About
by Paula Veidenbauma
Gravel screeches under our feet as we approach the almost unnoticeable hole in a fence next to Kopli Mägi. A number of slow-paced bikers enter the field one by one, trying to gain the necessary momentum to push their bikes to the top of the hill. From the peak of the mountain, the hole seems like a portal. A hidden gate. A secret entrance into a vast land where time seems encapsulated and suspended. Where time unfolds vertically rather than horizontally in narrow labyrinths of underground bunker structures. The sea murmurs, the sand echoes, and in the ground under our feet — the soil-covered waste — lies as a reminiscence of the interventionist character of Paljassaare’s geomorphological development. Yet, along the beaten tracks there is a sense of urgency accompanied by delicate fragility. What landscape will open up to us when we reach the lonely stones on the top of the hill?
Paljassaare, an utopian imagery and a bird paradise, a retreat and an out-of-sight hideout, a city storage space and the heart of its metabolism, a reflection space, a nature escape followed by the distinct smell of wastewater treatment and an immersive soundscape of never-ending excavator and bird orchestras, is a fiercely contested area in Tallinn. Dotted by speculative future scenarios of real-estate developers, it is enclosed in-between neoliberal dreams and a preserved natural landscape. Accompanied by a disturbing parallel universe of lime green renderings and artificial islands, the future imaginaries live next to Paljassaare’s present-day reality and hidden time capsules.
In the Urbanisation Studio 2021 the first-year students of the Urban Studies program at the Estonian Academy of Arts were working towards dismantling the hidden, forgotten, and tangible layers beneath the seemingly tranquil and peaceful landscape of Paljassaare. Tutored by Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aloe, we used the district as our object of research, approaching it as a lens to look through so as to gain a broader perspective on the peninsula’s contextual relationships: those of investor fantasies on the one hand and those of an urbanised capital city that drives the progressing peripheral relationship between the rural and the urban on the other.
After the first tour-du-Paljassaare on our bikes, accompanied by studio tutors, we started digging through the surface. During the first part of the studio, meetings were dedicated to detailed historical and topographical map research, looking at Paljassaare through cadastral registers and historical pictures, and flooding risk maps. Paljassaare peninsula, as we see it on the map today, was formed by military infrastructure development — by filling up the sea between two islands and mainland merely 100 years ago. Would there be a Paljassaare if there was no Russo-Japanese war?
Collectively, having laid a foundation for understanding Paljassaare’s historical and geological development and developments-in-progress, we applied contemporary urban research theories on the peninsula, its relationships to its surroundings and national as well as global processes. Planetary urbanisation as a methodology applicable for a more intersectional way of looking at urbanisation, helped us question a ‘city’ as an isolated entity. The studio continued to critically approach the waste-turned-into-value narrative and the positioning of the term “wasteland” as a normative instrument used to characterize land by absence, thus monetizing it as an aesthetic category.
The mid-term critique of the ongoing studio work took place in the form of a guided bike tour through Paljassaare (in collaboration with Contemporary Art students). The event was called “Peninsula Productions Presents: Paths of Desire”, and it reflected on the production of speculative narratives and perception of Paljassaare as a city hinterland, as a wasteland, a dreamland, and an impromptu reflection space. While presenting individual projects all across the peninsula, two of us were capturing the event on film, providing a meta-lense over our own narrative curation. Can we tell a story of Paljassaare without using it as a canvas for our own production processes?
The end of the first part of the studio was marked by the three-day field trip “Estonia Diagonal”, designed and put together by studio tutors Andra and Keiti. While driving to the far east of Estonia towards the Russian border in Narva, then south to Valga and back up north, meeting shrinking cities along the way, the studio reflected on the extent to which Tallinn is a catalyst of the growing “hinterlandisation” of rural Estonia. Considering the theories learned throughout the studio process, we looked at the dichotomy of urban and rural in the Estonian context whilst also taking global perspectives into account.
The second part of the studio was dedicated to individual projects, designed to take place in situ in Paljassaare in December. While digging deeper into our individual interests and discovering applicable philosophical ideas and urban research methods along the way, Paljassaare once again was the focus and grounding for the final projects of this studio. Having been urged to engage in close contact with the site and theories, we were asked to create projects to be tested and applied on-site in Paljassaare.
The final event, held on December 18, 2021, was an exhibition-expedition of 21 000 steps all across Paljassaare, offering glimpses into each of the ten individual projects created during the second part of Urbanisation Studio 2021. Under the title “Paljassaare time capsules: hiding, making, stalking, digging, hopping, skipping, crawling, barking, hawking, hoping, expecting, lingering, sludging, metabolizing, digesting, dismantling, defending, demolishing, augmenting, building, intending, archiving, recreating … (etc never-ending)”, we presented the time capsules opened and scratched upon, brand new, and long forgotten. A close encounter with the projects can be experienced here.
