Entangled Imaginaries of Time
by Luca Liese Ritter
Garaažilinnak, garage city, a city within the city, a functional place, an obsolete place, a place haunted by times past. A place to repair one's car, to store goods, to spend time. A place that must make way for the ever-expanding urban?
Urbanization implies a continuous forward movement into a future that is unlike the current status quo. From less urban to more urban. From isolated to connected. It is presented as the inevitable future of Paljassaare that must be organized in the now.
I sought to find out what the present had to offer for Garaažilinnak, Paljassaare’s garage area, and I came across material that kept tossing me back and forth between the past and the future. In Garaažilinnak, a complex of over 1300 simple metal garages neatly lined up over 77240m², the present becomes a contested terrain. Here, a variety of stakeholders forge different relationships with the passage of time. The present is not only the immediate, not only a point in time. It is a subjective interweaving of different temporal imaginaries. Where for some, the future is still a promise; For others, it is a realm of uncertainty. In pursuit of a better future, the past is sought by some to be vanquished, while others see it as an object of inquiry and projection, or as something to which one longs to return to.
Historical sciences have studied and tried to conceptualize humans’ relationship to the passage of time. In the 1970s, historian Reinhart Koselleck developed the theory of a distinct modern time regime in which the future is the point of orientation and time is understood as a progressive movement, an arrow pointing to a better time to come (Hellerman 2020: 3). In this view, the present is merely the stage on which we act for the sake of progress.
More recently, scholars have started to debate if this movement has possibly come to a halt. Historian François Hartog argues that a presentist regime of time has taken over (Hellerma 2020: 5). Instead of the constant progression from past to present to future, Hartog introduces a concept suggesting that the present expands as the future becomes more vague. It pushes into the future as humans try to maintain the status quo and reaches back into the past through memory-culture and heritage to establish a link between what has passed and what remains (Hellerma 2020: 7-8).
However, not all individuals subscribe to the same temporal order. The limits of any consideration of time regimes applicable to humanity as a whole, or at least to so-called Western society, lie in their essentializing claim to validity.
Scholar Aleida Assmann offers a way out of this dilemma in the form of another reading of presentism that differs conceptually from Hartog's proposed time regime. She states that “what is decisive about the present is that it is, and remains, the privileged site at which humans expand their present by creating their own future and past. [...] For what comes to be understood and evaluated as the past or future does not follow a natural logic; it only takes on shape and meaning in the context of specific cultural frameworks.” (Assmann 2020: 195).
If one understands the present as the place from which all connections to the past and the future are established, various temporal imaginaries become apparent in Garaažilinnak.
Garaažilinnak was established in the 1980s as a site for about 200 garages. However, the information about its origin remains vague and different narratives circulate.
Nevertheless, its time of origin is still relevant to many when it comes to interpreting the place.
“The whole garage village is like a place from a different time” (Vill 2013). ”These are some of the holiest monuments of Soviet culture.” (Hytönen 2020) - Garaažilinnak has been visited by many people. In the material they leave behind, in texts or pictures, many are inevitably drawn, it seems, to the past. The reason for Garaažilinnak's existence is sought in another time, when the lived reality was different.
Since Tallinn has been under the influence of socialist urban planning for almost five decades, the landscape bears the traces of this period. One object, a simple metal garage box, has experienced two different systems. Soviet and now post-Soviet. The post suggests that something is over, that something has changed, but paradoxically it also provides continuity. It becomes a means to explain the garage's raison d'être or it is the starting point for confusion about their present existence. The past is drawn into the present and exerts a strong grip on the materiality and practises that make up the place. Everyday actions can suddenly be looked at as remnants of past times.
Tauri Tuvikene, an urban geographer from Tallinn University, explains that in the early 2000s people were convinced that garage areas were a dying phenomena (Interview, December 10, 2021). In a 2010 article Tuvikene notes, “that with the change of society, garage areas are destined to disappear as they have become dysfunctional.” However, he goes on saying, despite the system change, “garage areas have managed to survive.” (Tuvikene 2010: 510). Ten years after the article was published, the same statement still holds true.
While newspaper articles and academic papers evoke a sense of wonder at the history and persistence of these facilities, planning documents suggest a different temporal perspective derived from the idea of obsolescence. In 2021, the General Plan of Northern Tallinn designates the premises of Garaažilinnak as a redevelopment site and suggests the launch of an architectural competition (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 16). Planning is forward-looking and seems to be inherently optimistic, constantly making promises for the future. These promises are not only statements, but they express an intention, i.e. they are supported by a movement (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011: 9). Curiously, the General Plan of North Tallinn proposes the possibility of developing Garaažilinnak "into a distinctive and innovative quarter of micro-housing." (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 40). Thus, the plan recognizes the particular typology of the place, but emphasizes the need to transform it into a state-of-the-art neighbourhood. The current state must be overcome in Garaažilinnak to enable a supposedly better future.
