Readdressing Practices and Theories of Experimentation in the 20th- and 21st-Century Estonian Visual and Spatial Culture

The main aim of this project is to analyze experiment in Estonian visual and spatial culture, and to investigate its role in official economic and political programs as well as in alternative and critical practices. By concentrating on its relation to “the paradigm of normality” in different periods, the project entails both a historical investigation of the 20th-century culture and an analysis of experiment as a working principle of contemporary art, architecture and film. Differing from the widely naturalised deployment of the term in contemporary cultural and historical discourses where it largely designates formal experimentation, our aim is to open up, and readdress, transformative and critical potential of this concept. Our interest include not only developments in content or form but also the processes of knowledge transfer from one discipline into another – migration of terminology, theories and instruments of creative work, and their effects on the development of discourse.