period can be interpreted through the way the art was presented rather than through the actual works.
Documenting Russia’s war on Ukraine in art, 2014–2022
Svitlana Biedarieva
The tensions related to the political changes and the war in Ukraine have provided an important background for a shift towards documentary practices in Ukrainian art after 2014, including film, video work, reportage, artist’s diaries and photography. The presentation will focus on the processes of documentation and creation of artistic archives following the beginning of the war through the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia from 2014. The presentation explores the changes in documentation practices with the recent escalation of violence and the simultaneous transformation of artists’ perspectives on war atrocities, historical memory, trauma and decoloniality. The presentation draws on the interdisciplinary approaches of the film researcher Erika Balsom, the curator Okwui Enwezor and the artist Hito Steyerl to analyze the transformative role of documentary art as a form that emerges in a state of war-related violence and mirrors the effects of the political and economic crisis. It is based on research conducted for the book Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, edited by Biedarieva (ibidem Press, 2021). This recently published text is the first comparative volume to focus on the reflections of postcolonial transformation, contested history and resistance in Ukraine and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), examining how these topics have been documented and interpreted in the art of these countries.
Olga Balashova is an art historian, curator and critic and the head of the Museum of Contemporary Art NGO in Kyiv.
Lizaveta German is a curator and art historian as well as a co-founder of The Naked Room, Kyiv, and co-curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennial.
Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian with a focus on contemporary Ukrainian art, decoloniality and Russia’s war on Ukraine, and is the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021(2021) and At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (2020).
Andrij Bojarov is a Ukrainian Estonian visual artist, independent curator and researcher who has, from the early 2000s, focused on exploring neglected histories of avant-garde art in the central European context, expanding and blending artistic and curatorial work with research practices.
Margaret Tali is an art historian and co-initiator of the project Communicating Difficult Pasts, which has brought together scholars and artists to revisit the 20th-century past in the broader Baltic region.
Lizaveta German and Olga Balashova are currently visiting researchers at EKA with support of the Estonian Research Council.
Posted by Annika Toots — Permalink
25.11.2022
Seminar ‘Arts, Crafts, Affects’
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
Public seminar Arts, Crafts, Affects: Documenting HerStories and Worldbuilding at Estonian Academy of Arts and workshop by #FramedinBelarus
Participants: #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar), Katrin Mayer, Mare Tralla
Discussant: Katrin Kivimaa
Organized by Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts) & Ulrike Gerhardt (University of Potsdam)
Pre-registration is required. Please register here
Introduction
Handi/crafts have made a visible and present return in contemporary art. Many artists have found their tools of expression in traditional media which require special training and skills that are often passed down through generations. Yet these manual ancestral techniques have complex connotations which can be pinned down to their specific purposes; these range from spiritual to communicative, ecological to existential, and last but not least, economic needs.
The area of handi/craft and textile studies has long been neglected and marginalized in art history writing. Yet textile art often has a strong conceptual and epistemic grounding and the use of crafts and old techniques brings to the fore new possibilities of resistance and alternative worldbuilding. In various Eastern European countries between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, many communities were formed around textile art, transforming the genre into an experimental, progressive, and community-feeding way of art making (Hock 2013). More recently, over the last decade, textile, quilting and embroidery techniques have seen a renaissance that urges us to rethink this research field as an increasingly intertwined and interdisciplinary terrain of art, design, material culture and handi/craft.
Feminist art historians have suggested that embroidery and related media have provided women with weapons of resistance, offering a potential challenge to the boundaries between high and low, gender and class relations, and their intersections with identity, race and diasporic memories (Parker 1984, Smith 2014, Plummer 2022). In this context, embodied herstory can be understood as women’s history embedded and encrypted in gendered techniques, textures and patterns, through which this historical knowledge is being carried, lived and transformed through generations, continents and local contexts.
This public seminar will bring together the experiences and research strategies of two artists, Mare Tralla (London / Tallinn) and Katrin Mayer (Düsseldorf / Berlin), as well as one collaborative craftivist project, #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, Prague). They will articulate relationships between embodied herstories and their chosen material forms. Furthermore, they will consider handi/craft as a channel of alternative communication that has long been used for transmitting women’s struggles and hardships in patriarchally structured and capitalist societies. Central questions of the public seminar are: How can we explain this return of traditional and transgenerational body-related techniques in art in the age of surveillance capitalism and diaspora? What kinds of affects do these techniques and materials channel and carry? How do they allow us to document and connect different feminist struggles, and bring together contemporary and historical resistances? In the context of this public seminar, art historians Margaret Tali (Tallinn) and Ulrike Gerhardt (Potsdam) are specifically interested in handi/craft as a newly interpreted tradition and as material labor and a means to express and communicate the unspeakable, including its capacity to raise new questions about international solidarity, acts of resistance and mental health, and to offer alternative worldbuilding practices.
On November 26th a workshop by #FramedinBelarus will take place in collaboration with the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in the framework of the seminar.
Mare Tralla is an Estonian queer-feminist interdisciplinary artist and activist living in London.
Katrin Mayer is an artist based in Berlin. Her approach is a type of archeology of knowledge, she takes up gender political histories of a place and translates them into spatial-material formulations.
