Category: Faculty of Art and Culture

Estonian Academy of Arts Grad Show TASE ’23
tase.artun.ee
01–17.06, open every day 12.00–18.00
Opening: 31.05, 16.00 at the Freedom Square and 19.00 at the Estonian Academy of Arts

Exhibition locations:
Freedom Square 8, Tallinn Art Hall, Artists Union’s studios, shop and bar rooms, Vent Space, Grafodrom and Experimental Printmaking Studio
Freedom Square 6, Tallinn Art Hall Gallery
Põhja pst 7, Estonian Academy of Arts (Architecture faculty’s grad works)
Lai 17, Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design yard (Graphic Design MA grad works, open until June 11)

On Freedom Square, we present the deconstructed fashion show You Have Only A Moment by Lab of Figurative Thought, followed by the announcements of the winners of the Young Artist and Young Applied Artist awards. Additionally, for the first time this year, the Young Designer Awards will be given out! Opening event continues at 19.00 at the TASE of Architecture, located in EKA!

TASE is the annual graduation show of the Estonian Academy of Arts. The exhibition presents graduation works of the Architecture, Art and Culture, Design, and Fine Arts faculties. Most works are exhibited in the Freedom Square buildings 8 and 6. The Architecture faculty’s graduation works are located at the Estonian Academy of Arts. The Graphic Design master’s works are exhibited in the yard of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (open until June 11).

tase.artun.ee opens with the exhibition on May 31!
Along with the works at the main exhibition, written theses are presented digitally on tase.artun.ee together with the PhD and Art and Culture works.

PROGRAMME

Grad Show TASE ‘23 grand opening
Fashion-performance You Have Only A Moment by Lab of Figurative Thought
Linda Mai Kari, Anita Kremm, Kristel Zimmer, Liisamari Viik
Supervisor: Ene-Liis Semper
31.05 at 16.00
Freedom Square

TASE of Architecture exhibition opening
31.05 at 19.00
EKA, Põhja pst 7

Theses defences
29.05–14.06
artun.ee/kaitsmised

TASE FILM
14.06 at 18.30
EKA, A101, Põhja pst 7

Guided tour by Anna-Liisa Villmann
15.06 at 15.00 in English
Starts at Tallinn Art Hall, Freedom Square 8
Guided tour by Gregor Taul (Faculty of Architecture’s graduation works)
16.06 at 12.00 in English
Starts at EKA lobby, Põhja pst 7

SATELLITE PROGRAMME

Fragment_21:12, Jewellery and Blacksmithing course works
Aleš Rezler, Elis Liivo, Lara Herrmann, Maarja Hallika, Madlen Hirtentreu, Madli Pajos, Helen Tiits, Paul Aadam Mikson
Supervisors: Eve Margus and Nils Hint
19.05–04.06, every day at 14.00–20.00
Tower of Old Town, Pikk Jalg 2

Unbounded Nature, Glass and Ceramics course works
Annali Kruusamägi, Annika Luhaäär, Erko Lill, Helen Tiits, Kätriin Reinart, Laura Stina Parri, Marta Vikentjeva, Sara Kyllönen, Valeria Poljakova, Õnne Paulus
19.05–18.06, every day at 9.00–19.00, opening 18.05 at 17.00
Tallinn Zoo, Paldiski mnt 146, entrance with the zoo ticket

Contemporary Drawing: Worlding in Layers, Contemporary Art course works
Triin Anijalg, Maria Hindreko, Sander Karjus, Kassandra Laur, Rebecca Norman, Helena Pass, Mia Rulli, Nana Schilf, Sirel Tammisto
Supervisor and curator: Britta Benno
23.05–17.06, Tue-Sat at 12.00–18.00, opening 22.05 at 17.00
EKA Gallery, Põhja pst 7

A pool with moderate temperature, Painting course works
Karola Ainsar, Luis Bruder, Maria Hindreko, Sander Karjus, Rebecca Norman, Daria Morozova, Elisa Margot Winters
Supervisors and curators: Mihkel Ilus, Tõnis Saadoja, Anna Škodenko
25.05–09.06.23, Mon-Fri at 12.00–18.00, opening 24.05 at 17.00
ARS project space, Pärnu mnt 154

