PhD Thesis Defence of Roemer van Toorn

Roemer van Toorn, external PhD candidate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Architecture and Urban Planning, will defend his thesis „Making Architecture Politically. From Fresh Conservatism to Aesthetics as a Form of Politics“ on 7th of September 2022 at 15.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defence can be followed in EKA TV  tv.artun.ee.

External reviewers: Prof. Panu Lehtovuori (Tampere University of Technology), Prof. Arie Graafland (Delft University of Technology).

Opponent: Prof. Arie Graafland

The defense will be held in English.

Making Architecture Politically opens with an analysis of the current conjecture of Neoliberalism through the concept of the Society of the And, opposing an understanding of our condition through modes of Eitherorism. It is a voyage, travelling along the many interdependencies of the revolutionary conservatisms of Fresh Conservatism and Progressive Neoliberalism today — parallel to the arrival of a new phase of global modernisation with a special and elaborated focus on the role of contemporary architecture in Dutch society from the 1990s — while its second chapter moves beyond Fresh Conservatism; towards a possible third of emancipation in architecture with its plea for an Aesthetics as a Form of Politics towards a cosmopolitical outlook.

Chapter one, entitled Fresh Conservatism critically addresses how the much-celebrated Superdutch movement in architecture paved the way of an upcoming Neoliberal phase of capitalism. The problem for many was not to make political architecture, on the contrary, its innovative practices — without being too conscious about the political — affirmed what later was called the post-political. With Aesthetics as a Form of Politics of chapter two, exemplary alternative horizons of possibility are being discerned; ones that make architecture politically through their aesthetic regime. It has everything to do with how freedom can be created with constraints, how one can dance with enmeshment, can move beyond limiting adversary, and dare to create lives of sustained optimal wellbeing and joy through the redistribution of the sensible. By grappling with making architecture politically, finding it wanting through critical analysis, observing the exemplary and often a-political role contemporary Dutch architecture played in the 90s and onward, it turns out the problem is not to make political architecture — all architecture is political — but how to make architecture politically.

Making architecture politically is about the creation of running room; a sense of polity — an aesthetic regime redistributing the sensible — that allows for a multiplication of connections and disconnections that reframe the relations between people, the world they live in, and the way they are supposed to act and behave. Such a field of possibility concerns a multiplicity of folds and gaps in the fabric of the common experience of the human and non-human that change the cartography of the perceptible, the imaginative and the feasible. As such, it allows for new modes of political construction of common objects and emancipatory possibilities of collective and private enunciation. Instead of slipping into paternalism or control, the idea of such a radical openness is characterized by indeterminacy, nuance, incommensurability, dissensus and the multitude of encounters it could generate. It is about a becoming that breaks open the conventional way space is experienced, thought and distributed, one that displaces the binary dialectics of colonizer and colonized, the one against the other by introducing a third (And) that belongs to both the one and the other while opening alternative horizons.

Members of the Defence Committee: Dr. Jüri Soolep, Dr. Anu Allas, Dr. Renee Puusepp, Prof. Maros Krivy, Prof. Andres Kurg, Prof. Klaske Havik, Prof. Claus Peder Pedersen.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE.

Join us for the opening of Kristel Zimmer’s solo show “The Rite of Spring” on August 11 at 4 pm at EKA Gallery! The exhibition is curated by Ene-Liis Semper and on view until September 10.

From the beginning, the body and physicality have been one of Kristel Zimmer’s themes. Her earlier works were more involved with the surreal and penetrating the darkest part of the subconsciousness. However, in the “The Rite of Spring” series, the brighter and more immediate side of being can also be perceived.
“The Rite of Spring” celebrates pure physical presence while at the same time opening the deeper layers of being behind feminine physicality.
Kristel does not use digital manipulation in her work but experiments with the field of view limited by the lens and different points of view. Therefore, her creation is also a performance carried out in front of the camera, in which the viewer can partake through the video medium.

