Erinn M. Cox “loneliness is the slowest death : a requiem for longing” at EKA Gallery 30.03.–16.04.2019

Join us for the opening on Friday, March 29, at 6 PM, with a special performance by the EKA Choir at 6:15 PM.

We are all born with a knowing pain in our soul, and this innate understanding is loneliness: a deep ache for another to fill the cavity we cannot otherwise fill, sincere desperation that seamlessly moves from the emotional and psychological to the physical.  It is an agonizing progression: painful in the utter dissection of the self with each invitation and rejection, each a beautiful and grounded humiliation where we no longer even recognize ourselves as we wholly long for someone to alleviate the paralyzing fear of dying alone.

When the other, it seems, is and has always been absent, the suffocation of loneliness becomes far more than a feeling – it becomes an insanity of our own making.  We are driven mad by an endless and relentless pursuit for a chosen other with a bittersweet and intoxicating need that is simultaneously exciting and devastating, loving and heartbreaking.  And it is this longing, this intense and unforgiving emotion, that will slowly and decidedly kill us.

Erinn M. Cox is a jewellery artist from the United States, currently residing in Tallinn, Estonia.   She holds a BFA in sculpture and photography from Florida State University, an MFA in sculpture and installation from the Memphis College of Art and is currently pursuing an MA degree in Jewellery at the Estonian Academy of Arts.  Erinn is a published writer on contemporary art and design, an adjunct professor of Fine Arts and Art History, and is the founder and writer for the online journal Louise & Maurice (www.louiseandmaurice.com) 

For more about the artist, visit www.erinnmcox.com

Erinn will give a personal tour of the exhibition on Tuesday, April 16 at 5:30 pm.

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this spring will be Mark Wigley – New Zealand-born architect, author, and from 2004 to 2014 Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. He will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 28th of March at 6 pm to talk about his latest book that discusses the works of Gordon Matta-Clark.

Mark Wigley is a Professor of Architecture at Columbia University. He is a historian, theorist and curator who explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His books include: Derrida’s Haunt: The Architecture of Deconstruction; White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture; Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire; Buckminster Fuller Inc. – Architecture in the Age of Radio; and Are We Human? – Notes on an Archaeology of Design (written with Beatriz Colomina when they co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial). He has also curated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center and Columbia University in New York, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. His most recent exhibition was The Human Insect: Antenna Architectures 1997-2017 at Het Nieuwe Instituut (2018).

Wigley will give a lecture entitled “Cutting Matta-Clark: The Anarchitecture Investigation” on the occasion of the publication of his new book with the same title. This major book, based on a wealth of previously unpublished images and documents, completely rethinks the transgressive building cuts by Gordon Matta-Clark, the legendary cult figure in both the art and architecture worlds.

The work of Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) fundamentally changed our understanding of the role of architecture in everyday life. Matta-Clark is best known for site-specific installations in abandoned houses scheduled to be demolished in New York, Paris, Antwerp and elsewhere. He revealed the chaos behind the seeming orderliness of the urban space and exposed the conflict between living spaces and architectural structures. Matta-Clark belonged to an artistic community that conceptualised the idea of “anarchitecture” (a conflation of the words “anarchy” and “architecture”). “Anarchitecture” referred to the creative practice that paid attention to the shifts, voids and non-places in the urban space.

Wigley’s lecture coincides with the joint exhibition of Gordon Matta-Clark and Estonian artist Anu Vahtra in Kumu Art Museum. The exhibition is called Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect. Anu Vahtra: Completion through removal. On Friday, March 29th at 12:00 a joint exhibition visit with Mark Wigley and Anu Vahtra will take place in Kumu.

The architecture and urban planning department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment. Mark Wigley’s lecture and the exhibition visit on Friday is organized in cooperation with Kumu Art Museum.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee
https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/
https://kumu.ekm.ee/

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Phantom Graphics” on March 22nd at 5 PM at EKA Billboard Gallery. The gallery is located outside on the building wall on Kotzebue street.

The exhibition is the result of Mirjam Reili’s workshop with EKA first-year graphic design students. A week-long investigation into vision and perception, where students at EKA explore how images construct ocular illusions, and how these could be presented.

Mirjam Reili is an Estonian graphic designer based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Research combined with drawing and puns often determines the outcome of her self-initiated and commissioned work. Mirjam has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts and Rietveld Academie Department of Graphic Design and is currently a participant of Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem.

Participants: Kristi Jaago, Marje Kask, Martin Kipper, Eliisabet Kuslap, Ellen Loitmaa, Ilja Moltšanov, Cristopher Rogotovski, Klara Magdalena Rozpondek, Sonia Ruus, Pavel Salmin, Birgita Siim, Natasha Sotti, Mirjam Varik, Agnes Isabelle Veeno, Ingel-Kristen Veevo, Aaro Veiderpass, Johannes Veike

The exhibition is opened until April 18th.