Cherries once grew in my garden, Curatorial Studies and Contemporary art group exhibition
Gerda Hansen, Iryna Tanasiichuk, Siew Ching Ang, Mirjam Varik, Sarah Noonan
Curator: Ketlin Käpp
27–28.05 and 01–04.06 at 12.00–19.00 or by appointment 26.05–07.06
Uus Rada gallery, Raja 11a

In the shadow of tree being, Contemporary Art course works
Triin Anijalg, Maria Hindreko, Sander Karjus, Kassandra Laur, Rebecca Norman, Helena Pass, Mia Rulli, Nana Schilf, Sirel Tammisto
27.05–18.06, every day at 9.00–18.00, opening 26.05 at 17.00
Gallery of Tampere House, Jaani 4, Tartu

Textile Design from Fibre to Tech Solutions, Open Academy course works
Carolin Freiberg, Madde Jerbach, Piret Kuhlbars, Monika Lepik, Marit Lillenberg, Mari-Liis Lõppe, Tiia Nõmm, Heidi Renzer, Aleksander Väär
28.05–19.06, every day at 9.00–23.00
EKA, first floor glass corridor, Põhja pst 7

Creative Realities, Contemporary Art course works
Gerda Hansen, Mirjam Varik, Syed Sachal Rizvi, Eri Rääsk, Mari Steinberg, Anna-Liisa Kree, Mia Felić, Lara Žagar, Mohammadmojtaba Habibidavijani
Curator: Siim Raie
28.05–28.08, Fri-Sat at 12.00–18.00, opening 28.05 at 15.00
Villa Dombrovka, Karepa, Lääne-Virumaa

Three Drops of Blood, student exhibition
Agnes Milla Bereczki, Anu Kadri Uustalu, Lumimari, Kaur Joonas Karu, Kirke Mari Päll, Piret Potter, Ringo Roots, Triinu Väikmeri, Wing Kiu Mak, Denise Damaso, Camille Laurelli
31.05–14.06, Wed–Thu at 13.00–20.00, Fri-Sun at 11.00–18.00
Kalamaja Museum, Kotzebue 16, entrance with the museum ticket

Catarsis, Interior Architecture course works
Marleen Armulik, Katarina Ild, Hanna Kruusma, Laura Movits, Getter Pihlak, Elle Marie Randoja, Jaan Repnikov, Sven Samyn, Mirjam Vaht
Supervisor: Nele Tiidelepp
01–04.06, 24/7, performance on 31.05 at 19.00
Abandoned hut across from EKA main entrance, Põhja pst 2

Sense of Measure, Interior Architecture course works
Simon Baguette, Piret-Liis Carson, Päär-Joonap Keedus, Ann-Katriin Kelder, Anni Truu, Krete Tarkmees, Laura Maria Tõru, Viktoria Ugur, Mari Uibo, Eliisabet Valmas-Romanov
Supervisors: Roland Reemaa, Hannah Sergerkrantz
01–17.06, every day at 09.00-23.00, opening 31.05 at 18.00
EKA cafeteria, Põhja pst 7

Pretty Gimmicks, Charming Trinkets and All the Other Things, Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art course works
Sandra Ernits, Mara Kirchenberg, Rose Magee, Sarah Nõmm, Siim Preiman, Leonor Talefe
Curator: Anita Kodanik
3–11.06, Mon-Fri at 14.00–20.00, Sat-Sun at 12.00–18.00, opening 2.06 at 18.00
Last stop with the Kopli tram, at the kiosk next to Kopli 99b

Head organiser: Pire Sova
Assistant: Dana Lorên Vares
Exhibition design: Kaisa Maasik, Johannes Luik
Architecture exhibition design: Diana Drobot, Karl Erik Miller
Communication: Solveig Jahnke, Andres Lõo, Maarja Pabut
Graphic design: Birgita Siim, Agnes Isabelle Veevo, Aaro Veiderpass
Web coordinator: Kert Väljak
Web developer: Patrick Zavadskis
Install manager: Johannes Luik
TASE FILM: Maya Chaudhary, Terje Losvik
TASE shop: Sigrit Lõhmus

Supported by: Estonian Artists’ Association, Tallinn Art Hall, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Akzonobel, Punch

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+.