Kristel Zimmer (b.1997) is a young artist and performer, currently studying in the Estonian Academy of Arts, Scenography MA. Her previous artistic activity has with the artists´ group dassemperdepot.

Ene-Liis Semper (b. 1969) is an Estonian video and installation artist and theatre director. Her works almost always involve a kind of duality, maintaining a precisely measured cognitive balance between seriousness and irony. The artist interacts with the viewer through testing the limits of both physical and psychological space.

OPENING: On July 29 at 5 p.m., students of architecture and urban planning will open this year’s wooden shelter KINO on the embankment of River Emajõgi in Tartu. You are all kindly invited to the opening.

The shelter / installation KINO is an school project created by EKA 1st-year architecture and urban planning students and completed during the summer construction study sessions. Designing and building a shelter has been the first major project of EKA architecture students for many years – this is the 17th shelter, to ve precise. Last winter, one proposal was selected from among the ideas developed for specially for Tartu city, which will now be built by the whole team of students. The KINO, consisting of three parts, will remain to enjoy for the citizens of the city until the end of Tartu’s cultural capital year, and the shelters for the next few years will also be planned and built in Tartu and for Tartu.

KINO is being produced with the support of the city of Tartu, the Estonian Cultural Foundation, the Estonian Forestry and Wood Industry Union, the Environmental Investment Center, Raitwood, Palmako and EKA.

Students and tutors:

EKA architecture and urban planning 1st year students’ design team: Alis Mäesalu, Tuule Kangur, Darja Gužovskaja, Madis Arp Keerd.

Construction team: Aiko Liisa Olek, Anabel Ainso, Anu Alver, Anneli Virts, Arabella Aabrams, Frank Kuresaar, Fred-Eric Pavel, Hugo Georg Kalaus, Karl Robin Timm, Karmo Viherpuu, Kristian Tigane, Laura Haki, Laura Venelaine, Liisalota Kroon, Rasmus Roosileht, Triinu Lamp.

The project was supervised by Ott Alver and Alvin Järving from architecture office Arhitekt Must, Ragnar Kekkonen guided the students in the carpentry workshop, and Andres Lehtla directed the constructions.

We will be happy to meet you all on the banks of Emajõgi – next to the Atlantis building in Ülejõe Park.

Taming a Wild Tongue
Laura Cemin (IT/FI) and Bianca Hisse (BR/NO)
curated by Monika Charkowska (PL/DE)
8.–30.7.2022, EKA Gallery, Kotzebue 1, Tallinn

Opening: 8.07.2022, 4 pm

Referring to Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of ‘wild tongue’ (Borderlands, 1987), the exhibition departs from the questions: How to tame a wild tongue? How to carry a language? The verbs ‘taming’ and ‘carrying’ imply certain dynamics of permission and restriction of movement, and suggest the entanglement between language and the body.
Through sculptural and audio elements, the exhibition explores the power of language and its poetics. It delves into the notion of ‘tongue’ as an archive: the tongue as a muscle shaped by the physical practice of moving/ talking, the tongue as a personal collection of the words that each of us speaks, the tongue as a ‘cultured’ part of the body. It explores the practices of accent reduction and speech therapy, tools widely used when ‘working on language’. It addresses accent as part of our linguistic identity, but also something that defines access or restriction. It examines the weight of different accents, their stigma, and what the process of adaptation to a new language can generate in a body.

Laura Cemin is an Italian artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Her work, often presented in galleries and non-traditional performance spaces, brings together elements of performance, writing and temporality with the intention of challenging the boundaries between dance and visual art. She graduated from Umeå Art Academy (SE) in 2019 and holds a degree in Ballet and Contemporary dance. She lives and works between languages.