Rufina Bazlova is a Belarusian artist who works with the traditional folk embroidery as a medium to depict socio-political issues.
Sofia Tocar is a curator and cultural manager who works on artivist collaborative projects and documentary films in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
#FramedinBelarus is a social art project by Stitchit dedicated to political prisoners and organized by Stitchit art group. Stitchit was created in 2021 in Prague by Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, who invite different communities and individuals to join their creative process.
Katrin Kivimaa is an art historian, whose main areas of research are feminist art history, Estonian modern and contemporary art, historiography of Estonian art history, representation of women in art and visual culture.
Ulrike Gerhardt is a visual studies scholar with a focus on cultural memory practices in post-socialist art and artistic co-directress of the feminist video art platform D’EST.
Margaret Tali is an art historian and cultural theorist whose work deals with memory politics, art museums and curation of difficult histories in the Baltic context. She co-curates the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts”.
The event is supported by European Regional Development Fund, Estonian Academy of Arts and University of Potsdam.
Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink
Seminar ‘Arts, Crafts, Affects’
Friday 25 November, 2022
Institute of Art History and Visual Culture
Public seminar Arts, Crafts, Affects: Documenting HerStories and Worldbuilding at Estonian Academy of Arts and workshop by #FramedinBelarus
Participants: #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar), Katrin Mayer, Mare Tralla
Discussant: Katrin Kivimaa
Organized by Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts) & Ulrike Gerhardt (University of Potsdam)
Pre-registration is required. Please register here
Introduction
Handi/crafts have made a visible and present return in contemporary art. Many artists have found their tools of expression in traditional media which require special training and skills that are often passed down through generations. Yet these manual ancestral techniques have complex connotations which can be pinned down to their specific purposes; these range from spiritual to communicative, ecological to existential, and last but not least, economic needs.
The area of handi/craft and textile studies has long been neglected and marginalized in art history writing. Yet textile art often has a strong conceptual and epistemic grounding and the use of crafts and old techniques brings to the fore new possibilities of resistance and alternative worldbuilding. In various Eastern European countries between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, many communities were formed around textile art, transforming the genre into an experimental, progressive, and community-feeding way of art making (Hock 2013). More recently, over the last decade, textile, quilting and embroidery techniques have seen a renaissance that urges us to rethink this research field as an increasingly intertwined and interdisciplinary terrain of art, design, material culture and handi/craft.
Feminist art historians have suggested that embroidery and related media have provided women with weapons of resistance, offering a potential challenge to the boundaries between high and low, gender and class relations, and their intersections with identity, race and diasporic memories (Parker 1984, Smith 2014, Plummer 2022). In this context, embodied herstory can be understood as women’s history embedded and encrypted in gendered techniques, textures and patterns, through which this historical knowledge is being carried, lived and transformed through generations, continents and local contexts.
This public seminar will bring together the experiences and research strategies of two artists, Mare Tralla (London / Tallinn) and Katrin Mayer (Düsseldorf / Berlin), as well as one collaborative craftivist project, #FramedinBelarus (Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, Prague). They will articulate relationships between embodied herstories and their chosen material forms. Furthermore, they will consider handi/craft as a channel of alternative communication that has long been used for transmitting women’s struggles and hardships in patriarchally structured and capitalist societies. Central questions of the public seminar are: How can we explain this return of traditional and transgenerational body-related techniques in art in the age of surveillance capitalism and diaspora? What kinds of affects do these techniques and materials channel and carry? How do they allow us to document and connect different feminist struggles, and bring together contemporary and historical resistances? In the context of this public seminar, art historians Margaret Tali (Tallinn) and Ulrike Gerhardt (Potsdam) are specifically interested in handi/craft as a newly interpreted tradition and as material labor and a means to express and communicate the unspeakable, including its capacity to raise new questions about international solidarity, acts of resistance and mental health, and to offer alternative worldbuilding practices.
On November 26th a workshop by #FramedinBelarus will take place in collaboration with the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in the framework of the seminar.
Mare Tralla is an Estonian queer-feminist interdisciplinary artist and activist living in London.
Katrin Mayer is an artist based in Berlin. Her approach is a type of archeology of knowledge, she takes up gender political histories of a place and translates them into spatial-material formulations.
Rufina Bazlova is a Belarusian artist who works with the traditional folk embroidery as a medium to depict socio-political issues.
Sofia Tocar is a curator and cultural manager who works on artivist collaborative projects and documentary films in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
#FramedinBelarus is a social art project by Stitchit dedicated to political prisoners and organized by Stitchit art group. Stitchit was created in 2021 in Prague by Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar, who invite different communities and individuals to join their creative process.
Katrin Kivimaa is an art historian, whose main areas of research are feminist art history, Estonian modern and contemporary art, historiography of Estonian art history, representation of women in art and visual culture.
Ulrike Gerhardt is a visual studies scholar with a focus on cultural memory practices in post-socialist art and artistic co-directress of the feminist video art platform D’EST.
Margaret Tali is an art historian and cultural theorist whose work deals with memory politics, art museums and curation of difficult histories in the Baltic context. She co-curates the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts”.
The event is supported by European Regional Development Fund, Estonian Academy of Arts and University of Potsdam.
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