Online launch of Memory Studies journal Special issue “The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories”

Online launch on Facebook

29 September 17.00–18.30 EEST time, 16.00–17.30 CET time and 15.00–16.30 BST time
How are suppressed memories returning in Eastern Europe? What role does locality play in this process? How has this process been theorized and studied? And what kind of impact has Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine had to these articulations?

We are happy to invite you to the online launch of the recent Memory Studies journal Special Issue “The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories” that was published in June 2022! During the launch authors will briefly introduce their articles that were published in the special issue by focusing on the notion of locality, one of the main keywords in this issue. The response of memory scholar Natalija Arlauskaitė will follow.

The special issue is part of the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts” (2019–2023), a project initiated by Estonian Academy of Arts and Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and curated by Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska, who are also the editors of this Memory Studies Special issue. It grows out of the symposium Prisms of Silence organized in Tallinn, Estonian Academy of Arts in 2020.

Participants: Roma Sendyka (Jagiellonian University/Humboldt University), Asja Mandić (University of Sarajevo), Shelley Hornstein (York University), Mischa Twitschin (Goldsmiths, University of London), Ieva Astahovska (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts) and Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts). Natalija Arlauskaitė (Vilnius University) will act as a respondent.

Seminar Likeness in Difference. Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History 

Location: Estonian Academy of Arts, Kumu Art Museum
The working language at the seminar is English.

The seminar jointly organised by Estonian Academy of Arts and the Art Museum of Estonia brings together art researchers and curators from the three Baltic countries. The art history of the Soviet period serves as the point of departure for the seminar.

The regional, comparative, and international focus on an analysis of cultural practices and the respective institutional conditions establishes a basis for presentations on both shared and individual experiences, facilitates studying their causes and backgrounds, and helps to challenge the established narratives that we construct and reproduce about our own art histories and those of others.

The meanings and self-understanding of the Baltics as a geopolitical and cultural region have changed several times throughout history. In the field of culture, the frequent interaction between the three Baltic republics in the Soviet time was replaced by narratives of national independence in the 1990s. Because of the polarised world perception of the Cold War era, the three countries sought to define themselves through these narratives as part of either Eastern Europe or the West. Therefore, their interest in one another and the sense of shared regional characteristics remained in the background for quite some time. Nevertheless, the last few years have witnessed changes in several spheres (of culture), which have served as a launch pad for a more active and productive dialogue.

The two-day seminar has been divided into six panels. Topics vary from photography and studies of the heritage of women artists to analyses of Soviet exhibition activities and experimental art practices. Presentations will also deal with real and imaginary art collectives and pose future-oriented questions about potential trans-Baltic research topics, exhibition projects and new theoretical approaches that provide the necessary framework. The aim is to explore intersections between the participants’ research interests and activities, and to prepare a foundation for future cooperation projects.

‘Likeness in Difference – Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History’
Digital Thesis PDF

More info + the programme

Event on Facebook

Online discussion “Political emancipation of artistic practices in Ukraine” 

On 16 March at 18:00—20:00 EEST

The discussion will be live streamed on Facebook.

Join us for an online discussion, where artists, curators and researchers from Ukraine will talk about their works dealing with the entanglements of past and present, memory and cultural decolonization.

Participants: Svitlana Biedarieva, Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev, Nikolay Karabinovich, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Kateryna Botanova.

Moderators: Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi

Since 24 February, the world has desparately followed the war started by Russian president Putin in Ukraine justifying his aggressive invasion of the neighboring country with the need to “defend itself”, “denazify” Ukraine and “protect people who have been subject to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv”. In his hour-long televised speech announcing the attack, Putin manipulated notions of 20th century and especially WWII history, denied that Ukraine has ever had “real statehood,” and stated that the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.” The falsification of history used to invade an independent state, assert power, and justify his imperial megalomania, has suddenly transformed war in Europe from a thing of the past into an urgent catastrophe of unprecedented scale for millions of people in the 21st century.

