NART Open Lecture: Sasha Rotts and Ola Lewczyk

In the fall of 2023, international artists from NART will be giving three lectures at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and the second event in this series is coming soon. The artists will talk about what everyday life is like in an art residency and present their work. The lecture will take place on Thursday, November 9th at 17:45 in room A-101. The event will be in English and is free of charge.

The November lecture will be delivered by Polish ceramicist Ola Lewczyk and Helsinki-based textile artist Sasha Rotts. During her art residency, Ola plans to explore the memory of Neolithic-era Narva ceramics and build a temporary ceramics kiln. Sasha, who was at the residency for the first time in May 2022, co-created a pop-up exhibition titled “Solid Plot” at the Kreenholm factory this summer, in collaboration with Hilda Karha.

BOOK LAUNCH: Urbanizing Suburbia: Hyper-Gentrification, the Financialization of Housing and the Remaking of the Outer European City

Location: EKA Lobby, Canteen

Time: 21.11.2023 @ 18:00

Urbanizing Suburbia considers three current and related processes underway in global cities: the hyper-gentrification of inner cities, the financialization of housing, and the structural changes occurring in the outer city. Rocketing housing prices have displaced residents from inner cities and created a rent gap in outer cities. Increasingly, municipalities, developers, and displaced residents search for opportunities in the suburban belts. Changes in demographics, densities, live/work ratios, and tenures are remaking outer cities, rendering them less and less suburban. The book examines these changes by looking at four key European cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and Stockholm. It is a first attempt at understanding the three processes discussed here within one comprehensive explanatory framework.

Editors are EKA adjunct staff teaching at the faculty of Architecture Tahl Kaminer, Leonard Ma and Helen Runting.

EKA Prof of Urban Studies Maroš Krivy has contributed in the book with one chapter.

Urbanizing Suburbia is published by JOVIS (De Gruyter) and the publication is supported by EKA. EKA urban studies students have been part of collecting materials for the book.

The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Kaja Pae. 

It is possible to buy the book at the presentation.

Don’t you wonder what’s inside? I have an idea. It appeared in the last dream. I changed something, but you can change it back. Where does the sun go? It tends to hide between the lines.

Pauline Creuzé is an artist from France. She works with video and site-specific video installation. With the artist collective À VENIR, she has been producing group exhibitions in empty urban spaces between 2017 and 2021.

kacper krajewski is an interdisciplinary Polish artist based in Tromsø, Norway. Kacper navigates the intricate intersections of biology and technology, compulsively challenging notions of consciousness, perception and corporeality. Guided by a queer perspective, they delve into the depths of embodied existence.

Gregor is a musician and artist from Eupen, a small city in the east of Belgium. Gregor combines different techniques to create immersive changes of perspective, often through compositions dictated by algorithmic approaches.

Py Tenor is an artist from Sweden based in Tromsø. Using installation and wearable sculpture, she works with recognizable material and situations, focusing on sensory and tactile experiences.
Sondre Sjølie is an artist from Nes municipality in Norway, currently taking a bachelor’s in fine arts in Tromsø. His works are often based in narrative and absurd storytelling, inspired by underground comics, humour and tragedy.

where does the sun go? is a collective exhibition by students of Tromsø Academy of Arts.

Event on Facebook

Vent Space is at Vabaduse väljak 6-8

October 31, 2023 Paul Kuimet’s solo exhibition Crystal Grid will be open in Draakon gallery.

The opening event takes place on November 1 at 18:00.
The project-related artist’s book presentation will take place on November 23 at 18:00 adjacent to the gallery in Kanuti Gildi SAAL.

“… How to give structure to something that itself is lacking one? How to present something like that? This is a question of visibility and making visible. What are the means for making visible something that always remains invisible? More precisely: the thing that remains invisible in real life, but of which we can get a glimpse in Crystal Grid, is the structure of capitalism. But how to display something like that?”

Neeme Lopp Paul Kuimet’s Analytical Photography
Essay from artist’s book Crystal Grid (Lugemik, 2023)

The exhibition features 25 new works from the Crystal Grid series. The series, commenced in 2020, consists of collages composed of photos taken in palm houses of various botanical gardens around the world. The collages are arranged in sets of two, three or four, juxtaposing plant fragments, which in reality are located hundreds or even thousands of kilometers apart.

For the collages, a pattern is used, derived from the structure of the ceiling of the central transept of the Crystal Palace, erected for the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. For each work, a new pattern is designed within the existing framework, based on the internal composition of each photo – part of the image is cut according to the pattern, and part is left uncut.

Paul Kuimet (1984) is an artist who works with photography, 16 mm film, and installation comprising of these media. Although his work is often described by a technological way of seeing, his practice places emphasis on the movement and presence of the beholder in the exhibition space. Since 2013, his work has been interested in modernist forms. In his latest works he has concentrated not so much on the forms of modernism, but on its materials, such as steel and glass, and their relationship to the development of modern capitalism since the mid-nineteenth century. He received an MA degree from the Estonian Academy of Arts (2014). In 2018, he participated in residency programmes at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, and at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City. Since 2022, Kuimet is the Associate Professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Photography.

The exhibition will remain open until November 25, 2023.

