View source for GMU:Re-enchanting the field/Kitman Yeung


=== Boundaries of Air and Displacement ===
'''Background:'''

Air in cities feels different depending on what raw materials they burn for energy—this was an observation noted by Michael Pinsky during his Pollution Pods project (Pinsky, n.d.). Estonia’s accession to the EU in 2004 regulated the air pollution from local power plant emissions. In order to stay below the now stricter standards, the Estonian oil shale power industry underwent a large reductive transformation, and many workers became unemployed. There are several groups of bodies affected. One group consists of the Russian miners who remained in Estonia and Kazakhstan after the end of the Soviet Union. Their employment opportunities are unpredictable, and they face constant indeterminacy. Their standing in society has dropped to second-class, and they feel they are treated as ‘waste’ (Kesküla, 2018). In lived effects, the largest buildings in Narva—which are the Eesti Power Plant and Balti Power Plant, are now also much emptier, so are the SOMPA abandoned housing blocks in the town of Kohtla-Järve, which we will visit.

'''Main objectives:'''

How do these ghostly/disused infrastructures come to terms with the idea of pollution or waste? I hypothesise that such economic consequences of the EU's accession have reshaped the Narva population and the local labour force. I want to investigate how oil shale creates air pollution that is, at first, a chemical waste, but can later have effects on the workers and residents, thereby transforming these bodies into emotional and political wastes.

How has the physicalised air pollution in Narva created displacements in the Estonian/Russian residents? And how do we follow this migration, in reference to the long history of the changing Narva demographics? A large archive and documentation regarding the local workforce already exists. Therefore, I want to propose a lens of visualising and speculating on these displaced bodies and real estate, in relation to the statistics and qualities of air in Narva. These displaced bodies are not ecological migrants; rather, they are political migrants, a consequence of Estonia’s choice to be accepted into the ‘air’ of the EU.

How does the new generation of residents react to the “wasteland aesthetics” of the past Baltic industrial cities (Printsmann, Sepp, & Luud, 2012)? To study our ‘ghosts’ of the modern anthropos, how ghosts of oil shale over-extraction exist in the forms of rusting rooms and the breathed air. These ghosts disturbed certain families and habitations in traceable ways (Tsing et al., 2017). The abandoned and underused industrial sites are representative of Narva’s changing economy. Notions of decay, disuse, and regeneration will be in focus during the technical observations on site.

I anticipate an outcome of a multimedia library of different sensorial observations collected from this research, represented in a digital/physical publication or webpage.

'''Technical description: tools, method, process'''

Possible fieldwork methods include observational journaling, photographic documentation, and collection of air and soil samples to study their temperature, humidity, CO₂ levels, and other air particles (using a portable CO₂ sensor). Statistical methods for transforming the data in the air samples will be created in parallel with Narva’s existing demographic data, in simplified illustration.

I will also pay attention to building surfaces and soils for any resilient beings that grow in such conditions, searching for their ‘symbiotic assemblages.’ I will record other sound and smell elements at the sites of the housing blocks and former and current oil shale power plants in Narva.

'''References'''

* Kesküla, E. (2018). Waste people or value producers? Contesting bioeconomic imaginaries of oil shale mining in Estonia. Journal of Baltic Studies, 49(4), 487–505. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2018.1503624</nowiki>
* Michael Pinsky. (n.d.). Pollution Pods. <nowiki>https://www.michaelpinsky.com/portfolio/pollution-pods-2/</nowiki>
* Printsmann, A., Sepp, M., & Luud, A. (2012). The land of oil-shale: the image, protection, and future of mining landscape heritage. In Häyrynen, S., Turunen, R., & Nyman, J. (Eds.), Locality, Memory, Reconstruction: The Cultural Challenges and Possibilities of Former Single-Industry Communities (pp. 180–196). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
* Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H. A., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (Eds.). (2017). Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1qft070</nowiki>
* The Baltic Atlas. (2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale.