Tallinn Art Hall: Residency
Starting from September 2020 artists Denis Dizon and Laura Kuusk & Camille Laurelli will each spend two months in residency at the Tallinn Art Hall. The selected artists, chosen from over 200 applicants, will develop new works reflecting on Virtual Reality contributing artistically to the discourse generated by the project BEYOND MATTER. The residency program is part of the large-scale cooperation project BEYOND MATTER. Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality, co-founded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union, dedicated to novel, digital approaches to exhibition revival, documentation, and dissemination, and the artistic, curatorial, and museological elaboration of the chances given by virtual representation.
Dennis Dizon
Dennis Dizon will develop, for BEYOND MATTER, the concept of an “ecological singularity”—a materialising of difference between person and thing, human and nonhuman. Focusing on curatorial methodology and public programming, he will examine practices in (collaborative) dialogue via digital information and communication technologies—techno-ecological encounters that could manifest in making, doing, writing or performing. How can we reimagine communication? What would it mean to “interface” with the digital screen or applications in XR? How can we tactically capitalise on affect to reconceptualise conversations between human-to-human and human-with-nonhuman? How can we translate “user experience” as a “more-than-human encounter”?
“Ecological singularity” rethinks ecological engagement: a reimagining of collaboration and participation as means for creating other discourse about human entanglements in more-than-human worlds. The approach is, first, a decentralisation of self as a means for transcending human exceptionalism in the midst of an ecological and affective crisis. With Tallinn Art Hall, Dennis will explore processes in individual intersectional thinking as a foundation for empathic communication and a shared imaginary.
Dennis runs MATTERS OF—an ongoing critical inquiry into a queer techno-ecological. For several years, he was a Program Manager at Google Arts & Culture, working with arts and cultural museums globally to bring their digital content online. He holds a Master of Research degree in Curatorial/Knowledge and a postgraduate diploma in Contemporary Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London, both with distinction. He is a Filipino-American based in London; he is getting used to writing in the third-person.
Website:
reason-less.com
Laura Kuusk
Laura Kuusk lives and works in Tallinn. Kuusk mainly uses photography, video and installation in her artistic practice. Most of her works have to do with recycling anthropological visual (found) materials. Kuusk is interested in the decision-making mechanisms within the collective consciousness.
Over the last years, she has worked with the experience of the human body in the surrounding environment — in homes, in clothes, in relation to technology and to other organisms. In her work, Kuusk experiments with the visual traces of bodily experiences and their connection to larger socio-political processes.
She studied at the Annecy Higher Art School (DSRA, 2014), the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA in Photography, 2008), and Tartu University (BA in Semiotics and Cultural Theory, 2005). Kuusk is holding a studio in ARS art factory in Tallinn (since 2015) and was a member of the art center OUI in Grenoble (2009-2015). She is an associate professor at Estonian Academy of Arts photography department since 2015.
Website:
laurakuusk.com
Camille Laurelli
Camille Laurelli is a french artist who currently lives and works in Tallinn. He funded and curated OUI Art Center from 2007 to 2014 and he’s curating Galerie Showcase in Grenoble since 2013 and Showcase Tallinn since 2016. He is Teaching at the Estonian Faculty of Art (EKA) in Tallinn as guest teacher from 2015. He’s also Triin Tamm’s assistant from 2009, and he curated the collective exhibition « Infinite Lives » for Kunstihoone at Tallinn Art Hall in September 2016 with the curator Nicolas Audureau.
Camille Laurelli is particularly engaged with conservation and reflecting on digital heritage. As a founding member of interactive video games museum LVLup! In Tallinn, he created the structure for collecting digital games and offering an interactive educational program. The museum is now part of European Federation of Game Archives Museums and Preservation Projects (EFGAMP). In his artistic and curatorial practice, Laurelli is involved in interactive and performative practices, video games being an example of creating multiple storylines and scenarios that are activated only at the event of playing/participation. He is currently running the LVLup! Museum of Video Games in Tallinn and sharing a studio with Laura Kuusk at ARS art factory.
Website:
camillelaurelli.tumblr.com