The exhibition is a part of the satellite programme of the contemporary art biennial Tallinn Photomonth (6.10.–26.11.2023). More info: fotokuu.ee

Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhjala Brewery
Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and AS Liviko.

I LIVE IN TALLINN
Kunstiryhmitus
02.11 – 09.11.2023
Opening: 02.11 at 6 pm

“I Live in Tallinn” is an exhibition that wraps up the collective Kunstiryhmitus’ 48 performances in Tallinn’s urban space. At the opening performance, rooms that were spilled throughout the city will be brought back together to a garage box at the gallery space Garage49 (Kalaranna 42/6). 

The sentence “I live in Tallinn.” should not refer to just the space that is enclosed between four walls. This can only be achieved if the space between buildings in a city does not only act as a transit corridor that takes you from point a to point b. The polarization between public and private space is artificial. When we stop seeing the two as totally separate, public space can be an extension of our home- it becomes common space. By bringing situations that usually take place at home to the streets of Tallinn, we turned it into a part of our homes. 

Kunstiryhmitus is a collective of EKA students from different study fields. The collective focuses on studying the space around them through performance. 

Instagram: @kunstiryhmitus

On Monday, October 30, 18.00, Rotterdam-based curator, writer and artist Isabelle Sully will introduce her practice in room A302.

Working with feminist histories in mind, Isabelle Sully works across curating, writing and art-making, taking the mechanisms and materiality of administration as the main focus within her work to develop conceptual projects that span experimental writing, performance, exhibition-making and publishing. Through drawing on her work as founding editor of the publication series Unbidden Tongues as well as founder and co-curator of the event platform Playbill, Sully will present a series of projects that take writing as a primary mode of thinking. Given that language and its handling are central to her work, she will also focus on the realisation of these projects as they relate to graphic design and techniques of distribution—approaches developed through learning from methods of information circulation used within various feminist movements.

Isabelle Sully (1991, AU) practices across art-making, curating, editing and writing. Originally from Melbourne, she now lives in Rotterdam where she is the founding editor of Unbidden Tongues and co-curator of Playbill. Her involvement with the administrative sphere of institutional practice also plays out in her current role as assistant director-curator at Kunstverein, Amsterdam.

Isabelle Sully’s lecture is co-organized by Graphic Design and Contemporary Art MA programs.

Everyone is welcome to join!

Gelatex Technologies OÜ is a materials technology company that develops and produces nanofibrous materials. These consist of fibers that are up to 100 times smaller than a human hair. Gelatex focuses specifically on areas related to biotechnology, especially in vitro 3D cell culture and tissue engineering. There are also ongoing projects in the direction of drug development, wound treatment, and cultivated meat. Gelatex has an international team of enthusiasts and solution-oriented people with backgrounds in materials technology, mechanics, biochemistry, microbiology, marketing, sales and business development.

10 November 6 p.m. in EKA auditorium A101

Sara Gunnarsdóttir “Making Independent Animation Art Within The American Film Industry”

Sara Gunnarsdóttir was born and raised in Iceland where she studied fine art. She went to The United States in her late twenties to study Experimental Animation at The California Institute of the Arts, where she lived and worked for fourteen years before turning back to her home country. During the decade and a half in the States, Sara managed to establish her own voice as an independent animator within the American industry.

In her lecture, she will talk about how remaining true to her own voice and way of approaching animation has helped open doors to various meaningful collaborations within different types of filmmaking, such as live action features, documentaries and TV series.

Q&A will follow after the event.

PÖFF Shorts events

Article on Cartoon Brew: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/know-your-indie-filmmaker/know-your-indie-filmmaker-sara-gunnarsdottir-227855.html

“The Life and Death”

Miradonna Sirkka and Sofi Häkkinen have worked together for 8 years – and counting. The pair has created the artistic world of Recover Laboratory, a Finnish pioneer of immersive performances. Sirkka hails from experimental contemporary circus and Häkkinen from fine arts; together they explore the space of performance art with their signature way of looking at the world, where the mundane becomes surreal, and humor and vulnerability are present simultaneously. 

Sirkka and Häkkinen’s performance “the Life and Death” brings together elements of performance art, DJ & VJ gigs, and having grown up in the 00’s. The performance can be seen as criticism of hetero- and mono-normativity, along with capitalistic perfectionism. Queerdos Häkkinen and Sirkka build a shared moment of fun, weirdness, horror, play, love and tears, while probing around the space they occupy right now both mentally and physically.

In the performance, the hypersexualization afab bodies are subjected to in everyday life is made visible and reclaimed. The duo takes matters into their own hands with the imagery of popular culture, movies and music. The performance rises from pure enjoyment. One of the kindles for the piece is the many incidents when the artist’s work has been criticized for showing boobs on stage.

CW: sexual movement, childbirth, death, tattoo needles, nudity

Visual artist Sofi Häkkinen (b 1990, Oulu, Finland) brings an assortment of sculptures and video works to Vent Space project space.

Häkkinen is a Master of Arts from Aalto University, and has a very multi-artistic approach to her work. The sculptures Häkkinen shows in Vent Space are mostly made out of dry pasta. The video pieces also explore the theme of food – along with death, the body, the Internet, humor, pop and doom scrolling.