Category: Contemporary Art

Composing the Sublime: Rituals in Electroacoustic Music
Can electroacoustic music concerts become places of ritual?

Open lecture on Monday, 9.03. at 16:00, room A302

In this talk, Yiorgis Sakellariou (GR) will explore this question that marked the beginning of an analytical and practical research of the social existence of electroacoustic music and the sublime experience of acousmatic listening.

The research expands the framework of sonic arts and suggests methods for further theoretical interrogation and artistic practice. Having taken a qualitative methodological approach, the research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and used digital sound technology to embody the evocative and transcendental atmosphere of religious rituals in electroacoustic music concerts.

The artistic outcomes (published compositions and public performances) focus on the communal experience of listening and the communication between composer, audiences, performance spaces and the rest of the physical and supernatural world.

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a composer of experimental and electroacoustic music. Since 2003, he has been active internationally being responsible for solo and collaboration albums, having composed music for short films and theatrical performances, leading workshops and ceaselessly performing his music around the globe.

His practice focuses on the communal experience of listening and the communication between composer, audiences, performance spaces and the rest of the physical and supernatural world. He only performs in absolute darkness, fostering an all-inclusive and profoundly submerging sonic experience.

He completed his PhD at Coventry University (April 2018). His research drew inspiration from ethnomusicological and anthropological contexts and explored the sonic symbolism and socio-aesthetic settings in ecstatic religious rituals in relation to field recording, electroacoustic composition and acousmatic performance.

Yiorgis Sakellariou is a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research Centre, the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association and the Lithuanian Composers Union. Since 2004 he has curated the label Echomusic. He is currently a lecturer at VDU and an assistant lecturer at LMTA.

https://mechaorga.wordpress.com/

What connects Toblerone to Bill Gates, waterbeds, orange juice, Coca-Cola, the Virgin Mary, and Immanuel Kant? Olof Olsson takes you on a mind-bending trip of comic infotainment.

Driving the Blues Away is an info comedy racing through the histories of art, chocolate, cola-drinks, personal computers, philosophy, and theology. Along the way there’s a romantic melodrama – where Olof’s almost partner is seduced by an ultra famous software entrepreneur in the tax-free shop of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport. The whole thing is steeped in Olof’s twisted love of language: “Our language and the world are not always hooked up one-to-one. It’s a mess, and that makes us nervous. But it’s a funny mess.”

Olof Olsson is a product of the charter tourism of the 1960s. His Dutch catholic mother and Swedish social democrat father met on Mallorca. In his youth Olof made attempts in journalism, documentary photography, and as a radio disc jockey. After having studied languages, philosophy and translation theory, Olof studied visual art at Konstfack in Stockholm and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Between 1992 and 2007, Olof mainly made conceptual art. Since 2007, Olof has been focusing on spoken performances – like lectures, speeches, and info comedy.

Olof Olsson’s Driving the Blues info comedy will be in English and is part of the EKA Contemporary Art MA (MACA) programme’s public lecture series ART TALKS.

Everybody is welcome to join!

Rumour and Justice: A Troubled Relationship

Rumours are “unconfirmed information” (Weingart 2006). Like images, they share a troubled relationship with law (see Vismann 2008) and justice. Since Virgil’s ancient epic Aeneid, “Fama” has been regarded as the allegory of both fame and rumour. Depicted as a trumpeting angel-monster with countless tongues and mouths, the figure is in urgent need of a gender critique. Unsurprisingly, Fama is an unwanted actor before court, for embodying hearsay and mediality.

In her public lecture, Lisa Stuckey philosophically addresses jurisdiction and “rumourological” (Ronell 1986) phenomena in contemporary art and culture. The legal-artistic engagements of Forensic Architecture will inform an exploration into how the political metaphor of the “leak” functions: where do forensic and poetic investigations into voids connect, where diverge? In this context, Stuckey also reflects the artistic-research methodology of her project Fama facing Trial: Words as Currency.

Lisa Stuckey is a media artist and cultural theorist. She is about to complete her doctoral thesis on contemporary art and jurisdiction at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She holds a MA in Art and Communication with emphasis on the History and Theory of Art and a MFA in Media Art. 2018/2019 she was Junior Fellow / Abroad of IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies, through which she undertook research stays at the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. 2019/2020 she is associate member of the Graduiertenkolleg Configurations of Film at Goethe University Frankfurt.

More info: lisastuckey.net

The talk is in English and is part of the EKA Contemporary Art MA (MACA) programme’s public lecture series ART TALKS.

Everybody is welcome to join!

Flo Kasearu (b. 1985) :

I was born in Soviet Union but grew up in Estonia. I studied painting (2004-2008) and photography (2008-2013) at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
In 2006-2007 I was an exchange student at the Rebecca Horn studio at Berlin University of the Arts, where I started doing performance and video art. I work and live in Flo Kasearu House Museum in Tallinn, Estonia.

