EKKM Reads with Birgit Poopuu

EKKM Reads is an informal reading group. Together with an artist, thinker or expert, participants have the opportunity to experience and reflect on texts selected by the facilitator at a slow pace. The blind-date format means that participants do not read the texts before the meeting; instead, they work through them together during the session. The event is free, but please register via Fienta to take part.

The next EKKM Reads with Birgit Poopuu takes place on 18 November at 18:00. Reading texts by Palestinian authors, Birgit invites participants to think about how to understand the violence of the State of Israel in Gaza and Palestine in its various forms. How did Israel build a system that has made Palestinian lives unlivable? Is violence merely a single blow, or rather a process? How can we speak about anti-Palestinian violence at all when we see that neither Palestinians themselves nor others are able to speak about it, because it is forcibly kept under lock and key?

Birgit Poopuu is a scholar-activist, professor of international relations and co-lead of the Centre for East European and Eurasian Studies (CEEShub) at Tallinn University. Her research focuses on critical peace and conflict studies. Her work is driven by the question of whose knowledge and lives matter in world politics. She has studied European Union peace missions and the Syrian revolution, reflected on violence, considered the possibility of solidarity between peripheries, and explored what kinds of relations matter for our world. Her article “The Postcolonial Moment in World Politics” addresses the question of Palestine. (https://www.vikerkaar.ee/postkoloniaalne-hetk-maailmapoliitikas-kelle-elud-on-jutustatud-tapetavateks/)

EKKM Reads is part of the public programme for the exhibition “We Have a Land of Words”, which supports and expands on the stories and experiences presented in the exhibition through events that bring its themes closer to us and connect them with the local context. In a programme co-curated by Anita Kodanik and Sanna Kartau, collective imagination and poetic resistance meet in reading evenings, informal gatherings, film screenings and discussions, in collaboration with various artists, researchers and institutions, extending the discussion beyond the museum building.

The group exhibition “We Have a Land of Words” (10.10–13.12.2026) makes a long-distance call to the Middle East and brings into focus, among others, internationally recognised Palestinian artists whose personal experiences of the region cannot be separated from their work. The exhibition moves from hearing to listening: from generalised media streams and ideological narratives to individual stories. At the same time, it examines the cultural narratives through which Palestine is viewed in Estonia and how they have changed over time.

The next EKKM Reads takes place on 3 December at 18:00 with Palestinian writer Heba Hayek (in English).