International biennial of contemporary art
October 6–November 26, 2023
Tallinn Photomonth international biennial of contemporary art is pleased to announce its 7th edition, which opens October 6 until November 26, 2023. Featuring work across all disciplines, the biennial looks at developments in art and society in a world increasingly mediated by cameras, screens and images.
Tallinn Photomonth 23 names New York-based Ilari Laamanen as the curator of Trance, the biennale’s Main Exhibition, which this year takes place at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamae Pavilion. The biennial will also include an Artists’ Film Programme curated by Piibe Kolka and Genevieve Yue and an extensive Satellite Programme across several of Tallinn’s most acclaimed institutions, galleries and cultural venues.
Art Fair Foto Tallinn will continue to take place as a collaboration between the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU) and the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC) during the biennial off-years. The 11th edition of the fair is expected to take place at Kai Art Center in the Fall of 2024.
Trance
Tallinn Photomonth 2023 Main Exhibition
Tallinn Art Hall, Lasnamäe Pavilion
October 6–November 26, 2023
Curator: Ilari Laamanen
Watching, spectating, following. Contemporary screen-dominated conditions can be described by many names. In digital interactions, notions between the living and nonliving or real and unreal continue to be destabilized. What was once understood as a reality is taking an unusual form. It has a texture that is unreal.
Trance explores how artworks can complicate and aid in examining sensory experience in a technologically mediated world. The exhibition is a swirl in time: a spiral moving between humane and mechanical, fantastical and factual, allure and absence. It aims to disorient and reorient the viewer and the viewing situation. Here, the act of watching itself is under scrutiny. The closer one gets to the real, the more imaginary it becomes.
Trance brings together local and international artists of many generations who work with various disciplines. The artists in the exhibition absorb, hack and reformat conventional means of (audio)visual presentation, through existing and newly commissioned work. They present idiosyncratic encounters between bodies and technologies and utilize glitch as a conceptual tool—a split in time, a gesture that by design requires a moment of remediation and reflection.
—Ilari Laamanen, curator of Trance, Tallinn Photomonth’s main exhibition
Artists’ Film Programme
Cinema Sõprus, Tallinn
November 16–17, 2023
Curators: Piibe Kolka and Genevieve Yue
The film programme will explore co-creative methods, collective authorship and the theme of sociality in the practice of artists working with experimental film. Further details will be released in September 2023.
For the first time, Tallinn Photomonth’s Artists’ Film programme will be presented within the framework of one of the largest and most distinctive film events in Northern Europe—the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) and its Expanded programme.
For international press inquiries please contact Alexia Menikou: am [at] alexiamenikou.com..
For press inquiries in Estonia please contact Marion Leetmaa: press [at] fotokuu.ee.
Notes to editors
About Ilari Laamanen
Ilari Laamanen is an independent curator based in New York. Through his projects he contemplates on challenges and possibilities of communication in hyperconnected culture. He worked as the Director of Programs at the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York (2013–2020) where he co-founded and led the MOBIUS Fellowship Program for independent and institutional curators. Laamanen received his MA in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture and his BA in Media studies at the University of Turku.
About Piibe Kolka
Piibe Kolka is an artist, filmmaker and film worker with a background in anthropology. She is interested in artists’ moving image as a personal enquiry into the bodily, temporal and rhythmic aspects of social realities. She works with video, sound, and performance, artistic research and curatorial practices. She has co-curated artist film programs for Kumu Art Film Festival (2016 and 2018) and at the international group show Point of No Return at NART art residency (2021).
About Genevieve Yue
Genevieve Yue is an associate professor of culture and media and director of the Screen Studies program at the New School. She has programmed films at Anthology Film Archives, Metrograph, MassArt, and other venues. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Mubi, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and Reverse Shot, and she is author of Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (Fordham University Press, 2021). She is based in New York City.
About Tallinn Photomonth
Tallinn Photomonth is an international biennial of contemporary art, which features work that spans all disciplines and looks at developments in art and society in a world increasingly mediated by cameras, screens and images. While it was initiated by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU) in 2011, which coordinates and supports collaboration between art institutions, galleries and artists, Photomonth seeks to broaden its focus beyond the means of photography.
The seventh Tallinn Photomonth takes place from October 6 to November 26, 2023. Included in the main programme is an international group exhibition at Tallinn Art Hall’s recently launched Lasnamäe Pavilion and an artists’ film programme taking place in the oldest existing cinemas in Estonia—Cinema Sõprus. Also a satellite programme will run in different art institutions, both public and commercial galleries in Tallinn. The main exhibition is contextualized through a programme of public events and an education programme for schools.
Contact: Kulla Laas, Artistic Director, 7th Tallinn Photomonth biennial, kulla.laas [at] fotokuu.ee
Tallinn Photomonth 2023 partners: Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU); Tallinn Art Hall; Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF); Cinema Sõprus; Cultural Endowment of Estonia; Tallinn City; Estonian Artists’ Association; Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC).