The nature of my works is seasonal and explorative, in that each project begins as an open-ended game. No favourite theme or a medium. I am interested in grassroots level, private and public space, vertical vs horizontal relationships, monumental vs unstable. I value irony more than aesthetics. So far I have played with private and public space, freedom, economic depression, patriotism and nationalism, domestic violence…

More info: www.flokasearu.eu

The talk is in English and is part of the EKA Contemporary Art MA (MACA) programme’s public lecture series ART TALKS.

Everybody is welcome to join!

On this Wednesday, 16th October at 4 PM in room A501 takes place the 7th Open Seminar of the Faculty of Fine Arts. This time we are visited by Canadian multimedia artist Tyler Tekatch. The seminar will be held in English.

Hamilton-based artist Tyler Tekatch creates work in film, video and installation that explores perception and the religious imagination. Influenced by Canadian filmmaker/artists such as Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Jack Chambers and Bruce Elder, Tekatch takes an experimental approach to media. He has expanded his practice to combine film and video with emerging technologies, such as projection mapping and interactivity. He has held two solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Ottawa Art Gallery, and has screened films at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Canadian National Film Board, and internationally.

https://tytekatch.com

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Self-Care” on Friday, October 11 at 6 PM at EKA Gallery. Participating artists: Andre Joosep Arming, Hanna-Liisa Lavonen, Carol Katkoff, and Mari-Liis Sõrg. The curators of the exhibition are Kleer Keret Tali and Hanna-Liisa Lavonen.

Taking care of oneself could be an activity that you apply consciously to your everyday. For that, you take time out of or contrive that with your daily activities. Despite different interpretations of the word compound (self-care), it still symbolizes the freedom and assured well being of an individual. 

Four artists are deciphering the meaning of self-care and how they vary in different practices coming from the individual points of view. Self-care can be external and internal; mental and physical. Through the prism of being an artist, they are approaching this topic from different sides. 

The exhibition will remain open until November 2 and is part of the Tallinn Photomonth satellite programme.

Thanks to: Andrus Arming, Silvia Sosaar, Sarah Elizabeth Johnston, Hans-Gunter Loch, Aksel Haagensen, Mart Veelmaa, Kati Jõevere, Jana Niglas, Priit Luik, Katre Lehtpuu, Raner Piibur, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo, Anne Eelmere, Jaan August Viirand, Annabel Konga, Kuldar Nool, Helle-Ly Tomberg, Maria Kurm, Kalle Tali

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia

Silvia Sosaar would like to request the honour of your presence at the opening of her exhibition “Unconscious Patient” on 31 May 2019 at EKKM at 5pm (Põhja pst 35, Tallinn). The exhibition is on view until August 30th 2019.

How to prepare, mobilise and attune a person to experience contemporary art?
Smells are the trigger of contextual memory. Smells are a central element of sensory processes, which are necessary for the development of a functioning memory and based on which the contextual memory is able to conjure up the past. The contextual memory functions when we associate a space with an event (because something once took place in that space) or associate a song with a special person, enabling us to be able to access a past reality once again – the same applies to the sense of smell. Smells affect moods and emotions. The aroma installation at the Showcase Gallery is open to visitors throughout the summer and will form the “basecamp” for the aroma-tours/performances that will take place in June, July and August in Tallinn’s urban space and in large shopping centres, Smell-O-Rama film screenings and a lecture on aroma marketing. Dates to be finalised.

In addition to the events at the Showcase Gallery, with the aroma installation in collaboration with EKKM café, the artist would like to direct visitors’ attention to the fact that many Estonian companies use aroma machines in their work environments daily – dentists, mini golf courses, spas, hotels, clothing stores, etc. across the whole of Estonia and the world, as well as the Estonian National Museum all implement the “scent marketing” service. Normally, people are not aware of this or don’t even notice that something is different; that their state of mind, desires and the most primary levels of their moods are being manipulated. This is also used in the military industries of various countries, where those entering war-zones are acclimatised with synthetic analogies to the smell of burning human flesh, spent gunpowder, sewage with the aim of softening the effects of the trauma awaiting them.

Silvia Sosaar (born 1979) is an interdisciplinary artist living in Tallinn. She works with photography, video, performance and installation. The main focus of her interest is the person – tackling the encounters between artist and subjects. Sosaar graduated from the photography department (BA) at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2017. In the same year, she started her master’s studies in contemporary art, faculty of fine arts at EKA, where she is presently studying. Sosaar is a member of the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU).
In addition to Estonia, she has participated in group exhibitions in London, Milan and Madrid. Sosaar’s short film “Finding Elvis” participated at the “60 Second Intl. Film Festival” in Islamabad.
Her first solo exhibition “Shiny Shoe Salon” took place in 2017 at EKA Gallery in Tallinn.
She is one of the co-founders of ;paranoia publishing and has participated at numerous performances connected to presentations of publications.  She is a founding member of skaala publishing.

The artist would like to thank the department of photography at Estonian Academy of Arts, EKKM Café, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, aroomiturundus.ee, Marten Esko, Aksel Haagensen, Cloe Jancis, Marge Monko, Immanuel Poltimäe, Eve Roosna, Hanno Soans.