Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00-16.00, coffee break 12-12.30, lunch 14-14.45
Location:
The workshop takes place in Naked Island workshop complex in Paljassaare, Northern Tallinn (tram 1, Sitsi stop, Laevastiku 3). The day consists of three parts, a coffee break and lunch (all on-site).
Convenors:
Dr. Kadri Tüür
Ave Matsin, MA
Craft studies is an emerging field of research that is gaining recognition worldwide. Craft studies combine practical skills with theoretical knowledge of heritage craft technologies. Practice-based approach helps researchers achieve a better understanding of the technical aspects of their objects of study. Research in craft studies contributes to understanding heritage craft practises, technologies, discourses, and networks as a technical and intellectual enterprise. Scholars of craft studies can emerge from amongst anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists, museum curators, craft practitioners, and so on.
In the workshop, we will attempt to blend craft studies into a wider array of disciplines that are commonly regarded as environmental humanities. We explore the connections between the study of heritage craft, environmental history, environmentalism and local ecologies. In the course of the workshop, we will discuss whether it is possible to draw information from historical and ethnological sources in order to facilitate our future resilience and to diminish our current ecological footrpint. How can the research into past, present and future be combined under the umbrella of applied environmental humanities?
Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00–17.00, lunch 13.30–14.30. Meeting point is at the Kumu Museum’s ticket counter at 10:00 am.
Location:
Kumu Art Museum (Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1)
Convenor:
Prof. Maximilian Schich (Tallinn University)
The experience of historical and contemporary art is often punctual, anecdotal, and specific. Meanwhile, the system of art and cultural production is very clearly an ecology of production processes, resonant physical and conceptual configurations, and collective attention dynamics. All these phenomena have in common that in quantity they aggregate to new qualitative patterns that are more than the sum of their specific parts. In this workshop, our mission is to explore and map the Kumu Museum collection in a comprehensive manner with the aim of surfacing signs and traces of this overarching ecology of processes, resonances, and dynamics. Following individual explorations, a mapping exercise, and group discussion, we will further engage with the ongoing and fitting exhibition “Art or Science”, which coincidentally would also be a fitting title of our own maps, produced in the morning. We conclude the day with a glimpse into the research practice of scholars, who look at museums in similar and related ways as a subject of their PhD or Postdoc projects.
Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00–16.00, lunch 12.00–13.00
Location:
Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A-501
Convenors:
Dr. Mika Elo (Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki)
Dr. Jaana Päeva (Estonian Academy of Arts)
During the past three decades artistic research has established itself as a part of academic research culture in many countries. The general legitimation struggles that were characteristic of its early years are not any longer in focus; the fronts have shifted and become more situational.
In artistic research methods are often entangled with idiosyncratic artistic frameworks. Therefore, some determined reflection on the inherent logic of seemingly non-systematic and heterogeneous (artistic) practices, is needed. This workshop is a place to reflect on the ways in which methods unfold in and through practices. How to “capture” methods in the process of their unfolding? How to fine-tune methods through variation, repetition, and iteration? How to adopt and adapt already existing methods?
An example of a research through design is presented to demonstrate what and how artistic research happens.
The workshop starts with introductory lectures by the convenors. A tour around EKA workshops provides a glimpse to practice and creative research in studios and workshops. The workshop culminates in a practical crash course and discussion on how to relate artistic and research processes with each other and how to develop individual methods through practice. The workshop is suitable to all students and researchers who have a growing or just emerging interest in the peculiarities of artistic research independently of their own field of study.
Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00–16.00, lunch 12.00–13.00
Location:
Original Sokos Hotel Viru, seminar room Semi, Viru Väljak 4
Workshop convenors:
Prof. Tauri Tuvikene (Tallinn University)
Prof. Ger Duijzings (University of Regensburg)
The workshop finds its inspiration in an edited volume just completed by the two conveners If Cars Could Walk: Postsocialist Streets in Transformation (forthcoming, Berghahn). The book presents a series of ethnographic case studies of street life in various (postsocialist) cities, showing the importance of a humanities-based perspective when exploring what happens on streets and understanding what interactions and frictions occur. Streets are spaces for mobilities and places for diverse social (and unsocial) activities. Streets bring together people and things, they allow for flows and stasis, they are places for socialising – which might result in negative encounters – but they are also spaces for people to move through on their way to other destinations (work, leisure, home, etc). We argue that streets are essential to help sustain the social fabric. They provide spatial anchors for communities and neighbourhoods and create an ‘identity’ for the city and its constitutive parts. In this workshop, we will first read and discuss some of the available literature on street life, subsequently carrying out our own urban explorations via a diverse toolbox of urban studies. Over several hours we will investigate social life at an actual intersection in the centre of Tallinn to understand frictions, socialities and (im)mobilities. The aim is to ethnographically observe and describe various mundane and taken-for-granted practices that occur during the winter season, being aware of the characteristics of the space (including material and technological details) and how they facilitate pedestrian movement, car traffic and public transport, as well as social interactions. In addition, we will raise critical questions about local urban histories and transformations, exploring – amongst others – about what “post-socialism” means in this context.
Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00–16.00, lunch 13.00–14.00
Location:
Estonian Academy of Arts, Põhja pst 7, room A-402
Workshop convenor:
Prof. Raili Marling (University of Tartu)
The aim of the workshop is to, first, ask what constitutes a crisis. In public discourse crises are conventionally conceptualized as rare, cataclysmic and spectacular events (events of 9/11, Fukushima disaster, tsunamis, etc.). Yet, we are on a daily basis surrounded by pervasive but invisible crises (climate change, economic restructuring). It is these crises that present a major representational challenge, as it is hard to make people respond to something that they cannot see or feel.
In the workshop we will look at discursive construction of crises in public and media discourse, using case studies from different languages. We will contrast the creation of social panics to the attempts to make invisible crises visible. Among other things, we will try to envision modes of representing the invisible crises, especially through artistic practices (literary fiction, film, contemporary art).
In the second part of the workshop, we will take a hands-on approach and analyze actual cases of crisis communication in different languages, to discuss the successes and failures from a linguistic, cultural and interpersonal perspectives. Finally, we will play through a scenario of an actual crisis and brainstorm effective crisis management strategies.
Depending on your interests:
Time:
26.01.2023 / 10.00-16.00, lunch 13.00-14.00
Location:
Film museum, Pirita tee 56 (from here, we will walk to the Maarjamäe Memorial Complex and the Memorial to the Victims of Communism)
Convenor:
Dr. Margaret Comer (Tallinn University)
Societies and states reinforce both their power and shared identity by shaping public space, building monuments and memorials that bolster a ‘unified’ view of that society’s shared past and values. When power changes hands, the new power-holders may be eager to change these symbols and places, in turn. In Estonia, some Soviet-era memorials and monuments were removed in the 1990s, but some remained in their original settings, although the popular meanings and led to occasional conflict, as in the Bronze Soldier ‘riots’ in 2007.
In the wake of Russia’s intensified war in Ukraine in 2022, controversy has erupted again over the meaning and status of Soviet memorials. Starting with nationwide bans on publicly displaying certain symbols, public and political conversations have produced new legislation, protests, counter-protests, and the removal of several high-profile war memorials and monuments. More are scheduled to be removed, while remaining Soviet symbols in other public places are slated for removal, too. Much of this discourse focuses on how these symbols and places might pose a ‘threat’ to contemporary Estonian identity and security and, conversely, how they symbolize Russian minority identity and a sense of pride in the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War/World War II.
This workshop will combine discussions with site visits to several prominent memorials in Tallinn: the Soviet-era Maarjamäe Memorial, dedicated to fallen Soviet ‘defenders’ and the adjoining Memorial to the Victims of Communism, which memorializes Estonians who were killed, deported, or imprisoned during the Soviet era. Together with a set of German war graves, these monuments form a highly contested and dissonant ‘heritagescape’. We will also view a collection of Soviet-era memorials that have been removed from their original locations to the Maarjamäe Palace history museum, which will also host lunch and discussions. Along with viewing so many varied manifestations of politicized memory in one small area, we will discuss how the meanings attributed to memorials change over time and how places formerly treated as ‘hallowed’ or revered can come to be considered dangerous – but to whom and why? And how do politics, identity, heritage, and memory continuously shape each other?
Please dress warmly and wear adequate footwear – it will be cold outside and the ground may be slippery.
Please also look at the Republic of Estonia’s official information center about the current situation regarding Soviet-era monuments, since the issue is developing rapidly: https://www.riigikantselei.ee/en/monuments