The war in Ukraine began in 2014 with Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine. Already at that time, cultural resistance played an essential role alongside political protests. “What the artists did next to the barricades, sandwiches, hospitals, and Molotov cocktails was also a form of survival art, careful and scrupulous, often anonymous documentation of day-to-day activities. It was the art of action, of intervention in the physical and political reality to affect the symbolic one,” writes Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer Kateryna Botanova. “Artistic practices engaged and laid the ground for a different kind of society based on a common fight and, at the same time, care and solidarity.”

After the Maidan Uprising (2013), many contemporary Ukrainian artists continued to work with difficult, debated and traumatic issues, among them searches for identity, memory wars, changing geopolitical affiliations, “documenting and empowering the voices of the other, telling the stories of those unseen and disempowered, articulating history not as a politically curated linear narrative serving the purpose of nation-building but as a layered and conflicting array of forgotten stories.” Collecting, accumulating, and articulating these issues of society’s blind spots, these artists have been building a critical mass of knowledge that are essential in building “a political nation capable of embracing multiple identities, on the foundations of traumatic experiences of the Soviet collectivity and post-Soviet aggressive individuality, colonial recasting of identities and post-colonial national take-over, Soviet totalitarianism and post-Soviet authoritarianism,” as Kateryna Botanova sums up.

The discussion is part of the project “Reflecting Post-Socialism through Postcolonialism in the Baltics”, which analyses the imprints of post-socialism and post-colonialism in the region. The programme is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Riga in collaboration with Kumu Art Museum, and it is curated by Ieva Astahovska and Linda Kaljundi.

The event is supported by the Nep4Dissent Research Network, an EU COST Action Association.

 ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS

Olia Mykhailiuk, “rememberMINT”

“rememberMINT” is a subjective multidimensional collage of poetic lines, documentary interviews, and photo/video essays from Donechchyna and Luhanshchyna, and performance. It is an attempt to explore the mechanisms of memory. When there are no more words, movements remain. When movements stop — smell remains. When people die — grass sprouts.

Many people find it difficult to forget times of hardship. But my memory, with no effort made, does not return me to where it was scary. In August 2014, I happened to be in the occupied Alchevsk for a while. There grew a lot of mint in the yard. When the world narrowed down to one backyard… we brewed mint tea. Sometimes a sunbeam fell through the window in the ceiling into the glass cup. Mint helps some to calm down and reconcile with their own memories, while it helps others, those who tend to forget, to recall. But I do not aim to cure everyone. Everyone has his own grass.

Olia Mykhailiuk lives and works in Kyiv. In 2007, teamed up with other like-minded people and founded ArtPole Agency in order to unite artists working in various areas—painters, musicians, performers, writers. Developed the concepts and initiated several notable multidisciplinary projects, both Ukrainian and international. She continues to work on the development of interaction between various art disciplines, particularly performance, music, literature and video art. In performance, she often tries to study the primal senses of words by referring to her own system of emotional signs and symbols.

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev

Cultural decolonisation in our practice

In our practice, we have been consistently working on establishing a discursive space that would enable the recontextualisation of cultural and historical processes in the context of the decolonisation of Ukrainian culture from the dominant external imperial narrative. We will show several examples of our works that use these optics while looking at the Ukrainian past and present.

Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev are artists from Ukraine, currently based in Poznań, Poland.

Lia is also cultural anthropologist and essayist. The primary areas of her research are trauma, post-memory and agency of vulnerable groups. She works in a wide range of media, including photography, installations and textile sculptures, and has exhibited her works in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.

Andrii is also photography researcher and curator. He has degrees in IT and Graphic Design. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma and identity—both personal and collective. He works in various media and has exhibited his works in Ukraine, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

Lada Nakonechna,
“Disciplined Vision”

“Disciplined Vision” is the title of an exhibition of Lada Nakonechna in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU). Looking at artifacts of the Socialist Realist tradition from the NAMU’s archives, library, and collection as testimony, it proposes examining the role of art in shaping judgments about history. For they are the shared aspect of culture that determines the present.
The paradox of the visual culture of the Soviet Union lies in the implicit violence in the affirmative, positive images that spring from general humanist values (emancipation, mutual respect, love for one’s native land, etc.). Expositions of Ukrainian Museums mainly continue chronological unfolding of the history of art that played a role in constructing unyielding logic of history. Disciplined Vision examines how the representation of Ukraine in Socialist Realist tradition still forms the consciousness of people.

Lada Nakonechna is an artist and researcher. In addition to her personal practice, she is involved in a number of group projects and collectives. She is a member of the R.E.P. group (since 2005), part of the curatorial and activist union Hudrada (since 2008), cofounder of Method Fund (2015) and co-curator of its educational and research programs. In 2016 she also joined the new editorial board of the Internet journal of art, literature and politics Prostory.net.ua. Nakonechna’s artworks, which often take the form of installations incorporating drawing, photographs and text, call attention to methods of recognition and reveal the internal aspects of visual and verbal structures. Her latest artistic investigations are based on artistic and archival materials related to the art of Socialist Realism—understood as a “method” and institutional and educational system. In 2014 she received the Kazimir Malevich Art Award.

Nikolay Karabinovych, “In the beginning there was the rhythm”

Brief history of Ukraine 1991–2021.

A few stories, few videos and 3 artworks.

Nikolay Karabinovych lives and works in Kyiv and Brussels. The artist works in a variety of media, including video, sound, text, and performance. In 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Special Prize. From 2019 he is studying at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2017, Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odessa Biennale. His work has been shown at M HKA, Antwerp, PinchukArtCentre Kyiv, Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, Odessa.

Svitlana Biedarieva

Viewing postcolonial entanglements in Ukraine through Latin American lens: Beyond “At the Front Line”

My presentation will focus on linking points between Ukrainian and Mexican art scenes. It will explore the notions of ambiguity and hybridity in the two regional contexts and will take on two different models of colonial and decolonial processes. I will compare the questions of (post)memory, memory wars, violence, and historical trauma in the discussion of art projects.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator with an interest in Eastern European and Latin American art. Her edited books include “Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021” (ibidem Press 2021), “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (Mexico City: Editorial 17, 2020, co-edited with Hanna Deikun). Biedarieva’s papers have been published by, among other outlets, Space and Culture (SAGE), Art Margins Online (MIT Press), and Revue Critique d’Art (University of Rennes 2). She obtained her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 2020.

Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and is an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival. She was a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art, in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on art and culture.

The exhibition “Open Windows” will reopen on the windows of the Library of EKA on February 21, at 4 pm.

Through the exhibition of EKA windows, different specialities of EKA introduce their most outstanding projects and the latest creations of students. The exhibition can be viewed on the windows of the EKA Library on Põhja pst and Kotzebue streets and will remain open until March 14.

Specialities represented: Installation and Sculpture, Room Design, Product and Environmental design, Visual Communication, Photography, Jewellery and Blacksmithing, Scenography, Fashion Design, Textile Design, Accessory Design, Graphics, Graphic Design, Animation, Ceramics, Industrial and Digital Product Design, Glass, Architecture, Interior Design, Painting, Art and Visual Culture, Cultural Heritage and Conservation

The exhibition of open windows of EKA made its debut in 2021 and received a warm welcome from those interested in art and art education. The Estonian Academy of Arts, located on the edge of Kalamaja, will once again enliven the city’s cultural landscape at street level. Get with it! 

Estonian Academy of Arts is launching a new event series called ROHEKA which promotes green lifestyle and sustainable development topics in EKA. The series consists of one-day events taking place once a month, focussing on important topics like waste management, sustainable learning, community, work environment, energy efficiency, etc.

The first event of ROHEKA series will take place this Wednesday, September 1, when EKA will introduce its sustainability principles and share tips for sorting physical and digital waste.

The day starts at 10am with presentations, continues with a playful online waste-quiz and ends with collective cleaning in EKA building. The first half of the event will take place digitally and will be broadcast on EKA TV. Collective cleaning, starting at 12.30, takes place all over the house. We’ll gather in EKA courtyard.

PROGRAMME

10.00 Introduction of the ROHEKA event series (EKA TV)

10.15 Lecture “Green EKA” (EAA TV)

11.00 Introduction of the RING application (EKA TV)

11.15 PAUSE

11.30 Waste quiz – registration form HERE. EKA merch as a prize! (registered users will be sent a link to the online quiz)

12.00 Lecture “Digital Waste” (EKA TV)

12.30 Collective cleaning of EKA building under the guidance of environmental specialist Johanna Vahtra. (We’ll gather in the courtyard)

Ingrid Ruudi, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Art History and Visual Culture, will defend her thesis Spaces of the Interregnum. Transformations in Estonian Architecture and Art, 1986–1994 („Ruumiline interreegnum. Muutused Eesti arhitektuuris ja kunstis 1986–1994“) on the 18th of December 2020 at 17.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defence will also be live-streamed on the following link: https://tv.artun.ee/doktoritoodekaitsmised

The defense will be held in English.

Supervisor: Prof. Andres Kurg (Estonian Academy of Arts)

External reviewers: Prof. Vladimir Kulić (Iowa State University), Dr. Johannes Saar (University of Tartu)

Opponent: Prof. Vladimir Kulić

Conventionally, the Estonian architecture history tends to address the late Soviet postmodernism up to the mid-1980s, and then resume with buidlings of the independent republic from the mid-1990s. The period in between constitutes a kind of gap, and indeed, there was a remarkable decline in building activities. Nevertheless, it was a highly loaded period of active production of new social space, establishment of public sphere and public space, and rethinking of the relationship between built environment and its subject. Those processes continue to have a noted impact on our spatial and social environment up to this day. The doctoral thesis challenges this conventional periosidation of the history of Estonian architecture and art, focusing on the era between two more or less clearly defined social formations – the interregnum of 1986–1994 which must not be treated as a temporary transition on the way to ’normalcy’ but as a specific period of abundant creativity worthwile in its own right. During this dynamic era certain late Soviet practices continued while accelerated appropriation and interpretation of new western impulses took place. The transition from one spatial regime to the other did not happen as a clear and definitive cut but rather as a process that was hybrid, fluid and uneven. The dissertation demonstrates how the production of new space took place on various interconnected levels: built and planned, dreamt and imagined, performed and enacted, as well as theorised and reflected.

The monographic thesis encompasses five loosely connected case studies. The chapter Unbuilt space analyses the most vivid examples of the large amount of unrealised architecture projects and urban designs, focusing on aspects such as production of new public space, identity building and the architects’ agency. Utopian space looks at artist Tõnis Vint’s vision of a new high-rise urban settlement on Naissaar island near Tallinn, proposed as a free trade zone, considering the case in the context of international economic developments and New Age ideologies. Discursive space focuses on the two first instances of Nordic-Baltic Architecture Triennials as attempts at establishing an international platform for theoretical exchange, demonstrating the different expectations of the Nordic and Baltic participants and diverging positions regarding the issue of regional architecture  in the global context. Performative space investigates the architecture and performance practices of Group T as an interconnected phenomenon, aiming at establishing temporary counterpublic spaces and an alternative concept of community to counteract the nationalistic social tendencies of the era. Institutional space looks at the renovation process of the functionalist Tallinn Art Hall as a conceptual processual work of art by George Steinmann, demonstrating the artist’s agency in establishing international transdisciplinary networks and reconceptualisating the artspace as a multivalent discursive space. The chapter also addresses the project’s inevitable entanglement with certain neocolonialist allusions and the restitutional mentality of the era, fuelled by the desire for rebirth of the pre-war republic.

