Teaching and Program Development

Current: Winter 2022-23 Humboldt Universität zu Berlin – Institut für Kulturwissenschaft

WS 2022 Culture Media Concept – seminar

Summer 2021 Humboldt Universität zu Berlin – Institut für Kulturwissenschaft

SS 2021 Digital Concept and Cultural Production in the 21st Century – a seminar

Winter 2017-2018 Humboldt Universität zu Berlin – Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, bologna.lab, in the studies program Vielfalt der Wissensformen

WS 2018-19 Attention – interdisciplinary takes on an endangered resource – a seminar

WS 2017-18 Visualizing Mind – a Seminar on Speculative Graphics and Epistemology

2015 – 2017 Technische Universität Braunschweig – Institute for Architecture-Related Art

IAK – Institut für architekturbezogene Kunst – Grundstudium programm co-creation, -teaching and -coordination; new institute homepage

2017 Lecture Series: The Road to Now – A Visual Culture History from Futurism through Acceleration

2016 Seminar: Architectural Body – seminar on the body and/as architecture

2015-16 Semester Workshop: Landing – some phenomenology for architecture-related artists

2009 – 2012 Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn – Architecture Faculty – Urban Studies MA Program

The City in/as Literature – yearly half-semester course examining the urban engagement of literary movements

2008 – 2011 University of Art and Design, Helsinki (TaiK), now Aalto University – MA Program in Graphic Design

Thinking Graphics – MA-level theory-studio on perception, visual language and message design (2009, 2011)
Attention, Space and Meaning – 2-week workshop on “attention tracking” in design research (2008, 2009)

2009 Universität der Künste, Berlin – Aesthetic Practices Program, Design Faculty

Text Bild Raum – 2 day-long workshops BA/MA on intermedial textuality as applied in spatial design

2004- 2008 University of Art and Design, Helsinki (TaiK), now Aalto U. – MA Program in Environmental Art

Masters Program core faculty and co-development (w/ Prof. Markku Hakuri), MA research and thesis supervision, core course teaching, special theory studio courses (2004-2008)

Environmental Arts: Backgrounds – art-history survey of forms and trends 1950’s to 2000’s (2005, 2006)
Making Sense I: Artist Writing Seminar (2004, 2005, 2006)
Making Sense II: Critical Writing and Research Seminar (2005, 2006, 2007)
MA Thesis Supervision (2005-2007)
MA Thesis Research Seminar (2005, 2006)

Architectural Poetics – MA theory seminar  (2004)
Mental Environments – theory seminar on critical urbanism and critical art practices (2005)
Ultimate Space – Week-long environmental art workshop on Kuuskajaskari Island, Rauma (2005)
InnerCity – Applied Urban Aesthetics, full-year theory-studio (2005-2006)
BodyBuilding – Procedural Architecture and Embodiment, full-year theory-studio (2006-2007

2006 – 2007 University of Art and Design, Helsinki – MA Program in Art Pedagogy

Free Advertising: a Liberation Graphics Workshop – Experimental EU 3-country virtual learning course (2007)
Stories and Places – Experimental EU virtual learning course, co-taught with Jan Kenneth Weckmann (2006)

2004-2009 University of Helsinki – Department of Art Research/Comparative Literature

Cognitive Impact Poetics: 20th Century Experimental Poetries (Fall 2004)
Poetry at the Turning Point: Avant-Garde Resurgences in 1950’s Europe (Spring 2006)
Avant-Garde and Modernity: Art, Poetry, Theory (Fall 2007)
Total Poetics: Intermediality and Poetic Migrations (Fall 2009)

Didactic Concept

A co-auto-pedagogy of the possible – The task in teaching/learning is to supply and exploit conditions for the autonomous grasping of ideas. Grasping is a social and bodily process of anchoring thoughts in referenceable perceptions and experiences. Becoming persons, the aim of grasping ideas, is also a social and bodily process: shaping and empowering selves for lifelong constructive involvement in this world that so desperately needs us.

Professional Arc

My professional arc has swept through various fields and practices, and my work has consisted largely in intersectional and transversal projects. It is a learning-curve we are all called on to take in this age, where knowledge must be re-integrated across disciplines.

Figure 1: background excerpted from a painting by Warren Neidich, “Chapman Brothers” from the Wrong Rainbow series, 2008 – the typography has been added.

Interdisciplinarity

In my experience, the expansions of interdisciplinarity go both ways. Our sureness and agility with concepts is enhanced when we develop sureness and agility in bodily and manual practices, and our technical mastery in a material or craft gains a voice and depth of purpose when we expand that mastery to our words and concepts.