Ptarmigan operated in Tallinn from 2011-2014. We no longer maintain any presence in Tallinn, but this website will continue to serve as an archive of the activities produced at Ptarmigan during these years.
Join us for a series of presentations by international artists who are on residency this summer at Culture Factory Polymer and Ptarmigan. Each artist will give a brief presentation of their work, followed by an open discussion. We'll discuss the role of text and language in a mobillity-based practice, the future of media-defined art, and the impressions of Tallinn on the artists so far.
Featuring:
This talk is free, but please wear clothing made from natural fabrics only.
Longtime Ptarmigan friend Derek Holzer returns to present a one-day workshop on building SoundBoxes. Participants will discover the hidden sonic qualities of objects from our everyday world in this hands-on workshop, which combines the arts of electronics, noise, sculpture and collage. The basic elements we will employ are a wooden box, a speaker, a small audio amplifier and a contact microphone. To this, brave box-builders will add their own found objects, graphics, images, memories and ideas to create a unique electroacoustic cabinet of curiosities.
WHAT TO BRING
Derek will provide most of the tools and materials necessary for constructing the box. However there are a few things you should bring yourself:
1) A BOX: This should be made of thin wood or very strong cardboard. Plastic can be also used, but it doesn’t sound very good. No metal, please! This box should be a minimum of 10x15x4cm. Larger boxes have better resonance and room for speakers, objects and decorations. Cigar boxes, small suitcases, instrument cases or jewelry/silverware boxes are all good things to look for. IMPORTANT: the lid of the box should be no more than 5mm thick!
2) A SPEAKER (OPTIONAL): I often have 77mm or 92mm speakers on hand, but if you want a larger or different one you can bring it yourself. Besides buying one, you can salvage one from old hi-fi systems, clock radios or portable stereos. Please make sure it fits in the box you have chosen!
3) FOUND/SOUND OBJECTS: Please bring as many found objects as you can to decorate your soundbox or use as a sound source via the contact microphone.
4) EFFECTS PEDALS (OPTIONAL): Any kind of battery-powered effects pedals, such as distortions, filters or delays, can be very useful in creating more nonlinearities in the feedback loop.
More information on the workshop (including more photos and video) can be found on Derek's site.
Participants will perform on their soundboxes later in the evening at the SoundBoxes performance night. Invite your friends and families!
Participants from Derek Holzer's SoundBoxes workshop (earlier in the day) will perform on their new instruments. This performance is free and will also feature DJ Kaarel Künnap, refreshments, and other potential surprises.
grawlix (plural grawlixes or grawlix)
What does it mean to be profane? In our increasingly global era, where all taboos have been broken and boundaries no longer exist to protect the sacred, the act of swearing becomes lost in the ever-increasing glossolalia of everyday life. Yet profanity, like anything else, can be approached as an art. When placed carefully, a simple 'fuck' or 'cock' can express a truth unparallelled by family-friendly language. At the same time, more grandiose constructions of the obscene can be mellifluous and sublime.
As part of Ptarmigan's Undo Lab series of collaborative creative activities without pressure for resolution or conclusion, we invite you to Grawlixes, a workshop for writers, thinkers, and people who like to curse. We will look at some great examples of obscenity in art, literature and popular culture, and try to unravel the art of the swear. We'll play simple textual games to stimulate our nasty glands, and of course we'll insult the shit out of each other.
Leave your sensitivity behind, and bring notebooks and pencils. This event is free but please register to let us know if you're fucking coming, dickheads.
At the second Strange Meetings club, we will gather on the banks of the mighty Pirita to examine the role of trout fishing in art, culture and society. Local writer/thinker Scott Diel will provide a live demonstration of the craft, while we ask attendees to use their collective energies to summon trout to the surface. The event will be supplemented by readings from Richard Brautigan's immortal Trout Fishing in America (1967) while we will improvise collaborative performance/interpretations inspired by trout, fishing, and the Pirita river.
We'll assemble where you see the green arrow on this map at precisely 6:41 PM.
Bring food; this is a picnic.
** Seminar will be available for remote participation via Skype! Please register here and include your Skype username to be invited to the call! **
This is a seminar/class that will meet this summer to explore the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The meetings will begin in the mid-late 1960’s and follow the development of the AACM, mainly looking at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as central figures, up through the late 1970s.
Each week we will listen together to AACM recordings, discuss our thoughts and ideas, and share food and drink. The principal text will be George E. Lewis’s book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, but we will supplement each meeting with additional readings that span theory, criticism and other themes related to their work. We will explicitly examine the organisational elements of the AACM, as an association that supports artistic research against the grain of commercial pressure, seeking strategies that may be applicable to our creative ventures today. Additionally, we’ll look for parallel developments in non-AACM art and music from these times.
Schedule:
In our final meeting, we will look at how the AACM changes in the late 1970s, responding to the challenges of sustaining continued musical creativity against both the shrinking cultural environment and the organisation’s own institutional nature. We'll check in with the AACM as it exists now, where it has become a storied Chicago institution, and listen to some of the recordings from the late 1970s that hint at the future development of these artists.
This week's listening:
** Seminar will be available for remote participation via Skype! Please register here and include your Skype username to be invited to the call! **
This is a seminar/class that will meet several times this summer to explore the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The meetings will begin in the mid-late 1960’s and follow the development of the AACM, mainly looking at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as central figures, up through the late 1970s.
Each week we will listen together to AACM recordings, discuss our thoughts and ideas, and share food and drink. The principal text will be George E. Lewis’s book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, but we will supplement each meeting with additional readings that span theory, criticism and other themes related to their work. We will explicitly examine the organisational elements of the AACM, as an association that supports artistic research against the grain of commercial pressure, seeking strategies that may be applicable to our creative ventures today. Additionally, we’ll look for parallel developments in non-AACM art and music from these times.
Schedule:
Back in America, the Art Ensemble added Don Moye as drummer and cemented the lineup that would continue until Bowie’s death. Meanwhile, other AACM musicians were moving to New York and expanding their circles, while the AACM approached ten years of existence.
This week's listening:
The Ptarmigan staff will build vertical windowfarms to grow vegetables, flowers and herbs as a year-round DIY indoor farm. We're going to attempt to construct a a muti-column window farm in the blue room of Ptarmigan, using available online plans, so why don't you join us?
From windowfarms.org: "Windowfarms let you grow food year-round inside while maximizing space. They are vertical food-growing gardens that use a dirt-free technique called hydroponics. You can buy a kit or build your own using low-impact or recycled local materials. Having a windowfarm is more about the activity and experience of windowfarming, these are living systems; not just a pretty thing to look at."
We'll start spray-painting bottles and gathering other materials Friday night around 19:00, and Saturday at 12:00 we'll start working through the plans. Come along if you'd like to help or just want to hang out.
** Seminar will be available for remote participation via Skype! Please register here and include your Skype username to be invited to the call! **
This is a seminar/class that will meet several times this summer to explore the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The meetings will begin in the mid-late 1960’s and follow the development of the AACM, mainly looking at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as central figures, up through the late 1970s.
Each week we will listen together to AACM recordings, discuss our thoughts and ideas, and share food and drink. The principal text will be George E. Lewis’s book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, but we will supplement each meeting with additional readings that span theory, criticism and other themes related to their work. We will explicitly examine the organisational elements of the AACM, as an association that supports artistic research against the grain of commercial pressure, seeking strategies that may be applicable to our creative ventures today. Additionally, we’ll look for parallel developments in non-AACM art and music from these times.
Schedule:
Some AACM musicians traveled to Paris in 1969, where the Art Ensemble of Chicago solidified, and they underwent their most fruitful period of musical exploration. Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Leo Smith and Steve McCall also worked in Paris at this time, playing in various group formations, and with Paris-based musicians. In France, their music was enthusiastically appreciated, though the reception of black American art in Europe was often problematic, tinged with an artificial exoticism.
This week's listening:
** Seminar will be available for remote participation via Skype! Please register here and include your Skype username to be invited to the call! **
This is a seminar/class that will meet several times this summer to explore the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The meetings will begin in the mid-late 1960’s and follow the development of the AACM, mainly looking at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as central figures, up through the late 1970s.
Each week we will listen together to AACM recordings, discuss our thoughts and ideas, and share food and drink. The principal text will be George E. Lewis’s book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, but we will supplement each meeting with additional readings that span theory, criticism and other themes related to their work. We will explicitly examine the organisational elements of the AACM, as an association that supports artistic research against the grain of commercial pressure, seeking strategies that may be applicable to our creative ventures today. Additionally, we’ll look for parallel developments in non-AACM art and music from these times.
Schedule:
This week we'll look at some more early AACM recordings, specifically the debut of a young composer named Anhony Braxton. While the Art Ensemble of Chicago was not yet named, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors were performing under various group names. Like a “super group” of Chicago-based musicians, these four were united in their distinct approach to creating “black music”. At once jazz and not-jazz, this music created a new form of sound expression that did not abandon the roots of jazz, Negro spirituals, and African tribal music yet was distinctly avant-garde and open in form.