The terms "optimistic," "better," or " state-of-the-art" I used here are intrinsically subjective attributions to a particular interest group. As Abram and Weszkalnys state: “Planning can and often does use violence (both symbolic and real) to enforce its ‘promise’, to the point where the promise may become a threat.“ (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011: 13). However, to legitimize planning, the current state must evoke a sense of crisis that needs to be addressed. In Garaažilinnak the crisis lies in the projected obsolescence and in the possible environmental pollution that supposedly originates from the area (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 148). The site is rendered as dysfunctional and in need of overhaul. Nevertheless, the implementation of any plan proves difficult. The reason may be the unresolved ownership of the land. Upon inquiry, the city explains that the land reform in the area has not yet been completed. However, it is expected that it will be transferred to municipal ownership or remain in state possession. For the garage owners, who lease the land for EUR 10,000 per month through their garage association, this means that once the lease expires, they are left with only their metal garage boxes - buildings that are considered movable property under Estonian law, as Tuvikene explains (Interview, December 10, 2021).
Online offers for garages for sale indicate that the lease is still valid for at least ten years, marking the future horizon offered to Garaažilinnak. Here, the crisis lies in the future, or rather in the prediction that there is no future for the area in its current state.
In the face of uncertainty, practices such as guarding the site and the fence may serve as barriers to protect the interior from outside forces that question its legitimacy.
In my quest to learn about the current temporal orders in Garaažilinnak, I struggled to include the voices of those most affected - the users. I walk around, observe, and record. How is time spent and understood in this place? My small interactions provided little insight into people’s experience of time.
I watch people repairing their cars, parking their cars, and transporting things they keep in the garages with their cars. I hear people hammering, sawing, talking, and realize that the very act of maintenance or storage is in itself future-oriented. It is about preparing for the future on a micro level. Or is it a matter of maintaining old habits?
I wonder what role I play in shaping how the site is perceived. I was there because Paljassaare is about to change. So is my presence a direct materialization of the causes of the current precariousness in Garaažilinnak?
My project attempts to link projections from the outside with the immediately perceptible by highlighting my positioning as an external researcher. The hesitation I felt to enter Garaažilinnak to obtain data for the purpose of knowledge production was translated into a movement around the site. My audio walk and installation allowed the listener to experience the synchronization of different temporal orders while viewing the immediately perceptible. The material produced about Garaažilinnak, relating to different temporalities that inform our gaze at the garage complex, was stored in my own metal box, a car parked in front of the property. Planning documents, newspaper articles, academic papers and students' works were collected and exhibited. In the background, recorded sounds from Garaažilinnak were mixed into a soundscape representing my subjective recordings of contemporary activities. The listeners mirrored my own actions on their walk and were forced to adopt the same voyeuristic external perspective. How does it feel to spend time there? How do different imaginaries of the passage of time influence our perspective on the place? And can we look away and let Garaažilinnak be as it is?
References
Abram, Simone and Weszkalnys, Gisa (2011) Anthropologies of planning, temporality, imagination, and ethnography. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2011 (61), 3-18.
Assmann, Aleida (2020) Is Time out of Joint?: On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hellerma, Juhan (2020) Negotiating presentism: toward a renewed understanding of historical change, Rethinking History, DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2020.1848132.
Hytönen, Ville (2020, December 11). Veelkord garaažidest. TUGLASE SELTS. Retrieved from https://www.tuglas.fi/veelkord-garaazidest. (Accessed November 30, 2021).
Tallinna Strateegiakeskus (2021) Põhja-Tallinna Linnaosa Üldplaneering. Accessible under https://www.tallinn.ee/est/g4843s140369. (Accessed November 16, 2021).
Tuvikene, Tauri (2010) From Soviet to Post-Soviet with Transformation of the Fragmented Urban Landscape: The Case of Garage Areas in Estonia, Landscape Research, 35:5, 509-528.
Vill, Ants (2013, September 6). Tundmatu linnaosa Paljassaare ja Kopli poolsaare vahel. Õhtuleht. Retrieved from https://www.ohtuleht.ee/572992/tundmatu-linnaosa-paljassaare-ja-kopli-poolsaare-vahel. (Accessed November 16, 2021).