Bianca Hisse is a Brazilian artist based in Norway. From a double movement between choreography and visual arts, her work investigates how today’s societies are choreographed by global demands. She graduated from Kunstakademiet i Tromsø in 2019 and has a BA in Performing Arts from Pontificia Universidade Catolica de São Paulo (2016). She lives and works between languages.

Monika Charkowska is a Polish-born researcher and curator based in Berlin (DE). Her current interests focus upon language, time relations and non-human ontologies. She studied in Toruń (PL), Freiburg (DE), Paris (FR) and Prague (CZ), and holds a MA degree in Art History, Philosophy and German Philology (with a focus on Modern German Literary History). She is also a Teacher of German as a Foreign Language. She lives and works between languages.

Graphic design: Kersti Heile

Screening of EKA Animation graduate students’ films in cinema “Sõprus” on Monday the 20th June at 16.30 p.m.

Films by:

John Francis Quirk, Aspasia Kazeli, Sophia Michele Bazalgette, Lukas Manuel Winter, Jass Kaselaan, Anne Mirjam Kraav, Hleb Kuftseryn, Andrei Bljahhin, Kadi Sink, Ida Lepparu, Sameliina Paurson, Anna Dvornik.

Please come to the screening and bring your family, friends, colleagues and everyone you want to share your works with!

Free entrance!

Cinema “Sõprus”, Vana-Posti 8

See you at the screening!

Facebook

This year, the graduation party takes place on 21th of June, starting from 19:00 in the EKA Gallery.

In addition to the graduating students, all other students, graduates and staff are welcome to attend. To kick off the party, there will be a drag show followed by the band Arg Part.

After the band, DJs will take over. The EKA X SVETA BAR will be serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks all night long. Guests can also capture the night in the photobooth which will be installed next to the gallery. 

The EKA Grad Party is hosted by EKA Student Council. 

SCHEDULE: 

19:00 – beginning of the party 

19:30-21:00 – Drag Show

21:00-23:00 – Arg Part

23:00-00:00 – DJ Silikaat

00:00-03:00 — DJ YALLAH b2b DJ HOLY MOUNTAIN 

Event on Facebook

LMDA research institute at the Art Academy of Latvia invites You to join LMDA talks on June 15th at 6PM. 

The talk will be livestreamed on Facebook. 

15-minute presentations by invited speakers are followed by a discussion round. 

You are welcome to join!

Extended Bodies / Extended Spaces

It is through our bodies that we make sense of space. Bodies practice and enact spaces. Body-space-interfacing can lead to the creation of schemas, which we project onto our bodies. These might include the embodiment of technologies, leading to body schemas that overcome notions of inside and outside. Thus, they extend to the tip of a pencil or the outer limitations of a car. Some of these schemas, or models of thought, if you will, dissolve the boundaries between bodies and spaces—a selection of which we will be discussing in the upcoming talk. By redefining bodily ways of being and by challenging us to rethink space, these models help to reconsider how bodies and (digital) environments build relationships with one another. 

Moderator: Dr. Eva Sommeregger, senior researcher, Art Academy of Latvia

Invited Speakers:

Christina Jauernig: architect and arts-based researcher (dance, digital environments)

Johanna Jõekalda: architect and VR researcher (human spatial perception)

Valerie Messini: architect and arts-based researcher (digital environments, AI, machine learning)

Seth Weiner / Sadie Siegel: transdisciplinary artist (spatial practice, sound)

Heleliis Hõim’s personal exhibition “The Mars Chronicles” in ARS Project Space

Opening on June 18 at 7 p.m.

Performance at 7:30 p.m.

The performance will feature music and soundscapes created by a group of vocalists led by Lauri Lesta and Kaie Sauga, inspired by the works exhibited at the exhibition.

The artist invites the viewer to relate to the planet Mars as a borrowed environment in order to gather thoughts of beliefs, isolation, limited thinking, and silence, right after a person has left.

