Category: New Media

“Sancho Panza, from a different vantage point, divides the world into those, like himself, who were born to sleep and those, like his master, who were born to watch.” Jonathan Crary, “24/7. Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep” (2013), p. 26.

Now open in Vent Space: “A Practice for Surrender” by Tõnis Jürgens.

A stage set for sleep. A butaforic space and light installation, evoking false insights, the liminality and artificiality of slumber, and crabs’ eyes.

The exhibition is part of Jürgens’ ongoing artistic research project at the art & design department of the doctoral school of EKA, dealing with sleep surveillance and digital trash.

Open from 20.–30.09.

Every day at 1–7 pm.

Graphic design: Laura Merendi

Thanks kindly to: Aadu Lambot, Hans-Gunter Lock, Joosep Ehasalu, Kulla Laas, Liisi Kõuhkna, Nabeel Imtiaz

Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts

Tõnis Jürgens (b. 1989) is a projectionist, writer, and void enthusiast. He holds a bachelor’s degree in culture theory from Tallinn University and a master’s in new media from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). Further, he’s spent a year studying at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague (UMPRUM).

Sten Saarits’ solo exhibition ‘Petrified’ open at Vaal Gallery.  The exhibition is curated by Eva Mustonen and remains open until 10th of September, Tue–Fri 12–6pm, Sat 12–4pm.

‘Petrified’ centers around the sense of detachment from the world and oneself, using familiar architectural forms from the city streets. Inside the exhibition space is created a backdrop of a nighttime cityscape, where the common feelings of this time and age such as anxiety and fear of the unknown are revealed in a new light.
The stillness of the night is a good time for gathering your thoughts, but it is also the time when illuminated screens and artificial lights compete most brutally for our attention.
The video and photo installations of the exhibition are defined by a continuous but aimless movement, where the characters in the videos or the motion mechanisms of the works themselves have succumbed to the endless loop.
The inability to turn around or to actively intervene in one’s surroundings brings attention to irrelevant details, where it falls into the folds of perception, like the blind but all-seeing eye. 

Sten Saarits (b 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist who works mainly with time based media. Saarits’ art practice, which emphasizes repetitions of themes and situations, is characterized by a drive to turn mental spaces into material landscapes to depict the states of mind, typical for the daily grind in a modern society, in a new form. Saarits has studied sound art (MA) and installation and sculpture (BA) in Estonian Academy of Arts. During the years of 2013–2014 he studied in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where his curriculum focused on sound art, performance and film. Saarits has shown his work in Estonia, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, France and Lithuania.

www.stensaarits.ee

Graphic design: Kert Viiart

EKA New Media has been enlisted as an educational partner in this years Pixelache festival online event #Burn_Slow

Events are starting this Friday and Saturday with #Burn_Slow, a series of talks and workshops organized by Liepaja University MP Lab. These events are free and specially made for students. Students varying from Fine Art to Design are welcome, as well as others interested. 

“Burn_Slow: Nordic-Baltic Sound and Radio Art for Mental Well-being” is an international audio art project which unites sound artists and art students from Nordic-Baltic region exploring mental ecology in times of crisis and social seclusion, via online lectures, skill-sharing, discussion and innovative networked audio performances.

Website

Facebook event

YouTube live stream for artist talks and discussion

Application form for attending workshops

Portfolio Café is structured around one-on-one meetings that take place between local and international fine arts and design professionals and graduate students. Each meeting takes place about 50 minutes. During Portfolio Café sessions students introduce themselves and their work, and experts share their observations, provide recommendations ask, questions etc. After the first scheduled conversation student moves on to the next selected expert they have signed up for.
All Portfolio Café meetings are in English.

Portfolio Café is a collaborative project between the Faculty of Fine Arts and Faculty of Design.

Registration:
Portfolio Café invites all fine art and design students from the MA level to participate. The spots are limited and participants will be chosen according to the provided portfolios. The reviews are considered as part of the studies and you may receive credits for participating (3 ECTS).

To apply, please fill our this registration form before April 12, 2021 and upload your portfolio.

Find detailed information about our experts in the registration form.

Portfolio Café is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

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/

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

From 1 February the exhibition “Ocean Botlights” by Taavi Suisalu will be open at the Tallinn City Gallery. Suisalu, who tackles the relationship between people and technology, here explores light – simultaneously a giver of life and a conveyer of information, spreading out in a web of rays the breadth of a hair at the bottom of the oceans, where no other light can reach. The exhibition is curated by Siim Preiman.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, 31 January at 6pm and will remain open until 31 March.

Taavi Suisalu (b. 1982) is an artist, who seems to be constantly flickering between different times, simultaneously looking into the ancient past and the future just out of reach. It seems that this tension between eras is an activating force in his work. At the exhibition “Ocean Botlights”, light is what brings together the ancient and the modern, simultaneously one of the prerequisites for life on Earth as well as the conveyer of information along the super-fast fibre optic cables that cover the world like a spider’s web.

