Eesti Kunstiakadeemia 40 soome-ugri ekspeditsiooni (1978–2017): sisemine järjepidevus ja paradigmamuutused
Authors: Alver Marika 
Published: June 2022

From 1978 to 2017, the legendary Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) expeditions to Finno Ugric territories were carried out every summer, which gave art students an opportunity to do fieldwork among tribal peoples and Estonian communities living in Russia. The tradition of the expeditions was established by the artist and educator Kaljo Põllu (1934–2010). By the beginning of the 1970s, Finno-Ugristics had birthed an entire cultural movement in Estonia, with facets of Finno-Ugric heritage and identity being absorbed by literature, music, art, film, theatre and applied arts. Põllu also became immersed in the cultural heritage of tribal peoples in his creative quest and, and influenced as he was by Paul Ariste's belief that true Finno-Ugristics consisted of the study of fieldwork data, he began to look for opportunities to organize folk art research trips for students. Immediately after his first expedition (1978), Põllu introduced a one-year study cycle. This interdisciplinary study module was a challenge for the supervisors - Kaljo Põllu (1978–1988, 1992–1993), Andri Ksenofontov (1989–1991), Kadri Viires (1994–2012), Marika Alver (2013–2017) - as well as for the students participating in the research trips. The labour-intensive study module started in the spring with preparations for the fieldwork, a three-week expedition took place in the summer, and work continued in the autumn semester as the material collected on the research trip was worked through. Exhibitions, presentations and articles were produced on the basis of the work. From 1978 to 2012, the expeditions sought to visit all of the tribal peoples in order to draw, measure and photograph their traditional costumes, utensils and buildings in the actual places, and in their actual ethnic environments. Kaljo Põllu and Kadri Viires approached ethnographic drawing as an object study, which, in addition to an in-depth study of an object or building, allowed a glimpse into the mind of its maker and user. In 2013, however, Marika Alver transformed the expeditions into anthropological fieldwork by using participant observation, interviews and artistic interventions as research methods. This paradigm shift reflected an ethnographic turn in the art world, with a growing interest among artists in ethnographic methods, questions of identity and representation, and a broadening of the context of artworks to include social and cultural theory alongside art history. The last expedition took place in 2017. A point had been reached when the workload and responsibilities of the study module’s tutor were not commensurate with the contractual requirements and remuneration of an hourly lecturer. As a result, the substantive development of the research program and the promotion of cooperation, both within the EKA and with other institutions, was severely hampered. Unfortunately, the EKA was unable to find the funding for the changes or the personnel who would be willing to continue the work under these conditions. The transformations that took place over these 40 years – changes in governments and economies, cultural upheavals, new generations coming of age, and changes in expedition leaders – influenced the organization and focus of the expeditions, yet still developed into a tradition characterized by internal continuity: • the students who took part in the expeditions form a conceptual chain from the first expedition to the last. All of the subsequent supervisors after Põllu were students who had taken part in earlier expeditions, and the expeditions were always accompanied by a student or alumnus who had taken part in a prior expedition, and knew the routine of fieldwork and were thus able to help the newcomers settle in. • the expeditions became a meeting and collaboration place for students from different disciplines, as students with different specialities (painting, architecture, textiles, art studies, etc.), who were at different stages of their curriculum, took part in the expeditions. The expeditions offered a chance to get to know each other, make friends and begin collaborative projects. • a (life) university within a university. Many participants in the expeditions pointed out that the fieldwork experience was like an extra education. • two art groups were set up by the students who participated in the expeditions: in 1998, under the leadership of Kaljo Põllu, the Ydi group was formed, which could be joined by all the students participating in the expeditions. In 2018, the SLED group was formed, which was motivated by the continuation of the creative research that was started in 2017 but could not work within the framework of the EKA curricular system.