Public Outreaches
2026
Jaak Tomberg’s interview for Trinokkel
“Literary scholar Jaak Tomberg: Response to the complicated world should not be comforting simplification but bold experimentation”. Available in Estonian: https://trinokkel.postimees.ee/8492062/intervjuu-kirjandusteadlane-jaak-tomberg-vastus-keerukale-maailmale-ei-peaks-olema-mitte-lohutav-lihtsustus-vaid-julge-eksperimenteerimine
Opening the Black Box
On May 11–16, at this year’s Prima Vista International Literary Festival, the research group decisively contributed to the organization of Opening the Black Box – an exhibition and event series taking place at Aparaaditehas’s Hall of Love, curated by Erica Masserano (UK) and Francis Gene-Rowe (UK).
From archival materials to smaller and larger language models, from poetic oracles to game zines, all pieces and events within that week responded to our interpretation of the festival theme: from “true and fake” to “the artificial and the real”. The exhibition arose from our common interest in literary games as a method toward collaborative story creation and playful approaches to causality, and art that helps us engage with language and narrative in ways that challenge othering and unbelonging.
Contemporary reality is so overwhelmingly multiple that voices in politics and the mediascape gain power and control by offering simplified, binaristic explanations. These ‘solutions’ are not only out of touch with the actuality of living and unliving things, they fuel destructive drives for a purity that never existed in the first place. Life is not a closed system. While we cultivate artificial nature in data center greenhouses, the all too real machinery of our cells hums a song of transformation and interconnection. Radical possibility can’t be drawn from what already exists. But whether through collaboration, creation, poetry, games or divination, this space will stay permeable and slimy. The exhibition and its associated events showed threads, windows, portals outside of binary thinking and into collaboration and fun.
The Opening the Black Box exhibition featured artwork by Arjan Guerrero, Kwame Phillips & Debra Spitulnik Vidali, Jaq & Erica Masserano, Francis Gene-Rowe, Amy Cutler, Llew Watkins, and Uma Breakdown.
The exhibition week was backed by 8 special events, including
– an opening roundtable,
– a live writing performance with participatory elements,
– an interactive writing session,
– an afternoon of playing small story games
– a creative workshop
– a film screening together with reading and discussion
– an experimental literary reading event in collaboration with the performance festival Ümberlülitus
– an evening of literary readings and performances by five international poets
For more information about the exhibition, artists, and artworks, you can read the exhibition booklet here.
For the event’s website, see https://kirjandusfestival.tartu.ee/en/projects/opening-the-black-box/
For exhibition and events photos, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Previous
Dr. Francesca Arnavas’ article “Eco-Critical Artistic Perspectives in the ‘Missing’ Exhibition at Tartu Art House” for the contemporary art online journal Echo Gone Wrong: https://echogonewrong.com/eco-critical-artistic-perspectives-in-the-missing-exhibition-at-tartu-art-house/
“Transforming Literary Places” Art Exhibition
The exhibition features visual, aural, audiovisual, and interactive installations of international artists, including illustrations, interactive narratives, and virtual reality experiences.
Artists reinterpret in their selected medium a place born in the context of a literary text, being it Alice’s Wonderland or Robert Frost’s woods. Artists re-imagine the locations through their work, bringing to the fore their own interpretation of the literary place of their choice, choosing what emotions to express, what to emphasise, what to add and what to change. In the exhibition, literary locations come to life in entirely novel, unexpected fashions.
The exhibition is part of Tartu 2024 European Capital of Culture programme.
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/transforming-literary-places/home
Transforming Literary Places was reported in the Radio Classics broadcasting Delta by the Estonian national broadcasting agency ERR: https://klassikaraadio.err.ee/1609293446/delta-8-aprillil-turandot-vanemuises-kirjanduslikud-paigad-naitusel/d220a0e3e66b74274faa6ff525364d7a
Dr. Francesca Arnavas’ article “Ime ja keskkond” (Wonder and the Environment) on the exhibition Waters of Hypoxic Slime and Tropic Lime at Kogo Gallery for Sirp Eesti Kulturileht: https://sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c6-kunst/ime-ja-keskkond/ Published in English in the website of the Gallery: https://www.kogogallery.ee/en/wonder-and-the-environment/
Dr. Francesca Arnavas’ speech “For a ‘non practical’ future” and PhD student Mattia Bellini speech “Listen to researchers!” at the Embassy of Utopia during the literary festival Prima Vista 2023: https://kultuur.err.ee/1608975398/galerii-utoopia-saatkonna-kolmas-paev-loi-vaheala-kohtumiseks/ (Photo: Jan Teevet)
Dr. Francesca Arnavas’ article “Mis juhtub pärast kriisi?” (What happens after the crisis?) on the Future project and Futures article for Sirp Eesti Kulturileht: https://www.sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c21-teadus/mis-juhtub-parast-kriisi/
Report on the Letters from the Future project and Futures article, published in the University of Tartu Research News section.
Read it in English: https://ut.ee/en/content/research-news-effective-child-protection-imagining-post-pandemic-future-training-obese-boys
Read it in Estonian: https://ut.ee/et/sisu/varske-teadus-tulemuslikust-lastekaitsest-koroonajargse-tuleviku-kujutlemisest-rasvunud-poiste
Prof. M. Grishakova’s interview to the Kuku Raadio broadcast Behind the Six Pillars on the international research project “Letters from the Future” coordinated by the University of Twente. Link: https://kuku.pleier.ee/podcast/kuue-samba-taga/120042
Mattia Bellini’s interview for the Estonian Research Council on the participation in a COST Action: https://cost25.etag.ee/lugu/mattia-bellini/
Mattia Bellini’s interview for the News section of the INDCOR website, on a brainstorming technique to gather information from a large number of researchers: https://indcor.eu/news/mattia-bellini/
Siim Sorokin’s interview to the Vikerraadio broadcast Labor on his PhD study of the TV series Breaking Bad. Link: https://vikerraadio.err.ee/v/labor/saated/53de1d14-d88c-4aad-a473-31cabfb67837/labor-looduse-huved-halvale-teele