GMU:Re-enchanting the field/Kitman Yeung - Revision history

Rofo0574 at 08:45, 17 July 2025

2025-07-17T08:45:01Z

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-Final project documentation
+Final project documentation:
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 * Sacha LOEVE & Bernadette BENSAUDE VINCENT, THE MULTIPLE SIGNATURES OF CARBON
 * Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky , Discard Studies, Wasting, Systems, and Pow

Rofo0574 at 08:40, 17 July 2025

2025-07-17T08:40:44Z

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-'''Ethnography of carbon displacement'''
+Final project documentation
 '''Background:'''
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 * Achille Mbembe (2011) Necropolitics
 * Sacha LOEVE & Bernadette BENSAUDE VINCENT, THE MULTIPLE SIGNATURES OF CARBON
-* Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky , Discard Studies, Wasting, Systems, and Power
+* Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky , Discard Studies, Wasting, Systems, and Pow
 ----
 **

Rofo0574 at 17:50, 18 May 2025

2025-05-18T17:50:36Z

Show changes

Rofo0574 at 14:14, 12 May 2025

2025-05-12T14:14:36Z

Show changes

Rofo0574 at 16:44, 6 May 2025

2025-05-06T16:44:48Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:44, 6 May 2025
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	'''Background:'''		'''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.		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. How will these embodied displacementes continue to play out for the workers in energy production in Ida-Viru, in response to Territorial Just Transition Plan (TJTP) , where objectives are se to cease electricity production from oil shale by 2035, to phase out oil shale in energy production by 2040 and to reach climate neutrality by 2050 ((European Commission, 2022).

	'''Main objectives:'''		'''Main objectives:'''
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	* 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>		* 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.		* The Baltic Atlas. (2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale.
			* European Commission. (2022, October 10). ''EU Cohesion Policy: €354 million for Estonia to phase out oil shale in energy production''. <nowiki>https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/whats-new/newsroom/10-10-2022-eu-cohesion-policy-eur354-million-for-estonia-to-phase-out-oil-shale-in-energy-production_en</nowiki>

Rofo0574: final update

2025-05-06T16:29:46Z

final update

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:29, 6 May 2025
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	~~proposal: boundaries of air and migration~~

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

	~~Estonia's~~ accession to the EU in 2004 regulated the air pollution of local power plant emissions. In order to stay ~~within its~~ now ~~tighter~~ standards, the ~~estonian~~ power ~~plant~~ industry underwent a large ~~reduction~~. One of the ~~biggest buildings~~ in ~~Narva was~~ the ~~power plant~~ and ~~it is now almost empty~~. (~~ref~~) ~~The~~ buildings we are ~~visiting K..~~, the ~~ghost towns~~		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.

	~~more about displacement and air~~		'''Main objectives:'''

	~~o 10+ '''sentences description: main object~~/~~focus~~ of ~~fieldwork~~, ~~research~~, ~~question~~, ~~anticipated outcomes'''~~		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.

	~~I hypothesise that such economic consequences~~ of ~~EU's accession have reshaped~~ the Narva ~~population~~ and the local ~~labour force~~. I want to ~~trace~~.		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.

	~~'''o 5+ technical description: tools~~, ~~method~~, ~~process'''~~		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.

	~~inspiration~~ from ~~old one to look at elements etc~~,		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'''

	~~5+ references~~		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'''

	~~our task~~		* 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>
	~~▪ Tracing how objects~~, ~~bodies~~, ~~plants~~, ~~organisms and places are linked into~~		* 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>
	~~relations of mutual shaping and interdependence~~		* The Baltic Atlas. (2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale.



	~~▪ Emphasis 1: tracing shifting boundaries of waste~~, ~~residue~~, ~~raw materials and~~

	~~resource and how they facilitate~~, ~~diffract and/or redistribute life~~-~~enabling or~~

	~~constraining potentials and capacities across times and scales~~

	~~▪ Emphasis 2~~: ~~unpacking less noticeable tensions~~, ~~collaborations~~, ~~solidarities~~ and

	~~attunements emerging from ‘non-consensual inhabitations’~~ of ~~land~~, ~~bodies~~,

	~~ecosystems~~, ~~or soils~~, ~~etc~~.

	* Feel free to set your own focus within the main objectives of ~~this program~~

	~~Key Steps~~ (~~in preparation of field week~~)

	~~▪ Select an object~~, ~~organism~~, ~~specimen~~, ~~people or places to study~~

	~~▪ Conduct preparatory research~~ on de/~~re-composition of elemental flows they~~

	~~embody and to what effect~~

	~~▪ Summarize your research interest~~/~~planned experiment in an idea paper on the~~

	~~course wiki~~

	~~o 5+ sentences background info~~,

Rofo0574 at 13:35, 6 May 2025

2025-05-06T13:35:33Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:35, 6 May 2025
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	'''o 5+ technical description: tools, method, process'''		'''o 5+ technical description: tools, method, process'''

	o 5+ references		inspiration from old one to look at elements etc,


			5+ references

Rofo0574 at 13:34, 6 May 2025

2025-05-06T13:34:53Z

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 proposal: boundaries of air and migration
 our task
@@ Line 36: / Line 51: @@
 o 5+ sentences background info,

Rofo0574 at 05:43, 5 May 2025

2025-05-05T05:43:33Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:43, 5 May 2025
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	~~'''~~proposal:~~'''~~		proposal: boundaries of air and migration

	~~'''Toward a “Wetland Aesthetics”'''~~		our task

	~~Specimen: sphagnum moss~~		▪ Tracing how objects, bodies, plants, organisms and places are linked into

