Navigating an Age of Uncertainty through Architectural Research

Open Lecture by:
Rolf Hughes, Professor of Artistic Research, Estonian Academy of the Arts/Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

&

Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Experimental Architecture Group, Newcastle University

This lecture describes the framework and strategies for engaging an age of uncertainty through artistic and design-led research. The presentation will ask how we will be inhabiting and making spaces at times of radical change. Hughes and Armstrong will provide examples from architectural research, address the value of creating transdisciplinary networks, the role of the architectural thinker within such networks, and the need to protect the artistic integrity of goal-based research projects.

Rolf Hughes has been at the forefront of developments in artistic research in Scandinavia and Northern Europe from its inception. He is currently Director of Artistic Research for the Experimental Architecture Group at Newcastle University (UK), Visiting Professor for the Estonian Academy of the Arts and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. He has supervised and examined PhD dissertations across architecture, art, craft, design, photography and the performing arts since 2000, including for the Bartlett, University of Westminster, Middlesex University, KU Leuven, Royal Institute of Technology, Oslo School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm University of the Arts, and elsewhere. He has published widely, and is in demand internationally as an expert on artistic research.

Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (UK). Her work explores how our buildings can incorporate some of the properties of living systems to become ‘living architectures’. She was coordinator for the FET Open Living Architecture project (April 2016-June 2019) and coordinates the EU Innovation Fund ALICE project. She is a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016) and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. She is also a Member of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University and Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG) whose work has been published and exhibited internationally.

The films by Ruth Lingford will be screened Thursday on the 24th of October at 19:30 in EKA auditorium A101. After the screening will be the Q&A with the director.

Ruth Lingford was born in London and worked as an Occupational Therapist in the fields of psychiatry and geriatrics before studying Fine Art and Art History at Middlesex Polytechnic and Animation at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1992. She has made short films and worked on documentary films and music videos. She has taught in the UK at the Royal College of Art and the National Film and Television School and since 2005 has taught Animation at Harvard University in Cambridge MA.

What She Wants, 1994, 4’
Death and the Mother, 1997, 11’
Pleasures of War, 1998, 11’
Silence, 1998, 11′
The Old Fools, 2002, 6’
Little Deaths, 2010, 11’
Trump Dreams, 2017, 4’

On Thursday, October 10, Jose Aldemar Muñoz will open his solo exhibition “Alchemy” at Vent Space project space at 7 pm. The exhibition will be open until October 13, every day 2–6 pm.

“I am interested in connecting alchemy and the body through the concept of transmutation of matter, soul and spirit. As an expression of the laboratory, I instinctively selected materials to experiment with, such as paper, wool, gold and silver paint, inks and pieces of metal, in order to describe the interaction between fluids, organs and thoughts inside the living body. Eventually, I found a connection between my research into Alchemy and some of Joseph Beuys’ approaches, whereby he sees life as a creative tool in itself and art as a transforming power which attempts to form the individual and collective consciousness.

The installation weaves together different materials, feelings and thoughts: the felting becomes the basis of my research, almost like a trace of the philosopher’s stone which makes me think of the body going beyond its own limits and becoming gold.”

Aldemar Muñoz is an artist from Bogota, Colombia. He graduated in 2013 from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano’s University and he is currently doing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Throughout his career, the body has been his subject of analysis. He is interested in researching the invisible realities around the body through understanding how organs, fluids, emotions and feelings respond in daily life.

So far, the results have been a series of drawings, objects, videos and performances on the subject of the body which have been exhibited in Colombia, Argentina and Japan.

The opening of the photography student group exhibition “I can’t be fucked” will take place on Monday, 21 October, at Vent Space project space at 6 pm. Two performances by Hans Jakob Väär will take place as part of the exhibition on 31.10 (in Estonian) and 01.11 (in English) at 6.30 pm. The exhibition will be open 21.10-03.11.2019, every day 1-6 pm.