This week we'll listen to:
In this first edition of the Strange Meetings Club, Justin Tyler Tate will host a chess tournament at 3:18hrs in front of the Estonian Parlimant Building/Riigikogu (Lossi plats 1a, 15165 Tallinn).
Chess is a game of reflection and analysis; so how does the proposed situation challenge the context of the site? How does the pre-modern function of chess relate to contemporary politics? Why are we meeting to play chess at 3:18hrs? These are the questions proposed as individuals will challenge each other in round after round until only one remains as the “Strange Meetings Club Chess Champion”.
Note: This is 3:18 AM Saturday night (technically, Sunday morning).
Trashlab repair cafe events are social occasions to gather and try to fix the things you have that are broken, and meet others who care about tinkering, fixing, hacking, and the problem of waste and obsolescence in society. Each time we try to identify someone(s) in advance who has some experience/skills, although everyone is encourage to help each other.
Join us on Saturday afternoon as we will open Ptarmigan for your own repairing activities. Bring things that you would like to repair, and feel free to hang out, enjoy some coffee and snacks, and tinker around. If you have a specific item you would like to repair, please register below and tell us about it, and we'll see if we can help in advance -- but you can always just show up without registering!
Repair Cafe is an ongoing monthly event of Pixelache Helsinki, as part of the Pixelversity Waste/d theme (and Trashlab). More information, including documentation of previous Repair Cafes, can be found at http://trashlabfix.tumblr.com.
Fake It Till You Make It returns on Tuesday, 4 June.
All are welcome, and remember, it's always nice to register so Justin knows roughly how many people are coming.
About FITYMI
Fake It Till You Make It is a workshop/working group for those curious individuals looking to broaden their experience and skill-set. Each session of FITYMI will be on a different subject which could fall under areas of expertise such as construction, making, baking, electronics, mechanics, cooking, jewelry, physics, plants, and whatever else can be imagined. It is the purpose of the workshop to learn new things for the sake of learning and it is for this reason that participants will only discover the subject of each session upon arriving to the workshop. During each meeting there is a short talk about the subject and how to accomplish the objective of the FITYMI session followed by participants choosing how to proceed (experimenting with materials, accomplishing a project, discussion and/or playing) with food available at some point during the workshop.
To cover the expenses of materials and food for the workshop participants are asked to ‘pay what you can’. We'll have food to share at the end while we reflect on what we made.
Running/organizing the workshop is Justin Tyler Tate who instructs other workshops such as 'Fast and Raw' - Intermediate sushi and 'Under Your Skin' (Tattooing Workshop). Tate has a Bachelors degree in Fine Art, a Doctorate in electronics and has an insatiable curiosity for new materials, techniques and ways of making.
** Seminar will be available for remote participation via Skype! Please register here and include your Skype username to be invited to the call! **
This is a seminar/class that will meet several times this summer to explore the evolution of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The meetings will begin in the mid-late 1960’s and follow the development of the AACM, mainly looking at the Art Ensemble of Chicago as central figures, up through the late 1970s.
Each week we will listen together to AACM recordings, discuss our thoughts and ideas, and share food and drink. The principal text will be George E. Lewis’s book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, but we will supplement each meeting with additional readings that span theory, criticism and other themes related to their work. We will explicitly examine the organisational elements of the AACM, as an association that supports artistic research against the grain of commercial pressure, seeking strategies that may be applicable to our creative ventures today. Additionally, we’ll look for parallel developments in non-AACM art and music from these times.
Schedule:
Listening:
Let us know if you are coming and feel free to bring food and drink to share!
There is no end to the description of reality. On Monday, 20 May 2013 at 18:00 Done Lab invites you for the marathon of unfinished documentaries by Eisenstein (Que Viva Mexico, 1931), Godard, Leacock, Pennebaker (1pm.,1968) and Ghatak (Ramkinkar Baij, 1976).
Bad ideas shouldn't be finalized. On Monday, 13 May 2013 at 19:00 Done Lab invites you for the marathon of terrible, incomplete movies by Leder, Hope, Sholem (Doomsday Machine, 1972), Lorinz (Swirly, 2000) and Sheldon (Grizzly II: The Predator, 1987).
Film icons also struggle with undone. On Monday, 6 May 2013 at 19:00 Done Lab in conjunction with Clip Kino invites you for the screening of unfinished movies (starring Charlie Caplin, Marilyn Monroe and Bruce Lee).