The Chronicles of Mars draws parallels with science fiction, citing Ray Bradbury’s book of the same name. In a collection of short stories, Bradbury describes how a person wants to inhabit Mars, despite its inhabitants and advanced civilization. Mankind wants and demands more than they have. Or there was, because a polluted and war-torn planet is left behind.

The artist focuses on a collage of a kind of planned and then abandoned environment, on the basis of which it is possible to feel the thoughts of the deceased, the creation of the environment, beliefs, dreams.

The exhibition is supported by EAA, the Estonian Artists’ Union, the Estonian Cultural Endowment

Facebook event

The exhibition is open from 20.06 to 12.07.2022

Mon-Wed 12 – 18 / Sat – Sun 12-16

Maria Kapajeva’s exhibition is a part of the permanent exhibition “Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700–1945”.

This exhibition is an artistic experiment: presenting a research process as an installation. What can you do and what would you do with a random collection of photographs? Eight years ago, Maria Kapajeva came across a few old photographs online for sale.

This was a quite random purchase for me. An American dealer who runs an online shop selling old images from all over the world agreed to put together ‘a collection’ of photographs, which he thought might be from Estonia. So, this is how this 105-piece collection of ‘loose photos, odds and ends’ (according to the dealer’s description) ended up in my hands. In his message he added ‘I am so glad these photos are “going home”, so to speak’.

“I had no knowledge of the images or how they ended up in the US.”

At the end of 2021, when I started to prepare for this exhibition, I tried to contact the dealer again, but I learned that he had unexpectedly died a week before. It was sad to realise that I had had those eight years to ask him questions, but I hadn’t and now I could not. So, I hope with the help of visitors to the exhibition, I can get answers to some of my questions.

Kapajeva experiments with different ways of opening up the potential of the often undervalued, under-researched, marginalised heritage of vernacular photography. In the age of automated face recognition software – partly developed by historical archives, but even more so by state and military institutions and international corporations – her project demonstrates the benefits of “slow recognition”. As she slowed down for an artistic exploration of this collection, Kapajeva also made this a part of her own homecoming, as she has lived abroad for years, just like the photos she is exploring.

Gradual identification of the photographers and the people portrayed by them reveals new perspectives on Estonian (micro-)history, which gain new meaning in the context of the permanent exhibition focusing on “landscapes of identity”. By focussing on the faces of the photographed people, their stories and some other forgotten facts which she learned from these images, Kapajeva shows her appreciation for each person and every individual story in our history.

Kapajeva invites everyone to contribute to the installation as a continuous research process. Please look at the photos closely and if you recognise anyone, please write down their names or stories, add the photo number(s) and attach this information to the wall.

Exhibition design: LLRRLLRR – Laura Linsi, Karolin Kull
Graphic designer: Maria Muuk
Exhibition coordinator: Magdaleena Maasik
Exhibition technician: Andres Amos
Artist’s research assistant: Ketlin Käpp
With contribution in kind by Linda Kaljundi, Annika Toots and Karmen-Eliise Kiidron

Special thanks to Liisa Kaljula, Merilis Roosalu (Tallinn City Museum – Museum of Photography), Aado Luik, Janeli Suits, Piret Karro, Lembi Anepaio, Aljona Kapajeva and the Sokk family

In autumn 2021, a workshop The Alchemy of [Painting] was held at the Chair of Painting at the EKA.

Inspired by a still life of strange parts and wet preparations, the aim was to open up the concept of alchemy from the point of view of painting and using the tools of painting. In addition to the practical work, there were lectures and discussions on phenomen of alchemy from the perspectives of art, literature, music and film, on a timeline from the Middle Ages through popular culture to the present day.

The paintings were created using Cobra water-based oil paints from Royal Talens.

Tutors: Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Mihkel Ilus, Holger Loodus

Artists: Georg Kaasik, Samuel Lehikoinen, Noah Emanuel Morrison, Brenda Purtsak, Marleen Suvi, Egert Tishler, Triin Türnpuu