Participating artists: Kristiina Aarna, Lisann Lillevere, Gerda Nurk, Ania Pażucha, Anna Tamm, Pille-Riin Vihtre, Hans Jakob Väär

Curators: Kati Ots and Aksel Haagensen
Graphic designer: Moonika Maidre

“I can’t be fucked” is a collaboration between students from the photography department, the contemporary art programme and the curatorial studies programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In preparation for the exhibition, an exchange of ideas between students was of central importance. The students from the photography department developed their studio projects into what has become a new collective body of work, which expresses the individual practice of each artist while contributing to new thematic directions.

Vent Space is a student project space run by curatorial studies and fine art students from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), the aim of which is to offer EKA students a public platform for their creative practice.

The exhibition is part of the satellite programme of the Tallinn Photomonth 2019 biennial of contemporary art.

Supported by the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn Photomonth, EKA Student Council, EKA Gallery, Vaba Kunst MTÜ, Nudist, Õllenaut

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

From October 23 – 26, 2019, Estonian Academy of Arts will be hosting Nordic-Baltic Academy of Architecture meeting. Welcome!

Programme
Registration

List of participants

Taxi from the airport: 10 – 15 EUR. Tram No 4 connects from the airport to the hotel, station “Hobujaama”. Ticket purchased from the driver costs 2 EUR. Passenger port is within a walking distance from the hotel.

Organising committee:
Andres Ojari
Ole Gustavsen
Ugis Bratuskins
Pille Epner
Jüri Soolep
Sandra Mell

October 9, at 16.00, room A101

Open Lecture by Jan van Boeckel
Art and Sustainability Education in an Age of Uncertainty and Climate Fear

Jan van Boeckel will give a presentation on fostering attention through arts-based open-ended approaches in an age of ecological emergency and radical uncertainty. If we are to respond adequately to the rapid and deep changes taking place in the world in our current times, we may need to envisage a very different type of education. Not one that is predominantly based on knowledge transfer, but a kind of teaching and learning that foregrounds engaging with radical uncertainty. In more open-ended modalities of education, learners tend not to know on forehand what the outcomes and expected deliverables will be. Such approaches may cause a sense of unease because of a presumed lack of control, of missing framing guidelines and clear target objectives. It is exactly in this space of vulnerability that it is essential that learners feel that their educational experience is safely contained and held by teachers and facilitators. A way of achieving this may be through employing arts-based approaches. Through such practices of artful exploring (for example together with a group of students) a sense of excitement, of curiosity and wonder may be prompted.

One of Van Boeckel’s key areas of interest is in educational activity as primarily and fundamentally an open-ended process. The outcome is not given, though the participants follow certain sequential steps which frame the process. Through teaching and hands-on doing, it aims to promote understanding of interconnected systems – both biological and cultural. Van Boeckel contextualizes this form of arts-based environmental education by valuing it as a form of ‘poor pedagogy’, as articulated by Jan Masschelein. Such practice is expressive of a view on education that is not about the transmission of knowledge but rather is a way of attending to things (Tim Ingold). It is also ‘weak pedagogy’, in which is foregrounded what Gert Biesta regards as ‘the educational imperative’: to arouse in another human being the desire to exist as subject, in dialogue with the world. For him this means being ‘in the world without occupying the centre of the world’, trying to exist in dialogue with what and who is other.

Exactly because artistic activities and research, as part of this kind of education, aren’t prima facie linked to urgent themes such as climate change – that they may lend possibilities, affordances, to take up such subjects in new ways. For, on a meta-level, they can also be seen as exercises in facing complexity, uncertainty, not-knowing, and of discovering and forging new relationships between phenomena and processes, in ways that are often far from obvious. Van Boeckel suggests that it is precisely this element of sustainable education (Stephen Sterling) we need, if we are aiming to equip new generations with skills to live in ‘postnormal times.’

Jan van Boeckel is an artist and art educator who has worked for many years on the intersections of art, education and ecology. He was professor in art pedagogy at EKA from 2015 until 2018. Before he was a teacher at the Iceland University of the Arts and other places. In academic year 2018-2019 Jan worked as senior lecturer in art education at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and as visiting lecturer and teacher on the themes of art, sustainability and climate leadership at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS) in Uppsala, also in Sweden.
More info: www.janvanboeckel.wordpress.com

The lecture is in English, attendance free.