This week I have been in Latvia and Estonia to attend the Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Tartu. I travelled to Estonia by train from Riga.
My paper was “Archives Across Borders: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor”. I presented work in progress from three interactive digital films, exploring the digital space of a website as a space for editing. In a similar way to a viewer moving around split screen work in a gallery. The work is inspired by Shirin Neshat and Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky’s approaches to ‘soft cinema’, using interactive ‘layers’ to build stories.
I was discussant for a panel about Soviet-Era Heritage, military sites and modernist architecture in two sites in Latvia and in Uzbekistan, with a focus on Tashkent. Connecting themes of the three papers included responses to dissonant or ‘difficult’ heritage sites and the narrative surrounding architectural legacy.
I read two papers while I was away. One was a pre-read of an article by Yuliya Yurchuk, who I met at ASN in New York this year. The second paper was Epp Annus’ paper: “Inter-imperial invisibility and the logic of extractivism”. Annus uses eco-social approaches to argue that environment and living beings are linked, and describes Russian colonialism and extracting opportunities from land and cultures in Ukraine and Estonia. The principle of ‘invisibility’ applies to the colonising state only recognising what is of benefit, and without dignity. Annus uses two case studies – one is the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the other the Sillamäe uranium plant in Estonia. I have been thinking, and researching nuclear power and the Chornobyl plant ahead of the Rozpad discussion on Wednesday.