Urbanization implies a continuous forward movement into a future that is unlike the current status quo. From less urban to more urban. From isolated to connected. It is presented as the inevitable future of Paljassaare that must be organized in the now.
I sought to find out what the present had to offer for Garaažilinnak, Paljassaare’s garage area, and I came across material that kept tossing me back and forth between the past and the future. In Garaažilinnak, a complex of over 1300 simple metal garages neatly lined up over 77240m², the present becomes a contested terrain. Here, a variety of stakeholders forge different relationships with the passage of time. The present is not only the immediate, not only a point in time. It is a subjective interweaving of different temporal imaginaries. Where for some, the future is still a promise; For others, it is a realm of uncertainty. In pursuit of a better future, the past is sought by some to be vanquished, while others see it as an object of inquiry and projection, or as something to which one longs to return to.
Historical sciences have studied and tried to conceptualize humans’ relationship to the passage of time. In the 1970s, historian Reinhart Koselleck developed the theory of a distinct modern time regime in which the future is the point of orientation and time is understood as a progressive movement, an arrow pointing to a better time to come (Hellerman 2020: 3). In this view, the present is merely the stage on which we act for the sake of progress.
More recently, scholars have started to debate if this movement has possibly come to a halt. Historian François Hartog argues that a presentist regime of time has taken over (Hellerma 2020: 5). Instead of the constant progression from past to present to future, Hartog introduces a concept suggesting that the present expands as the future becomes more vague. It pushes into the future as humans try to maintain the status quo and reaches back into the past through memory-culture and heritage to establish a link between what has passed and what remains (Hellerma 2020: 7-8).
However, not all individuals subscribe to the same temporal order. The limits of any consideration of time regimes applicable to humanity as a whole, or at least to so-called Western society, lie in their essentializing claim to validity.
Scholar Aleida Assmann offers a way out of this dilemma in the form of another reading of presentism that differs conceptually from Hartog's proposed time regime. She states that “what is decisive about the present is that it is, and remains, the privileged site at which humans expand their present by creating their own future and past. [...] For what comes to be understood and evaluated as the past or future does not follow a natural logic; it only takes on shape and meaning in the context of specific cultural frameworks.” (Assmann 2020: 195).
If one understands the present as the place from which all connections to the past and the future are established, various temporal imaginaries become apparent in Garaažilinnak.
Garaažilinnak was established in the 1980s as a site for about 200 garages. However, the information about its origin remains vague and different narratives circulate.
Nevertheless, its time of origin is still relevant to many when it comes to interpreting the place.
“The whole garage village is like a place from a different time” (Vill 2013). ”These are some of the holiest monuments of Soviet culture.” (Hytönen 2020) - Garaažilinnak has been visited by many people. In the material they leave behind, in texts or pictures, many are inevitably drawn, it seems, to the past. The reason for Garaažilinnak's existence is sought in another time, when the lived reality was different.
Since Tallinn has been under the influence of socialist urban planning for almost five decades, the landscape bears the traces of this period. One object, a simple metal garage box, has experienced two different systems. Soviet and now post-Soviet. The post suggests that something is over, that something has changed, but paradoxically it also provides continuity. It becomes a means to explain the garage's raison d'être or it is the starting point for confusion about their present existence. The past is drawn into the present and exerts a strong grip on the materiality and practises that make up the place. Everyday actions can suddenly be looked at as remnants of past times.
Tauri Tuvikene, an urban geographer from Tallinn University, explains that in the early 2000s people were convinced that garage areas were a dying phenomena (Interview, December 10, 2021). In a 2010 article Tuvikene notes, “that with the change of society, garage areas are destined to disappear as they have become dysfunctional.” However, he goes on saying, despite the system change, “garage areas have managed to survive.” (Tuvikene 2010: 510). Ten years after the article was published, the same statement still holds true.
While newspaper articles and academic papers evoke a sense of wonder at the history and persistence of these facilities, planning documents suggest a different temporal perspective derived from the idea of obsolescence. In 2021, the General Plan of Northern Tallinn designates the premises of Garaažilinnak as a redevelopment site and suggests the launch of an architectural competition (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 16). Planning is forward-looking and seems to be inherently optimistic, constantly making promises for the future. These promises are not only statements, but they express an intention, i.e. they are supported by a movement (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011: 9). Curiously, the General Plan of North Tallinn proposes the possibility of developing Garaažilinnak "into a distinctive and innovative quarter of micro-housing." (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 40). Thus, the plan recognizes the particular typology of the place, but emphasizes the need to transform it into a state-of-the-art neighbourhood. The current state must be overcome in Garaažilinnak to enable a supposedly better future.