	Or		relations of mutual shaping and interdependence

	~~Location: Puhatu Wetland Complex, da-Viru County, Estonia (Puhatu soostik)~~


	~~'''Background info'''~~		▪ Emphasis 1: tracing shifting boundaries of waste, residue, raw materials and

	Northeastern Estonia are home to peatlands, which are carbon sinks shaped over millennia by slow accumulations of plant matter in water-saturated, anaerobic conditions. These landscapes have undergone forceful drainage, to repurpose the wetlands for agricultural or industrial uses. Not only that, decades of industrial pollution of ash, particularly from oil shale combustion has also increased the alkalinity of these bogs, which limits their carbon holding capacity. Contemporary efforts in restoration have reconsidered the biodiversity and carbon retaining abilities of sphagnum moss in bogs. Recent scholarship prompts us to reconsider the ‘unintentional designs at sites of disturbances (Tsing, 2023) and ~~the spontaneous potentials of “wastelands" (''The Baltic Atlas,'' 2016). How do these peatlands mediate between ongoing industrial violence and future climatic hopes? I aim to unpack~~ how it becomes a carbon bank—a slow body that stabilizes what once moved rapidly and violently through the air. Through this lens, the peatland is not merely a landscape but an entangled infrastructure of storage, filtering, and ~~reconfiguration.~~		resource and how they facilitate, diffract and/or redistribute life-enabling or

	~~'''Main Objective / Field Focus'''~~		constraining potentials and capacities across times and scales

	This fieldwork centers on sphagnum moss growing in acidic conditions of northeastern Estonian peatlands. It is a situation of a multispecies and multi-elemental assemblage with the atmosphere, sphagnum moss, oil shale ash, vascular plants and microbial life. I focus on tracing the photosynthesizing process of sphagnum moss in different peatlands samples, and how particularly how atmospheric residues linger in the bodies of plants and soils. The samples will involve environments altered with oil shale ash to see how the increased carbon dioxide, released through oil shale combustion, is being re-sequestered by the carbon sink-wetland substrate. Using the idea of a "wetland aesthetics," I examine the wetland as a site which redefines excess carbon pollution. However, perhaps once this carbon pollution is stored in an inactive state, its toxicity status can be reconsidered. Through this investigation, ~~my artistic intervention builds on the abstraction of how the sense of time~~, and movement is obscured in the peatlands, where decomposition is slowed due to the acidic of the soil being anoxic (oxygen-deprived) in peatlands, which restricts the activity of many decomposers, which are organisms that break down organic matter.		▪ Emphasis 2: unpacking less noticeable tensions, collaborations, solidarities and

	~~'''Technical Description'''~~		attunements emerging from ‘non-consensual inhabitations’ of land, bodies,

	~~Possible fieldwork methods include observational journaling~~, ~~photographic documentation, and elemental mapping (e.g., visualizing zones of higher moss activity~~ or ash residue). I will collect air and soil temperature/humidity data (using a portable CO₂ sensor?) and include sound recordings to document the peatland’s auditory atmosphere (wind, water movement, birdlife). Additional elements could include aesthetic transformation of the land, ~~and speculative visualizations of carbon entrapment over time~~.		ecosystems, or soils, etc.

	~~'''Preliminary References'''~~		* Feel free to set your own focus within the main objectives of this program

	~~# ''Ots~~, K., ~~Tullus~~, T., ~~Sild, M~~., ~~Tullus, A~~.~~, Täll, K., & Tullus, H~~. (~~2023~~). ~~Ash treatment promotes~~ the ~~revegetation~~ of ~~abandoned extracted peatlands~~. ~~Land, 13(~~10~~), 1623. <nowiki>https~~:/~~/doi.org/10.3390/land13101623</nowiki>~~''		Key Steps (in preparation of field week)
	~~# Paal, J., Vellak, K., Liira, J., & Karofeld, E. (2010).~~ ''~~Bog Recovery in Northeastern Estonia after the Reduction of Atmospheric Pollutant Input.~~''
	~~# Tsing~~, ~~A. (2023).~~ ''~~Bestiary of the Anthropocene~~'~~', Chapter: “Unruly Edges.”~~		▪ Select an object, organism, specimen, people or places to study
	~~# '~~'~~The Baltic Atlas~~'' ~~(2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale.~~
	~~# Wojcik, M., & Almeida, A. S. (2024). The role of peatlands in carbon storage and climate change mitigation~~: ~~A review of ecosystem services~~, ~~threats~~, ~~and restoration approaches. Science of The Total Environment, 915, 170501. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170501</nowiki>~~		▪ Conduct preparatory research on de/re-composition of elemental flows they

			embody and to what effect

			▪ Summarize your research interest/planned experiment in an idea paper on the

			course wiki

			o 5+ sentences background info,

			background:

			Estonia's accession to the EU in 2004 regulated the air pollution of local power plant emissions. In order to stay within its now tighter standards, the estonian power plant industry underwent a large reduction. One of the biggest buildings in Narva was the power plant and it is now almost empty. (ref) The buildings we are visiting K.., the ghost towns

			I hypothesise that such economic consequences of EU's accession have reshaped the Narva population and the local labour force. I want to trace.

			o 10+ '''sentences description: main object/focus of fieldwork, research'''

			'''question, anticipated outcomes'''

			'''o 5+ technical description: tools, method, process'''

			o 5+ references

Rofo0574 at 23:33, 1 May 2025

2025-05-01T23:33:00Z

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-'''background information'''
+'''proposal:'''
-'''idea'''
+Specimen: sphagnum moss
-'''references'''
+Location: Puhatu Wetland Complex, da-Viru County, Estonia (Puhatu soostik)