Please join us for an artist talk by August Korb on 26 March at 18:00 to learn about the creative process behind and the philosophy that inspired their newest photo series “Thislessness”. The series will hang in the philosophy corridor of Philosophicum, Jakobi 2 (2nd floor), from 21 March until 12 June 2026.
August Korb is a multidisciplinary artist from Pittsburgh, PA, USA, currently living in Tartu and studying in the University of Tartu’s Philosophy master's programme.
Moved by Jaan Kaplinski’s semi-autobiographical novel The Same River, August set off ‘through the forest’ in the spirit of the novel’s principal character. These expeditions are what eventually brought forth the series “Thislessness”. The artists’ repeated journeys deeper into the Estonian natural landscape were guided by a desire to touch the numinous experience of nature that transfixed the book’s young protagonist. The boy gives this hopeful, peaceful, and fleeting phenomena a name, “the This”.
Korb’s work recognises and considers the similarities between Kaplinski’s descriptions and the ideas discussed in philosopher Simone Weil’s essay “Attention and the Will”. Using Kaplisnki’s poetic imagery, Weil’s mystical vocabulary, and the artist’s own photography, Korb attempts to sow together a phenomenological account of “the This”. The talk will reside in the hedges between philosophy and art, an exercise in translating between the two.