The Many Realms of Home and Other Virtual Tales: Open Lecture by Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular

The next lecturers of the Open Lecture Series this spring will be London-based architects Lara Lasmes and Fredrik Hellberg, the founders of Space Popular. Space Popular is a multidisciplinary design and research practice that makes architecture, products, furniture graphics, interfaces and research. They will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 14th of March at 6 pm to talk about the role of architectural practice in the virtual.

Lara Lesmes (Spain) and Fredrik Hellberg (Sweden), both graduates from the Architectural Association in London, founded Space Popular in Bangkok in 2013. Based in London since 2016, the practice works at multiple scales: from furniture and interior design to architecture, urbanism, and the design of virtual worlds. The duo have extensive teaching experience at INDA (Bangkok) and the Architectural Association and have lectured and participated as visiting critics internationally. Beyond their academic experience, Space Popular has ongoing and realised built projects and exhibitions in Europe and Asia.

How do we address the digital spaces we inhabit today, and the overlapping realms that will soon be an everyday reality? What is the virtual, as detached from the digital? How have virtual worlds been created, manifested and inhabited historically? What is the role of architecture as a practice in the virtual? What are function and program when there is no shelter to provide, nor problems to solve? How will the three-dimensional virtual realm challenge our notions of privacy and property? These and other issues will be discussed by Space Popular directors through examples of the office’s work. More info: http://www.spacepopular.com/

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment. The lecture of Space Popular is supported by British Council and Estonian Centre for Architecture.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

www.avatudloengud.ee

https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:

Pille Epner /  arhitektuur@artun.ee / +372 642 0071

Open lecture by Peter Martin, an American teaching design in Qatar, in Middle East. The lecture will take place on Thursday, March 7 th at 18:00, room A501 of Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7, Tallinn). Based on his 20 years of teaching experience in Qatar, at a crossroads of new and ancient, of Western and Middle Eastern cultures, of tense 21 st century global socio-political processes, Peter Martin explores how design works culturally. Unfolding the visible layers of design, he considers and explores its invisible cultural/contextual activities and significance. As Peter’s experience has revealed – nearly everything is negotiable as an imperative and a possibility. As designers, how do we begin to make sense of what imperatives we participate in and what possibilities we pursue? How can we work more holistically to the shared endeavor of living together on this earth.

Peter Martin holds a BS in Design and Environmental Analysis from Cornell University and an MFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). He leads the Graphic Design department at VCU’s branch in Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula. He began working there in 1999, being the first teacher of visual communication in a country that had nearly no history of graphic design within its very traditional Bedouin culture. Using different platforms, Peter became a promoter of design and design thinking beyond the university campus. In 2004, he co-founded the biannual Tasmeem Doha international design conference, in 2010, he initiated and co-hosted a radio program, Design Edition. In 2014, he co-led the VCU Qatar strategic planning process. Peter’s research involves theoretical, applied and pedagogic inquiries into structures of contextual analysis and mapping methods. Also, he focuses on processes designed for social and organizational innovation.

Info:
Kristjan Mändmaa
EKA Faculty of Design
kristjan.mandmaa@artun.ee

Being a gardener is to build the experience: Open Lecture by Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda of amid.cero9

The next lecturers of the Open Lecture Series this spring will be Madrid-based architects Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda of amid.cero9 fame. They will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 28th of February at 6 pm to talk about a variety of amid.cero9 projects from the period between 2004 and 2015.

Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda hold a MArch (E.T.S. de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) degree and are co-directors and co-founders of amid.cero9, an experimental architectural practice based in Madrid. They are currently Visiting Professors at the Institut für Kunst und Architektur, Akademie der Bildenden Künste IKA, Vienna, Diploma Unit Masters at the A.A. School in London since 2009 (on leave during the 2018-2019 academic year) and Visiting Critics at SOA, Princeton Universtity since 2017.

Their work is part of the Permanent Collection of the Pompidou Center in Paris and has been exhibited in the Biennale di Architettura di Venezia in the Official Section in 2010, 2004, 2000, in the Spanish Pavillion in 2014 and 2002 and in the Greek Pavillion in 2014, among others.

Their projects have been widely disseminated and they have won more than 40 prizes in national and international competitions.

Amid.cero9 cultivates a post-digital, afterpop approach to the contemporary notion of space that enlists sociology, technology, media, politics and representation in projects ranging from architecture (Cherry Blossom Pavilion in Jerte Valley, Spain, shown at the 12th Biennale di Venezia, Giner de los Ríos Foundation in Madrid, Diagonal80 Industrial Pavillion in Madrid) to design (ESA Pavillion), ecosystemic studies (The Magic Mountain in Ames, We as a plague in Rome, TRP in Venice) and hybrid urban projects (Aijalaranta in Jyväskylä, or Hhouse in Balearic Islands).

