TOK to mount the main exhibition of Tallinn Photomonth
Q&A with Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits, the co-founders of TOK
The sixth edition of the Tallinn Photomonth biennial of contemporary art is scheduled to take place in the Estonian capital between 1 September and 17 October 2021. The main exhibition of the project will be curated by the TOK Creative Association of Curators from Russia (Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits). The exhibition will be on view at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) from 3 September through 17 October 2021.
Tallinn Photomonth, an international biennial of contemporary art, was initiated by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists in 2011. Initially conceived as a biennial of photography and video art, the Tallinn Photomonth eventually stopped limiting itself to these two media, considerably expanding its arsenal of artistic strategies. What the biennial mainly aims at today is recording and examining the transformative processes of the contemporary society, most of which we tend to follow through our and other people’s screens and cameras. Since its inception, the biennial has not only become one of the main events on the Estonian art scene but also evolved into a powerful hub connecting local institutions and artists.
The new directors of the Tallinn Photomonth Kulla Laas and Merilin Talumaa. Photo: Hedi Jaansoo
The posts of the directors of the biennial were recently assumed by Kulla Laas and Merilin Talumaa, and they came up with the idea of dedicating this year’s Photomonth and its main exhibition to forging new ties between the Baltic and Russian art and culture circles. The involvement of Russian artists who have never previously shown in Tallinn and the fact that, for the first time, curators from Russia have been invited to develop the concept of the main exhibition will both contribute to this end. Founded in St Petersburg by Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits in 2010 as a platform for research projects on the intersection of contemporary art, social sciences and socially oriented design, the TOK Creative Association of Curators is the first officially registered curatorial alliance in Russia.
Kristina Õllek. Distorted Hands. 2017. From the exhibition of the 2017 Tallinn Photomonth
The curatorial concept proposed by TOK was chosen as the most accordant with the general course of this year’s biennial, examining strategies of survival, adaptation and community building in the context of current climate of uncertainty and social political ruptures. The members of TOK describe their curatorial idea in the following way: ‘Our main objective is searching for answers to the question: How do we form new practices of cohabitation in the current situation of dissociation and forced distancing, bringing us closer to a future built on principles of interdependency and non-violence? To this end, we chose the strategy of overcoming the prescribed temporal and narrative linearity and turning to peripheral and non-obvious practices of preserving and conveying knowledge. We base our research on the concept of “intensive locations” proposed by the Russian philosopher and media researcher Mikhail Kurtov. Our plan is to carry out a mapping of the intensive spots of Tallinn as part of the biennial and attempt to trigger a process of further intensification using artistic and curatorial strategies.’
We contacted Anna and Maria to learn more about their vision of the project and asked them five questions for our express interview, some which they answered together and some ‒ individually.
How is your relationship with Tallinn coming along and what is your impression of this city and its residents?
Anna Bitkina: It seems that the separate puzzle pieces of our Estonian period had started to assemble into a coherent picture some time ago, and we really do believe in these things. First we were selected as winners of the contest for a curatorial residency at the KAI centre in 2019; we were supposed to go there in December 2020 but couldn’t due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, last year we were also invited to take part in the (Re)Configuring Territories residency in Narva to re-examine the past and the shifting present of the Ida-Virumaa region. It is a joint project by NART (Narva Art Residency), Finnish Institute in Estonia and the Trojan Horse art collective from Helsinki. And then we were selected as curators of this year’s edition of the Tallinn Photomonth. As a result, the KAI and Narva residencies will happen in May and June, complementing each other and allowing us to immerse ourselves in the Estonian context on a deeper and geographically more extensive level. We are very much looking forward to our trip. It is almost as if there were close relatives waiting for us in Tallinn, people we haven’t seen for ages but have been through a lot with together. And we can’t wait to see them in person and find out how they are doing.
From the Mercury exhibition of the 2019 Tallinn Photomonth
What are the perspectives you see in forging collaboration between the art circles of the Baltic countries and Russia? What are the points of intersection between them?
Maria Veits: As we started going through the history of the Tallinn Photomonth, we realised that not a single artist from Russia had taken part in the biennial throughout the years of its existence. Similarly, I don’t recall a large number of Estonian artists showing recently at Russian venues. If there was any interaction taking place, it was complicated by the political context, like the project by Kristina Norman during the Manifesta 10 biennial in St Petersburg: dedicated to issues of historical truth, the sculptural intervention was shown on Palace Square against the backdrop of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine and thus turned into a critical statement on the political actions of the Russian side. The work was subject to fierce attacks by the city and the public; at that, it was not just the conceptual aspect of the piece that was lambasted but also its aesthetics. In a way, this is typical of the interaction between Russia and Estonia in general: there is sufficient mutual interest but no practice of communication, and it has a lot to do with the way the relationship between the two countries developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and later, after Estonia joined the EU. Furthermore, as curators we find it very interesting to explore the current developments in Estonia: observing as outsiders, we see many interesting young artists emerging; new venues and platforms are opening; Estonia has been a strong presence at the Venice Biennial for quite a few years now. We would love to work closer with the Estonian art scene, and I hope that we will be able to do that as part of the Photomonth ‒ also that we will manage to introduce to the Estonian audience some Russian artists whose works have never been shown in Tallinn before. I believe that a certain reboot of the relationship between the art circles in Estonia and St Peterburg is in order, considering the fact that we are so close to each other and it is not just historical ties that connect us but also a common ecological future: since we live in similar geographical context, we also share problems caused by the consequences of our industrial past and the current state of the region’s woodlands.
You have linked your curatorial concept of the Tallinn Photomonth to the notion of ‘intensive places’ and intend to carry out a mapping of these locations in the city. Could you expand on your plans in this regard?