The case studies demonstrate that the Estonian architecture culture from the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s was far from in hibernation: quite the contrary, it was unprecedentedly vigorous and operated in active dialogue with other processes in the production of space for the new society. Making use of the radical openness of the era, the architecture of the interregnum built upon the previous late Soviet experience and realised some of its desires. It also tested out new impulses connected with the opening up of the society. The experiments stemmed from a belief in creative individuals’ essential role in imagining future space and their right to participate in the public sphere, thus helping to keep open the discussions of possibilities. The spaces thus produced might have been intangible but they were nevertheless vital in shaping the social life of the interregnum.

Members of the Defence Council: Prof. Krista Kodres, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Virve Sarapik, Dr. Anneli Randla, Prof. Juhan Maiste, Prof. Marek Tamm, Prof. Tõnu Viik

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

Kristina Jõekalda, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Art History and Visual Culture, will defend her thesis “German Monuments in the Baltic Heimat? A Historiography of Heritage in the “Long Nineteenth Century”” (“Saksa mälestised ja Balti Heimat. Pärandi historiograafia “pikal 19. sajandil””) on the 20th of November 2020 at 11.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

Up to 30 people from EKA can participate on-site, please register HERE
The defence will also be live-streamed on the following link: https://tv.artun.ee/doktoritoodekaitsmised

Live-stream viewers can submit their questions HERE

The defense will be held in English.

Supervisors: Prof. Krista Kodres (Estonian Academy of Arts), Prof. Ulrike Plath (Tallinn University)

External reviewers: Prof. Jörg Hackmann, Dr. Ants Hein

Opponent: Prof. Jörg Hackmann (University of Szczecin; University of Greifswald)

In Estonian humanities the Baltic Germans (Deutschbalten) are mostly addressed as a historical phenomenon, despite the fact that the architecture that they left behind from medieval and later times still continues to shape the local environment of the present. How did the Baltic Germans project the image they held of their past onto their goals for the present and the future? How did that path relate to the culture of the Germans living elsewhere in Eastern Europe? What new research prospects are there available to be taken up today? This transdisciplinary and transnational dissertation looks at the representations of Baltic German identity that expressed themselves in art historiography and in heritage preservation from late eighteenth century until the interwar era. This period witnessed not just the rise of nationalism, but also the emergence of the concept of heritage as a culturally valuable entity, the formation of the humanities and of the idea of civil society. Attitudes to monuments and historiography are reflections on political and social processes. Nevertheless, not much research exists to date on the history of art history and heritage preservation taken as a combined topic, nor yet on the popular dimension of these fields, beyond academic circles. This thesis seeks to show that, rather than leaning exclusively on Estonian nationalism, the idea of the existence of a national heritage goes back to the patriotic movement of the Baltic Germans, which had also struggled to create and preserve the symbols of a glorious past against the background of German identity. This is the first attempt made within Estonian humanities to research the challenges that heritage studies – a field heavily tilted toward contemporary concerns – have posed for the discipline of art history. The analysis also has many overlaps with nationalism studies and German diaspora studies, the key concepts being ʻheritageʼ, Heimat and ʻnationʼ, all seen as constructs. What is in focus here is not the local architectural monuments themselves, but the process of turning them into heritage. Ideological standpoints are more fully articulated in the handbooks and widely disseminated texts that hence provide the main sources for this work, especially texts relating to cultural memory, identity and belonging. Addressing various media by which (national) heritage is constructed – in image, word and practice – this dissertation constitutes a critical historiography of texts on the history and protection of local architecture, focusing for the most part on the contribution of the learned societies and of Wilhelm Neumann (1849–1919). The dissertation therefore looks at discussions on monuments through various visions of continuity and discontinuity, of similarity and difference, of localism and universalism, of nationalism and internationalism, of Balticness and Germanness (and Estonianness), of scholarship and popularisation.

Members of the Defence Council: Prof. Andres Kurg, Dr. Anu Allas, Prof. Virve Sarapik, Dr. Anneli Randla, Prof. Juhan Maiste, Prof. Marek Tamm, Prof. Tõnu Viik

Please find the PhD thesis HERE