Clip Kino events are self-organised screening events of short video clips & documentaries found online. It aims to drag aspects of normalised 'private' activity - of viewing downloaded content on one's own computer - into public space for screening, appreciation and debate.
Do you have an idea that you know you are never going to actually get around to doing?
Come to the Idea Liberation Zone and present it! The Idea Liberation Zone is a public forum where anyone can present their un-started or unfinished ideas. The stage is yours to tell us about it, or you can just come to listen and enjoy food, drink and music. Your idea will be made “open source” tonight, so you must be comfortable with allowing others to take it and make it fly.
Idea Liberation Zone is the introductory event of Done Lab, a project of resident artist Agnieszka Pokrywka. Done Lab is a temporary, experimental space focused on making undone things done. A series of activities will comprise Done Lab, for anyone who struggles with unfinished letters, art, relationships, projects, writings, crafts, academic work, or other not suitably implemented ideas. Done Lab events will create supportive environments to encourage making new sense out of the unfinished past in the reflective context of the present.
With the increase in DIY electronics techniques (as information is shared online and participation-based activities, such as the ones we have hosted at Ptarmigan, enable enthusiasts to develop together outside of institutions), the ability to move from the private realm into public space becomes possible. But how can someone use electronics in an expressive, public context? Street art and graffiti most often takes the form of provocative graphic design or tried-and-true genre stereotypes; more elaborate constructions are views as 'public art'. Can there be a space somewhere in-between?
With the cost of electronics constantly falling, it's no longer a crazy idea to invest time and money into something that will end up in a temporary public use. How can "electronics graffiti" build upon a tradition of public intervention (as found in performance art, social practice, relational aesthetics, etc.) in combination with an expressive, production-based art practice?
Australian/UK-based artist Tara Pattenden will lead a 2-day workshop that will bend the idea of public art and electronics. On the first day, she will lead participants through various small projects such as simple noise-making oscillators, LED 'throwies', and similar objects that are inexpensive, easy, and flexible. On Sunday, participants will take to the streets of Tallinn to deploy these objects, documenting where possible, while Ptarmigan remains open for further assistance. Sunday evening, participants will return to present what they have done and discuss their approaches, both technical and philosophical, to the subject.
Tara Pattenden co-founded Ptarmigan in Helsinki, in 2009. She is a visual/media artist whose practice is driven by a working fascination with the excesses of visual culture; that is, with the clutter, framing and generative potential of today’s various electronic communications technologies, broadcast media, advertising design, pop music and film. The interplay of contemporary and traditional ritual in the construction of collective identity is of particular interest to her, as well as the playful manipulation of each process and media’s operational limits. She is one-half of noise duo Kunt and currently resides in Bristol, England. http://www.schmelfhelp.co.uk/
This workshop is part of the (Il)legal Aesthetics series, a project of MIgrating Art Academies, curated by Mindaugas Gapsevicius.
Fast and Raw is a workshop on sushi making, knife sharpening and sushi eating. During the workshop participants will learn to make Hosomaki, Temaki, Nigiri, and Gunkanmaki sushi with a variety of different traditional (and untraditional) fillings. Those in the class will also learn how to sharpen a knife (bring a knife from home) by using a sharpening stone (because a sharp knife makes your sushi more delicious). For the finale of the class, we will have a large sushi banquet (which you should invite your friends/family to).
Leading the course is Justin Tyler Tate who has a Bachelors degree in Fine Art, a Doctorate in electronics and no qualifications in the field of sushi. He has never been to Japan but people, who have also never been to Japan, regard his sushi as “the best”.
The February seesion of Fake It Till You Make It will meet on Tuesday, 12 February.
All are welcome, and remember, it's always nice to register so Justin knows roughly how many people are coming.
About FITYMI
Fake It Till You Make It is a workshop/working group for those curious individuals looking to broaden their experience and skill-set. Each session of FITYMI will be on a different subject which could fall under areas of expertise such as construction, making, baking, electronics, mechanics, cooking, jewelry, physics, plants, and whatever else can be imagined. It is the purpose of the workshop to learn new things for the sake of learning and it is for this reason that participants will only discover the subject of each session upon arriving to the workshop. During each meeting there is a short talk about the subject and how to accomplish the objective of the FITYMI session followed by participants choosing how to proceed (experimenting with materials, accomplishing a project, discussion and/or playing) with food available at some point during the workshop.
To cover the expenses of materials and food for the workshop participants are asked to ‘pay what you can’. We'll have food to share at the end while we reflect on what we made.
