Essays & Poetry

Ieva Rojūtė is a visual artist based in Vilnius, Lithuania. She works with installation, text and drawing. Her large-scale installations intertwine hand-painted verbal narratives with abstract elements. Fragments of overheard conversations and stories merge with her own personal and artistic experience into a broad range of topics, including social constructions such as family, daily use of language, and small yet overwhelming human concerns, fears, dreams and failures.

Ieva Rojūtė

ieva puhas1

The Shapes of Language

Dreamers

nvk (nick von kleist) is an artist, poet, performer and producer who investigates the archive and its debris as repertoire to be rehearsed, fractured and reconfigured, repeatedly. nvk explores ways that the virtual and personal can inspire new conceptions of context, time, access and equity. nvk has recently published a metamorphic book of poetry, “w-a-t-e-r-s-l-i-d-e-s” with Risiko Press (Antwerp), appearing as sound with Ignota Press, and a performance with Montez Press Radio (NY). nvk has ongoing performance-based collaborations with Michelangelo Miccolis, Kris Lemsalu, Autumn Knight, Cally Spooner, Nikima Jagudajev, and Dora García.

nvk (nick von kleist)

chain

Flesh in Tension

start—screen—spiral

Concordia Klar (1938–2004) was an Estonian printmaker. She graduated from the Estonian State Art Institute in 1963 and soon became interested in surrealist ideas. Klar’s visionary imagery often combines nature motifs and human figures – her series of women with musical instruments embodies harmony between the two. A lesser known fact is that Klar also wrote poetry and for this issue of A Shade Colder two of her poems from the 1970s have been translated to English for the first time.&nbsp;

Concordia Klar

Adam Cullen is a poet and translator of Estonian prose, poetry, drama, and children’s literature into English. Originally from Minnesota, he is a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union and has resided in Estonia since 2007.

Adam Cullen

Translated by

Safe from the Snowdrift

Shifting Timelines

Two Poems by Concordia Klar

Vaim Sarv is a folk musician and experimental vocalist. Her rituals combine free improvisation with noise and ancient Finno-Ugric folk song. Using portable, consumer-grade electronics and extended vocal technique, he worships spaces with unconventional acoustics and queer senses of place.

Vaim Sarv

IMG_3387

Whispers in the Landscape

the girliness of the wasteland

Rebecca Jagoe is an autistic artist, writer and editor based in Wales. Working across objects, drawing, textiles, printed texts, performance, and workshops, their practice variously explores the ideological construction of monstrosity and madness in Western culture; the relationship between clothing, illness, and gender; and human intimacy with other-than-humans. They are currently on the Freelands Fellowship at g39 in Cardiff, where they are researching the traces of animistic thought found in late Medieval European languages.

Rebecca Jagoe

Thirst

Ofthyrst

Shola von Reinhold is a Scottish writer. Their debut novel, LOTE (2020), was published by Jacaranda Books and won the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Memorial Prize.

Shola von Reinhold

shola veeb preview

The Eyes of My Other

The Undinous Court

Brit Pavelson is a graphic designer based in Tallinn, Estonia. Her work is currently driven by decorative practices in graphic design, for their healing power, sustainability potential and vessels for intuitive storytelling.

Brit Pavelson

ma_vc_brit_pavelson_1

Market Values

A Shade Colder is a platform for discussions about and around art in Estonia and beyond.

A Shade Colder

kollaaz gregor

Gender is a language, and it could be fun to play with if there wasn’t so much power and coercion attached to it. Interview with McKenzie Wark

Cecilia Alemani giving a talk at the Estonian Academy of Arts-2023-Photo Ott Kattel copy

Exhibition language is universal but often feels empty: Interview with Cecilia Alemani on text and language in curatorial practice

kollaaz

Organising against precarity

Kris Lemsalu, „HOLY HELL O“, 2018. Commissioned by Goldsmiths CCA and Tramway, Glasgow. Photo_ Mark Blower

Your guide to Estonia and beyond in Autumn and Winter 2023/2024