The terms "optimistic," "better," or " state-of-the-art" I used here are intrinsically subjective attributions to a particular interest group. As Abram and Weszkalnys state: “Planning can and often does use violence (both symbolic and real) to enforce its ‘promise’, to the point where the promise may become a threat.“ (Abram and Weszkalnys 2011: 13). However, to legitimize planning, the current state must evoke a sense of crisis that needs to be addressed. In Garaažilinnak the crisis lies in the projected obsolescence and in the possible environmental pollution that supposedly originates from the area (Tallinna Strateegiakeskus 2021: 148). The site is rendered as dysfunctional and in need of overhaul. Nevertheless, the implementation of any plan proves difficult. The reason may be the unresolved ownership of the land. Upon inquiry, the city explains that the land reform in the area has not yet been completed. However, it is expected that it will be transferred to municipal ownership or remain in state possession. For the garage owners, who lease the land for EUR 10,000 per month through their garage association, this means that once the lease expires, they are left with only their metal garage boxes - buildings that are considered movable property under Estonian law, as Tuvikene explains (Interview, December 10, 2021).
Online offers for garages for sale indicate that the lease is still valid for at least ten years, marking the future horizon offered to Garaažilinnak. Here, the crisis lies in the future, or rather in the prediction that there is no future for the area in its current state.
In the face of uncertainty, practices such as guarding the site and the fence may serve as barriers to protect the interior from outside forces that question its legitimacy.
In my quest to learn about the current temporal orders in Garaažilinnak, I struggled to include the voices of those most affected - the users. I walk around, observe, and record. How is time spent and understood in this place? My small interactions provided little insight into people’s experience of time.
I watch people repairing their cars, parking their cars, and transporting things they keep in the garages with their cars. I hear people hammering, sawing, talking, and realize that the very act of maintenance or storage is in itself future-oriented. It is about preparing for the future on a micro level. Or is it a matter of maintaining old habits?
I wonder what role I play in shaping how the site is perceived. I was there because Paljassaare is about to change. So is my presence a direct materialization of the causes of the current precariousness in Garaažilinnak?
My project attempts to link projections from the outside with the immediately perceptible by highlighting my positioning as an external researcher. The hesitation I felt to enter Garaažilinnak to obtain data for the purpose of knowledge production was translated into a movement around the site. My audio walk and installation allowed the listener to experience the synchronization of different temporal orders while viewing the immediately perceptible. The material produced about Garaažilinnak, relating to different temporalities that inform our gaze at the garage complex, was stored in my own metal box, a car parked in front of the property. Planning documents, newspaper articles, academic papers and students' works were collected and exhibited. In the background, recorded sounds from Garaažilinnak were mixed into a soundscape representing my subjective recordings of contemporary activities. The listeners mirrored my own actions on their walk and were forced to adopt the same voyeuristic external perspective. How does it feel to spend time there? How do different imaginaries of the passage of time influence our perspective on the place? And can we look away and let Garaažilinnak be as it is?
References
Abram, Simone and Weszkalnys, Gisa (2011) Anthropologies of planning, temporality, imagination, and ethnography. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2011 (61), 3-18.
Assmann, Aleida (2020) Is Time out of Joint?: On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hellerma, Juhan (2020) Negotiating presentism: toward a renewed understanding of historical change, Rethinking History, DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2020.1848132.
Hytönen, Ville (2020, December 11). Veelkord garaažidest. TUGLASE SELTS. Retrieved from https://www.tuglas.fi/veelkord-garaazidest. (Accessed November 30, 2021).
Tallinna Strateegiakeskus (2021) Põhja-Tallinna Linnaosa Üldplaneering. Accessible under https://www.tallinn.ee/est/g4843s140369. (Accessed November 16, 2021).
Tuvikene, Tauri (2010) From Soviet to Post-Soviet with Transformation of the Fragmented Urban Landscape: The Case of Garage Areas in Estonia, Landscape Research, 35:5, 509-528.
Vill, Ants (2013, September 6). Tundmatu linnaosa Paljassaare ja Kopli poolsaare vahel. Õhtuleht. Retrieved from https://www.ohtuleht.ee/572992/tundmatu-linnaosa-paljassaare-ja-kopli-poolsaare-vahel. (Accessed November 16, 2021).
