Sõprus – Дружба (Friendship)
Still from Sõprus – Дружба
The Tallinn project (2004-2007) is an exploration of how young people use public space in the changing capital of Estonia. The city of Tallinn in a stage of transition from a post-Soviet state to a country with the most liberal economic system in European Union. This long-term project began with research at the Estonian Film Archive. The caretaker of the archive presented me with a wealth of film material about the urbanization of Tallinn after the WWII. Most of the archival material had been filmed during the Soviet occupation and was thus carrying strongly propagandist undertones.
Nowadays the local intellectuals have an ongoing, vivid interest for their city and its rapid change, manifested in different publications, discussions and projects. I chose to work with a group of teenagers from both Estonian and Russian backgrounds. Since they have been born into the current situation and haven’t experienced the Soviet times themselves, they could interpret their city from the point of view of here and now. The teens were found from the locations I wanted to work in; from the newly built Viru Keskus shopping centre, from Linnahall City Hall and Maarjamäe Memorial Complex (both built during the Soviet era) from suburbs and through announcements left at schools.
Still from Sõprus – Дружба
The collaboration with the nine participants started with interviews and discussions. They also wrote stories, which took place in public spaces in Tallinn. Based on all this as well as my own observations, I wrote a loose film manuscript, which we further defined in two video improvisation workshops in 2005 and 2006. The final results of the process are the half-hour film ‘Sõprus – Дружба’, a 20 minutes 3-screen film installation with the same title, video work ‘You don’t realize it used to be different’, a series of photographs of the teenagers and an edited discussion. The project in its all forms finds its optimism in the floating curiosity of teenage existence.
Exhibition View: Vantaa Art Museum 2010. / ‘After the Final Simplification of Ruins ‘, The Montehermoso Cultural Center, Vitoria, Spain. 2009.
20 minutes 3-screen film installation, sound stereo. Dimensions variable. Screening version available.
I filmed our improvisation workshops on video with the nine Estonian and Russian speaking teenagers. The footage entitled ‘You don’t realize it used to be different’ shows their varying thoughts and opinions give subjective historical-societal background for the situations acted out in the scenes, swinging between dreams and threats.
I also photographed the participanting: Ilja Alpatov, Mari Tammesalu, Häli-Ann Reintamm, Steven Vihalem, Ronald Pelin, Olena Romanjuk, Madis Mäeorg, Erich Hartvich and Sille Paas in the different locations in which we worked in Tallinn.
‘You don’t realize it used to be different’ 2006. Videostill.
‘Mari outside the Linnahall Cultural Centre. Tallinn, March 2006.’
Ilja in the Viru Keskus Shopping Centre Bus Terminal. Tallinn, March 2006.
Ronald outside the Linnahall Cultural Centre. Tallinn, March 2006. Chromogenic color prints with metal frames and glass. 40 x 40 cm each.
‘Case study of the statue of the Unknown Soldier’
Discussion with the participants in the Tallinn Project PDF-file
At the end of April 2007, all the thoughts the participants had expressed in the interviews about the Estonian-Russian relations became very acute. Two nights of riots around the ‘Monument Crisis’, with up to 1000 participants, followed the government’s speedy decision to move a Soviet era statue, the ’Unknown Soldier’ (and the 12 bodies beneath it) from its place by Tõnismägi to the soldier’s cemetery two kilometres away. We had another discussion session with the participants about these events in July 2007, It was published for the Ars Baltica exhibition in the Art Museum of Estonia in August 2007.