A special and heartfelt thanks to our studio tutors Andra Aaloe and Keiti Kljavin for the digging tools provided along the way, your persistent encouragement and enthusiasm, your endurance during our long-long-green-green, sometimes wet and windy bike rides and walking expeditions, and never-ending ideas for our own individual time capsules. Thank you for accompanying us on our long and winding desire paths of Paljassaare.
Paljassaare, an utopian imagery and a bird paradise, a retreat and an out-of-sight hideout, a city storage space and the heart of its metabolism, a reflection space, a nature escape followed by the distinct smell of wastewater treatment and an immersive soundscape of never-ending excavator and bird orchestras, is a fiercely contested area in Tallinn. Dotted by speculative future scenarios of real-estate developers, it is enclosed in-between neoliberal dreams and a preserved natural landscape. Accompanied by a disturbing parallel universe of lime green renderings and artificial islands, the future imaginaries live next to Paljassaare’s present-day reality and hidden time capsules.
In the Urbanisation Studio 2021 the first-year students of the Urban Studies program at the Estonian Academy of Arts were working towards dismantling the hidden, forgotten, and tangible layers beneath the seemingly tranquil and peaceful landscape of Paljassaare. Tutored by Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aloe, we used the district as our object of research, approaching it as a lens to look through so as to gain a broader perspective on the peninsula’s contextual relationships: those of investor fantasies on the one hand and those of an urbanised capital city that drives the progressing peripheral relationship between the rural and the urban on the other.
After the first tour-du-Paljassaare on our bikes, accompanied by studio tutors, we started digging through the surface. During the first part of the studio, meetings were dedicated to detailed historical and topographical map research, looking at Paljassaare through cadastral registers and historical pictures, and flooding risk maps. Paljassaare peninsula, as we see it on the map today, was formed by military infrastructure development — by filling up the sea between two islands and mainland merely 100 years ago. Would there be a Paljassaare if there was no Russo-Japanese war?
Collectively, having laid a foundation for understanding Paljassaare’s historical and geological development and developments-in-progress, we applied contemporary urban research theories on the peninsula, its relationships to its surroundings and national as well as global processes. Planetary urbanisation as a methodology applicable for a more intersectional way of looking at urbanisation, helped us question a ‘city’ as an isolated entity. The studio continued to critically approach the waste-turned-into-value narrative and the positioning of the term “wasteland” as a normative instrument used to characterize land by absence, thus monetizing it as an aesthetic category.
The mid-term critique of the ongoing studio work took place in the form of a guided bike tour through Paljassaare (in collaboration with Contemporary Art students). The event was called “Peninsula Productions Presents: Paths of Desire”, and it reflected on the production of speculative narratives and perception of Paljassaare as a city hinterland, as a wasteland, a dreamland, and an impromptu reflection space. While presenting individual projects all across the peninsula, two of us were capturing the event on film, providing a meta-lense over our own narrative curation. Can we tell a story of Paljassaare without using it as a canvas for our own production processes?
The end of the first part of the studio was marked by the three-day field trip “Estonia Diagonal”, designed and put together by studio tutors Andra and Keiti. While driving to the far east of Estonia towards the Russian border in Narva, then south to Valga and back up north, meeting shrinking cities along the way, the studio reflected on the extent to which Tallinn is a catalyst of the growing “hinterlandisation” of rural Estonia. Considering the theories learned throughout the studio process, we looked at the dichotomy of urban and rural in the Estonian context whilst also taking global perspectives into account.
The second part of the studio was dedicated to individual projects, designed to take place in situ in Paljassaare in December. While digging deeper into our individual interests and discovering applicable philosophical ideas and urban research methods along the way, Paljassaare once again was the focus and grounding for the final projects of this studio. Having been urged to engage in close contact with the site and theories, we were asked to create projects to be tested and applied on-site in Paljassaare.
The final event, held on December 18, 2021, was an exhibition-expedition of 21 000 steps all across Paljassaare, offering glimpses into each of the ten individual projects created during the second part of Urbanisation Studio 2021. Under the title “Paljassaare time capsules: hiding, making, stalking, digging, hopping, skipping, crawling, barking, hawking, hoping, expecting, lingering, sludging, metabolizing, digesting, dismantling, defending, demolishing, augmenting, building, intending, archiving, recreating … (etc never-ending)”, we presented the time capsules opened and scratched upon, brand new, and long forgotten. A close encounter with the projects can be experienced here.
A special and heartfelt thanks to our studio tutors Andra Aaloe and Keiti Kljavin for the digging tools provided along the way, your persistent encouragement and enthusiasm, your endurance during our long-long-green-green, sometimes wet and windy bike rides and walking expeditions, and never-ending ideas for our own individual time capsules. Thank you for accompanying us on our long and winding desire paths of Paljassaare.