Their lecture is titled “Being a gardener is to build the experience”. As our speakers promise: “The intervention will be based on a choral recount, with many voices from different authors, places, scientific disciplines and moments of history but also a partial one, which gathers some of the main topics of concern and study that inspired our project of the Institution for Free Education headquarters in Madrid. Anchored both in our own personal concerns and in the intellectual connections of the Institution, our aim was to project the intellectual legacy of Giner de los Ríos – a philosopher, an educator and one of the most influential Spanish intellectuals – towards the future.” Díaz Moreno and García Grinda’s lecture will also look at different amid.cero9 projects from the period between 2004 and 2015.

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali
www.avatudloengud.ee
https://www.facebook.com/EKAarhitektuur/

More info:
Pille Epner
arhitektuur@artun.ee
+372 642 0071

The opening of the exhibition Weak Monument will take place on February 21st at 8PM. The opening is preceded by Välkloeng at 6PM, moderated by Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa.

Weak Monument was the Estonian national pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. It was located in the deconsecrated church of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice. The exhibition at the EAA Gallery looks back at the site-specific spatial installation through photographer Hampus Berndtson’s photos and introduces the project through spatial fragments, models and the book Weak Monument: Architectures Beyond the Plinth.

 Weak Monument turns its focus from the traditional culture of monuments to space that is implicitly and concealedly political. Instead of explicit meanings inscribed in marble and bronze, what charges the public might lie elsewhere. How does space represent power? Imagine a spectrum between the triumphal column and revolutionary barricade and extend it – sometimes it is the underlying pavement which is the true representation of collective agency. Weak Monument is an oxymoron – a rhetorical device which can offer fresh perspectives on how to recognise the political in any built form.

In conjunction with the pavilion, the book Weak Monument – Architectures Beyond the Plinth edited by the curators Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa and Tadeas Riha was published by Park Books (Zürich, 2018). The book includes essays by authors such as Tom Avermaete, Eik Hermann, Klaus Platzgummer and Margrethe Troensegaard, and presents a collection of weak monuments through paintings, personal photos and drawings as well as archive material from Estonian and European museums.

The next exhibition at EKA Gallery is The world’s biggest EKA Gallery-exhibited work by PRIIT, a group of artists from EKA. The exhibition is open only for a week, on February 12–17 and is accessible 24/7.

PRIIT has said about the exhibition: “Space becomes installation and installation becomes space again. A trans-medium and multidimensional work fills the entire space and is in terms of its parameters the biggest work that will ever be shown in that gallery. What do we have to sacrifice to completely subordinate space to ourselves at the exhibition? We experience defiance at the white cube, experience a loss and rediscovery of self in the abstract information field of non-objects.”

PRIIT is a group of artist including Riin Maide, Sidney Lepp, Johannes Luik, Cristo Madissoo, Nele Tiidelepp. Earlier, PRIIT has produced two slightly place-specific and quite experimental exhibitions – Placeless in a Kadriorg rental flat and The Fifth Ice Age before the Third World War in the Tartu culture club Üheteistkümnes.

On Friday, February 15 at 6 pm, Liina Siib’s exhibition “Politics of Paradise” curated by Taru Elfving will be opened in Tallinn Art Hall.

Liina Siib excavates the multiple dreams and ideals that haunt the present. Her work pays acute attention to the minor narratives, which usually persist in the shadows of the attention economy or crevices of accelerated lived experience. Bringing together new productions and a selection of older works by Siib, the exhibition Politics of Paradise mediates intergenerational conversations between individual lives and complex gendered histories of privilege and power.

Recently Siib has looked at the ongoing regional economic migration through the eyes of Estonian women working in Finland. This contemporary polyphony of personal stories, desires and realities is reflected against new installations focused on the tragic yet deviant historical local female characters. They continue Siib’s long-term artistic investigations into the entangled political and habitual claims to space, voice and meaning.

Tallinn Art Hall (Vabaduse väljak 8, Tallinn) is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 12 noon to 7 pm, admission € 3 / € 6 / € 9.

The Art Hall Foundation is a contemporary art establishment that presents exhibitions in three galleries on the central square of Tallinn – at Tallinn Art Hall and nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery. Tallinn Art Hall exhibitions are installed by Valge Kuup.

February 15 and 16, at 6–8PM in EKA Gallery

Kaspar Aus: “On two days I will pass on what I know about body, mind and movement. We listen, catch up and let life through ourselves. For example just like you could place one small seed cell into a human anus and from there grows the plant through and out of us. That the body becomes non-existent and the manifestation of everything that is.”

To get involved, you need comfortable clothes, shoes for running and dancing around, an effort to be opened and together. You do not need to have any specific skills in dance and body movement beforehand. There are a changing room and a shower. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience. Free of charge!

About the artist: kasparaus.wixsite.com/artist