Anna Bitkina: In our curatorial statement we would like to highlight various fault lines in history, memory, human experience and ways of interspecies interaction, architecture, public spaces and visions of future, in which numerous different processes and superimpositions are combined, thus proposing a completely different mindset or a different cognitive apparatus. We will spend the coming months searching for a language or visuality capable to describe or depict in three or more dimensions the complexity of reality and its invisible processes packed into mundane everyday life. This is where we are helped by the concept of ‘intensive places’ introduced into the semantic field by the contemporary philosopher Mikhail Kurtov. He derives the concept from intensive geography concerned with porousness of a location and a mixture of physical and mental realities. It is the mapping of these places that we want to carry out in Tallinn. Considering the peculiar circumstances of the pandemic and post-pandemic situation, we cannot invite foreign artists to come and do their research in Tallinn to then go on and create new works. Which is why we are inviting international artists to contribute existing projects in which the idea of intensiveness is connected to a specific geography and yet has the potential of establishing a link with local processes, creating a conceptual association with the Estonian context and designating a ‘universal intensive place’. We will invite local artists to contribute new works or create conditions for completing ongoing research and art process.
Pop-up bar against the backdrop of a development site in the southwest of St Petersburg. Part of the 5th session of the Critical Mass project organised by TOK. Photo: Anna Bitkina
One of the cartographic directions of the concept is described as ‘fostering political imagination through the process of decolonialisation of architecture’. What is your understanding of it and how do you propose to implement it?
Maria Veits: The Soviet-era architecture in Estonia is an area of interest for many local researchers who study its various aspects. For instance, the architectural historian Ingrid Ruudi examines it from the perspective of feminist optics, female experience, gender relations in the Soviet society and the ways in which the patriarchal model was integrated into the architectural projects of the time, including resident and public spaces.
We have long been interested in the issue of the built-in element of violence in architecture, including the modernist project with its intent of regulating and controlling people’s personal space and, respectively, lives. As part of the fifth season of the Critical Mass project dedicated to the housing issue, we examine various processes in the development of territories, the subject of (in)accessible real estate and different ambitious architectural projects, discuss the foundations and principles of housing policy within various geographical, political and economic contexts. The main objective of the project is developing a set of approaches and strategies for decolonialisation the issue of housing, having worked out how our cognitive apparatus and familiar set of terms for describing reality through the lens of architecture and related matters ‒ from propaganda and imposing a certain way of life in the city to the ever-increasing social stratification ‒ are formed. It is, obviously, a very ambitious task and we have been learning a lot ourselves during the project, first and foremost ‒ to ‘unsee’ and ‘unlearn’ what we have grown accustomed to view as given. Unravelling these social political and cultural layers, identifying the determinant factors of their presence and ostensible invisibility ‒ this for me is an attempt to refine out political vision and imagination, a rejection of the pre-existing paradigm and an effort to find our own interpretation of the present to create an alternative picture of the future.
As part of the Photomonth, we will invite a number of Estonian artists to work with the subject of decolonialisation both the urban environment and their personal take on it; it will be very interesting to see the points of entrance to this range of problems proposed by the artists. It would be exciting to examine the urban space of Tallinn through the experience of various implicit communities, unusual and non-prescribed practices of using the cityscape elements and attempts of reclaiming territories ‒ both physical and conceptual.
In 2020, TOK launched a series of online discussions Get Real! dedicated to housing issues, featuring a panel of international curators, artists, historians, social scientists and architects
What has the pandemic and the resulting global lockdown of most cultural institutions taught you as curators? Does the situation, which still casts a shadow of uncertainty on the perspectives of foreseeable future, call for a re-evaluation of the curatorial practice?
Anna Bitkina: We have always been a nomadic collective and have frequently worked remotely; however, the pandemic and the lockdown(s) have escalated the situation to ultimate uncertainty of a physical encounter. Our workload has not dried up; on the contrary, sometimes I feel that it has actually grown. Our advantage is the fact that we are quite mobile and can reorientate quite quickly ‒ unlike, presumably, most larger institutions. Some timelines have shifted; some plans have been moved online. At the same time, we are also quite vulnerable, and the pandemic has revealed the total fragility of existence of independent institutions and self-employed specialists whose financial defence mechanisms are minimal or non-existent. Perhaps at times like these many of us start thinking: But what else can I do to make a living? Where else does my potential lie?
Maria Veits: Many of the practices that have become particularly popular since the pandemic broke out were not a novelty for us: we have been working remotely for more than a decade now, and we have grown accustomed to mounting large projects this way, so switching to online mode completely was not something unexpected for us. We managed to move part of the projects online, for instance, launching a series of discussions Get Real! dedicated to housing issues, featuring a panel of international curators, artists, historians, social scientists and architects, and our School of New Co-Existence Practice, an educational online project which will result in the participants creating real and virtual projects for an exhibition, part of the fifth season of our Critical Mass project. The sheer volume of all this zooming and online communication seemed daunting at first but now, I think, everybody has already grown used to it and the infinite possibilities presented by the process of creating and using online content. New exhibiting strategies emerge; numbers of hybrid projects grow; curatorial and art practices adapt to the new conditions; knowledge exchange has become more horizontal and accessible, because the pandemic has also made us more equal in our immobility. Importantly, at that, smaller institutions and projects have proved themselves more focused in their efforts to adapt; their adaptability in general is better developed than that of bulkier institutions, which mostly rely on exhibition audiences. Moreover, the audience itself has also switched to online mode and found out that it has its strong points as well. Sometimes it is the only format available, and not just because of the pandemic: for instance, early April saw Roskomnadzor (Russian Service for Supervision of Communications) suspended the Artdocfest events in St Petersburg; the organizers moved the whole programme online, which made it available to a much larger number of viewers.
