Wimper

Written by students of the Master of Contemporary Art program at the Estonian Academy of Arts during the Writing Practice course with Lieven Lahaye, February 2025. 

Contributions by Bob Bicknell-Knight, Giulio Cusinato, Anastasiia Krapivina, Tonya Kroplya, Fausta Noreikaite, Rosa-Maria Nuutinen, Nora Schmelter

Designed by Alina Scharnhorst and Sunny Lei (EKA GD MA)

Since the 1970s, Cynthia Hawkins has investigated the potentials of abstract painting. While often beginning a work or series with a predetermined concept or strategy, Hawkins’s process-oriented practice simultaneously embraces the improvisational to create a systemized space for her continually evolving vocabulary. From 1979 to 1981, important early years in the elaboration of her work, Hawkins documented these developments in a journal. A record of routine and the everyday, the journal also gathers sketches, notes for new and in-progress works, and responses to contemporary art and criticism, bringing the artist’s process, experimentation, and reflections on materials, formalism, abstraction, and figuration into relief. 

Art Notes, Art also offers a picture of the burgeoning Black-owned gallery scene in 1970s and ‘80s New York that Hawkins was an important participant in—including Cinque Gallery, Kenkeleba Gallery, and Just Above Midtown, where she had her first solo exhibition in 1981–as well as the women artists’ circle she was an active member of, which hosted weekly shares, critiques, exchange, and amplification of each others’ work. An important glimpse into Hawkins’s creative process and artistic community, Art Notes, Art is richly illustrated with works by the artist produced during this key period–some of which are now lost–photographs and ephemera, and a visual archive of contemporaneous work by her peers.

Editor: Ananth Shastri
Managing Editor: Rachel Valinsky

Audio journals that document Wojnarowicz's turbulent attempts to understand his anxieties and passions, and tracking his thoughts as they develop in real time. 

"In these moments I hate language. I hate what words are like, I hate the idea of putting these preformed gestures on the tip of my tongue, or through my lips, or through the inside of my mouth, forming sounds to approximate something that's like a cyclone, or something that's like a flood, or something that's like a weather system that's out of control, that's dangerous, or alarming.... It just seems like sounds that have been uttered back and forth maybe now over centuries. And it always boils down to the same meaning within those sounds, unless you're more intense uttering them, or you precede them or accompany them with certain forms of violence."
—from The Weight of the Earth

Artist, writer, and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was an important figure in the downtown New York art scene. His art was preoccupied with sex, death, violence, and the limitations of language. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Wojnarowicz began keeping audio journals, returning to a practice he'd begun in his youth.The Weight of the Earth presents transcripts of these tapes, documenting Wojnarowicz's turbulent attempts to understand his anxieties and passions, and tracking his thoughts as they develop in real time.

In these taped diaries, Wojnarowicz talks about his frustrations with the art world, recounts his dreams, and describes his rage, fear, and confusion about his HIV diagnosis. Primarily spanning the years 1987 and 1989, recorded as Wojnarowicz took solitary road trips around the United States or ruminated in his New York loft, the audio journals are an intimate and affecting record of an artist facing death. By turns despairing, funny, exalted, and angry, this volume covers a period largely missing from Wojnarowicz's written journals, providing us with an essential new record of a singular American voice.

‘Kamer I - Oesters’ is een kort verhaal geschreven in het kader van het kunstproject Beste Anna,. Hierin fungeert de figuur van de openlijk lesbische Rotterdamse schrijfster Anna Blaman als motor voor vragen, gesprekken en correspondenties rondom feminisme, schrijvende vrouwen en de canon, anders zijn, eenzaamheid en vriendschap.

Ook verkent Katinka met dit onderzoek Anna Blaman als personage voor een toekomstige roman. In ‘Kamer I - Oesters’ betreedt de hoofdpersoon Anna’s met een rolkoffer vol boeken van andere schrijvers, fluistert ze hun woorden in de kieren in Anna’s muren en verleidt ze Anna met een pauwendans.

Anna Blaman (1905-1960) was openlijk lesbisch, in die tijd een groot taboe, maar zag zichzelf niet als voorvechter van een beweging. Een belangrijk thema in haar werk is de vraag of we een ander werkelijk kunnen kennen. De personages in haar romans zijn vaak alleen en verlangen naar een ander, die altijd onbereikbaar blijft. In 1948 publiceerde Blaman de roman Eenzaam Avontuur, die erg veel stof op deed waaien vanwege enkele (homo-)erotische personages die in het boek voorkomen. 

Dear Friend is a monthly letter format publication covering design events, issues, and ideas. This publication distributed via snail mail is initiated by Sandra Nuut and Ott Kagovere.

The publication edited by Sandra Nuut & Ott Kagovere features all the letters from the Dear Friend publishing project, which they initiated at the Graphic Design Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2018. The book includes contributions by Singapore-based design writer Justin Zhuang, designer and writer Else Lagerspetz, and artist Lieven Lahaye. The book is designed by Ott Kagovere and published by Lugemik and Estonian Academy of Arts.

Texts by Justin Zhuang, Lieven Lahaye, Else Lagerspetz

Letters written by Alicia Ajayi, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Claudia Doms, Nell Donkers, Maarin Ektermann, Rosen Eveleigh, Maryam Fanni, Saara Hannus, Eik Hermann, Paul John, Maria Juur, Ott Kagovere, Maarja Kangro, Arja Karhumaa, Kristina Ketola Bore, Nicole Killian, Rachel Kinbar, Tuomas Kortteinen, Keiu Krikmann, Kadri Laas, Else Lagerspetz, Lieven Lahaye, James Langdon, Jungmyung Lee, Kai Lobjakas, Michelle Millar Fisher, Maria Muuk, Sheere Ng, Sandra Nuut, Laura Pappa, Jack Self, Indrek Sirkel, Paul Soulellis, Triin Tamm, Laura Toots, Alice Twemlow, Loore Viires, Sean Yendrys, Justin Zhuang