Running/organizing the workshop is Justin Tyler Tate who instructs other workshops such as 'Fast and Raw' - Intermediate sushi and 'Under Your Skin' (Tattooing Workshop). Tate has a Bachelors degree in Fine Art, a Doctorate in electronics and has an insatiable curiosity for new materials, techniques and ways of making.
After the economic collapse there seems to be nothing that holds Europe together any more besides opportunism, cynicism and indifference. This is now the means of survival; we are trapped in a system we cannot control, victims of a system that centralises power and spreads risk to the rest of us.
Robin Hood Minor Asset Management is a cooperative of artists, activists and researchers originating in Helsinki, Finland. Using their sophisticated 'parasite' system, Robin Hood uses the same tools of investment/exploitation to return capital to people and projects with contrary goals to those of eternally expanding Wall Street investors. The project, in an experimental beta phase, returns 50% of profit to the investor and the other 50% into a cooperative fund which will be used to support ideas normally outside the purview of investment banks.
At Ptarmigan, Akseli Virtanen, Ana Fradique and Karolina Kucia will present the Robin Hood project and offer a chance to join. We will then open up into a workshop that will explore the critical questions at the core of this project. Is a 'parasite' an effective scheme of action? Where do we draw the boundaries of collective activity - the boundaries of trust, risk, and sharing? How does one negotiate their core beliefs by participating in the stock market ?
Please come with ideas, questions, and an open mind.
On Saturday, 19 January, we invite the public to Ptarmigan for the presentation of the (Il)legal Aesthetics core workshop, which occurs 16-19 January and features participants from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Norway, the US, Sweden, Denmark and the UK. While the workshop is closed to the public now, we wil be showcasing output from the group at Ptarmigan and outside.
Registration for this workshop is now closed.
Fluctuating between legal and illegal, the (Il)legal Aesthetics laboratory aims to raise more questions than to bring answers. If dOCUMENTA (13) concentrated on vanishing borders between art and science, (Il)legal Aesthetics seeks to investigate other side of the truth. For example, may norms and etiquette be ignored? How far can pirate radio broadcasts be harmful or harmless? Why do I need to buy Photoshop if I can download it for free? And what are the borders of art and education?
Ptarmigan, in collaboration with resident artist Mindaugas Gapsevicius, will present a series of activities from January - March 2013 around the concept of (Il)legal Aesthetics. This "core" will focus on content and tools which are not common for a usual artist. This series of workshops and programmes do not oppose existing educational institutions pre se; they are intended to be a complementary experience. We will investigate responsibilities and possibilities; we will attempt to discover (il)legal forms of action and aesthetics.
This core workshop is divided into two parts:
Registrants will participate in both parts of this core workshop. Optional followup workshops will be offered in February and March:The open dungeon, a seminar/workshop on p2p networks, open data structures and their social ramifications; Strategies Against Advertising, an activist-themed exploration into the language of advertising; Radio Free Tallinn, the theory and practice of pirate radio.
(Il)legal Aesthetics is organised by Estonian Academy of Arts, Migrating Art Academies, and Ptarmigan Tallinn. The laboratory is partly supported by KUNO network and Kulturkontakt Nord.
Registration for this workshop is now closed.
We bring in the new year at Ptarmigan with the first seesion of Fake It Till You Make It, which will meet on Thursday, 3 January.
All are welcome, and remember, it's always nice to register so Justin knows roughly how many people are coming.
About FITYMI
Fake It Till You Make It is a workshop/working group for those curious individuals looking to broaden their experience and skill-set. Each session of FITYMI will be on a different subject which could fall under areas of expertise such as construction, making, baking, electronics, mechanics, cooking, jewelry, physics, plants, and whatever else can be imagined. It is the purpose of the workshop to learn new things for the sake of learning and it is for this reason that participants will only discover the subject of each session upon arriving to the workshop. During each meeting there is a short talk about the subject and how to accomplish the objective of the FITYMI session followed by participants choosing how to proceed (experimenting with materials, accomplishing a project, discussion and/or playing) with food available at some point during the workshop.
To cover the expenses of materials and food for the workshop participants are asked to ‘pay what you can’. We'll have food to share at the end while we reflect on what we made.
Running/organizing the workshop is Justin Tyler Tate who instructs other workshops such as 'Fast and Raw' - Intermediate sushi and 'Under Your Skin' (Tattooing Workshop). Tate has a Bachelors degree in Fine Art, a Doctorate in electronics and has an insatiable curiosity for new materials, techniques and ways of making.