“Light is not just a condition necessary for life, but the infrastructure of our information society also relies on it – the internet relies in large part on the relay of information in the form of light along fibre optic cables. Along with productivity, cheapness and user-friendliness, the internet has helped the mass growth of information and communication technology (ICT) in society. As a result, almost all important products and services in first-world countries depend on ICTs,” Oliver Laas writes in the accompanying booklet.

The installations on show at the exhibition bring together the characteristics of light both ancient and new. Suisalu seems to be trying to capture continuity in his work and is searching for something with a longer perspective. “Although how people behave and think acclimatises to new technologies quickly, the changes in sensations, physiology and mentality are more long-term,” he writes in the accompanying text. It seems that Suisalu is striving towards such a level of standardisation that would allow us to overcome the seemingly accelerating and unstoppable fervour for technological development.

Taavi Suisalu activates peripheral areas using technology, sound and performance based art as tools for an intriguing coming together. His work is inspired by the way contemporary society relates to technology and its influence on how a social being behaves, senses and thinks. In his work, he also connects cultural phenomena with contemporary cultural practices and approaches that are more traditional. His recent solo-exhibitions include “Landscapes and Portraits” (Hobusepea Gallery, 2017) and “I Am NOT Sitting in a Room” (Draakoni Gallery, 2015).

We would like to thank: Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Estonian Artists’ Association, Veinisõber, AkzoNobel, WRO Art Center, EMAP / EMARE, Creative Europe, Tartu Valgus, KOOR Wood, Kadri Toom, Indrek Tali, Mihkel Säre, Tõnu Narro, John Grzinich

Tallinn City Gallery (Harju 13) is open Wednesday till Sunday 12–7pm. Entrance is free.

Katrin Enni will open her solo exhibition “Almost Parallel” at Vent Space project space on Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 6pm.

“Almost Parallel” is an audiovisual installation. The inspiration for creating
the installation came from a romantic
sci-fi fantasy about lonely robots drifting around in space and looking for companions. During the process, while investigating the physicality of sound and how materials resonate, the robots were born with bodies looking like large metal cones. At the same time they also function as large vibrating speakers. The final result is a cosmic sound installation, involving sound, noise, light, movement, algorithms and also randomness.

A live performance by Katrin Enni
will take place on Thursday, January 10
at 7pm. Various soundscapes that are created specially for this sound installation will be presented. Entrance is free.

The exhibition is open daily from
1pm to 7pm and will remain open
until January 11, 2019.

Katrin Enni is currently studying at the Master programme of Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (where she also obtained her BA in 2018 in the department of Sculpture and Installation). She has created sound installations from electronic components, micro motors, found objects, ready-mades and industrial materials. “Almost Parallel” is her first solo exhibition.

System & Error

Exhibition: 23rd February / 4th March

Off-season Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM),

Opening Party: 18:00 / Friday 23rd

Ordinary life is made of eventful junctures, constant surprises and adjustments that go beyond all attempts to rigorously plan and design things. Infrastructures crack, smart phones make errors, printers print funny stuff, states fail and the financial market fall into cyclical crises; Also our body can react strangely. All these failures have an aura though: they do not occur twice in the same way and produce the adrenaline of edges. Paraphrasing Tolstoy, all the families are successful alike, but failed in their own unique way.

The artworks of this exhibition have been produced honouring the meaning of collaboration, since the groups of artists are composed with MA students from Aalto University and from the Estonian Academy of Arts, which adds to the exhibition a reflection about the risks, potentials and failures of cooperation between artists and between institutions. For the exhibition, students have engaged with how misbehaviours and things out of place constitute a terrain of experimentation, addressing different meanings of systems, randomness and dead ends, and facing questions such as:

• Do failures need an excuse?
• What does an error look like?
• What is the benefit of being part of a system?
• How much tolerance for the non-perfect do our societies have?
• Is a list of failures more revealing than a list of successes?
• Are gaps, holes, tricksters and hackers part of the system or the error?
• In which ways systems are organised by defining some practices as normal and some others as deviant (noise, dirt, queer…)?
• And does anything right might come from pursuing wrong practices?

Curator: Francisco Martínez

Graphic designer Heleliis Hõim

Artists:

• Madis Kurss & Martha Jessen
• Mirka Sulander & Elina Saat
• Hanna Perälä & Heleliis Hõim
• Sandra Schneider, Anu Jalas & Kadi Reintamm
• Uzair Amjad, Aman Askarizad & Aap Jaapan
• Ana Fernandes & Mark Antonious Puhkan
• Solveig Lill & Tuomas Lehtomaa
• Elham Rahmati, Danai Anagnostou & Heidi Paju