Urban Ethnography. Exploring, Interpreting and Reshaping Patterns of Everyday / EKA Urban Studies

R.I.P

EXPLORING, INTERPRETING AND RESHAPING PATTERNS OF EVERYDAY

URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY

URBAN STUDIES SEMINAR 01.2017-04.2017

Cover: Frances Kowalski (2017)

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Elena Bolkhovitinova Tom Brennecke Aleksandra Dorofeeva Güngör Güneş Nina Stener Jørgensen Frances Kowalski Anastassija Malkova Théo Morier Kaarel Oks Filippo Stagnini

Urban Ethnography EXPLORING, INTERPRETING AND RESHAPING PATTERNS OF EVERYDAY

From Filippo Stagnini’s project “Homeless After Earthquake”.

Why Ethnography for Urban Designers?

Ethnography provides tools for inquiring how specific locations, human and non-human histories, materialities, representations, imaginaries and cultural practices blend together to constitute everyday life and practice. Ethnographic research seeks to understand how different groups of people interact with urban space.

Literally, ethnography means describing (graphing) the people (ethno), and in practice it often implies describing the behavioral and material expressions of culture. Architecture and urban design provide new ways for people to connect and interact in a city. The constructed spaces and urban processes are never given nor are they universally inclusive. They are always embedded in skewed distributions of power. Through inquiry and interpretation ethnography can give insights into the social struggles incorporated in the construction of urban infrastructures as they occur in concrete spaces and times. Is there, however, such a thing as “the ethnographic method”?

The course served as a platform to explore and critically engage with the limits and possibilities of ethnography. Through group readings and discussions it questioned the uneasy position of the ethnographer vis à vis the “researched object” (Tim Ingold), the fluctuating boundaries of what is to be considered social (Anna Tsing), and the “dangers” of the ethnographic turn in the arts (Hal Foster).

Employing “urban infrastructure” as a central concept allowed us to connect the “hard” (physical networks of material, resources, technology) structures with the “soft” (institutional networks, social customs) aspects that constitute the fabric of urban space. Using works by Matthew Gandy, Selena Savic, or Allan Sekula as inspiration, we specifically paid attention to environmental conditions, as they permeate the seemingly clear-cut (soft-hard, culture-nature, etc.) binary categories of urban space. These examples delineate how “nature” limits urban development (bedrock, water access, climate), how it is reshaped into urban infrastures (indoor air, water flow, canalisation), and how it transgresses what is planned or imagined in urban space (air pollution, urban biodiversity). We discussed how urban infrastructures accommodate and affect people’s daily lives, and how they become sites of daily social and political struggle.

The understandings of what matters, what is considered as “normal”, and what are the desirable futures, precipitates from shared past experiences and histories. By creating collective imaginaries, people cultivate and negotiate relations with the material world, and among ourselves. Communities are always imagined communities (Benedict Anderson).

Imaginaries are closely related to governance, the processes of defining and recognizing issues of common concern. Local imaginaries of how urban space can, and should, be structured, organized and governed intervene with the top-down planning of urban space. Urban environmental imaginaries are shared in daily processes of governance and are as such part of the infrastructures of the city. As they are collectively produced they contribute to how different organisations of space in the city come into being, and to what alternative forms are made possible, or rendered invisible.

To start engaging with ethnographic methods, the participants of the course were asked to bring an image, artifact, or text, that related to an example of (invisible) infrastructure and argue how it creates conditions for material intervention, governance, or self-governance in the city. This shared starting point branched into ten diverse and multifaceted individual research outcomes such as booklets, posters, texts, timelines, videos and websites. These short but intensive hands-on research projects pushed students to critically engage with the concepts, and practices, discussed in the course and to critically reflect upon the methods used to convey the results of the research. Although different in content and form, some common threads emerged between the different projects. Students arranged their projects into three categories “Imaginaries”, “Shift in customs” and “Claiming space”. These different clusters show that ethnography, at least as performed by these projects, doesn’t restrict itself to describing, but also, proposes a means for exploring, interpreting and reshaping everyday urban imaginaries, habits and spaces.

Supervisors Hanna Husberg & Agata Marzecova

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From Théo Morier’s project “ZAD Zones to Defend”.

Depiction. Four interpretations of Nina’s project about limestone in Estonia.

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Imaginaries We were all on an adventure to disclose some of society’s many imaginaries. During our journey some of us discovered ways to communicate with plants, needed patience to unveil limestone creatures, learned to transform thoughts into visible substance and even visited those last seconds of life before death. Each investigation went through several stages such as social networks, visual representation, keeping a timeline, sketching and questionnaires.

Historically, ethnographic projects have focused on the systematic identification of the types of society – uncovering and systemizing them. The ethnographic apparatus is increasingly challenged by the many possible interpretations the diversity of urban life today offers. That calls for different methods of investigation and often results in outcomes that do not easily restrict themselves to a standard paper format.

The different formats do not determine the imagination but the imaginary aspect comes along as a step aside, as a bigger wish, desire or craving behind the projects. Some of them, i.e. the various limestone constructions provided us with images that coin words in the form of thoughts. Others, such as the Death FAQ project is heading out to give us words and we create the picture. Furthermore, the reader should also keep in mind that the imaginary does not only stand for what we imagine, but also what we do not imagine and it hence remains an intangible entity.

Revealing imaginaries means trying to grasp the essential. That is envisioning colourful pebbles under the streams of water, no longer pristine, and document – precisely – those left on the coast with tides. Although sometimes they are just shards of glass bottles, some can still see in them that sheer spirit of celebrating life. We are capturing lucid visions veined with intimacy and share them with the audience – in the hope of giving them a go, meanwhile, restoring dignity – whether of plants, flow of reflection, expiring – or imagination itself.

In order to showcase the different aspects and possible obstacles of interpretation that ethnographic studies can be confronted with, each student within the topic ‘Imaginaries’ has been asked to write down an introduction, an explanation and a poem as well as to reflect on the projects of the others through depiction. The various depictions concerning each topic reveal thought-provoking similarities between the student’s interpretation.

TOM BRENNECKE

Plants vs. Humans The program ventured out to dissolve the not-so-substantiated gap between humans and plants, by which we mean all kind of greenery. Famous and less famous scientists and philosophers have conducted experiments with plants, in which they brought out the plant’s reaction to the stimuli to light. The main aim was to show that plants can perceive more than we thought, up to a point where plants seem to have nervous systems similar to humans. Of course, many of these experiments are disreputable and not commonly accepted. My personal task was to start from this point and try to raise the awareness of plants and their status. A plant adoption website was created where people could hand in plants they cannot take care of anymore and give these to applicants who want to care. For more information, please see Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/adoptplants Find also the link to the blog featuring experiments and historic facts https://plantorphanageblog.wordpress.com/ The following poem is the romanticisation of the relationship between humans and plants.

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Plant Purity It’s been a while but it’s true I’m living with a household plant From now and then I call her ‘you’ Due to all the time we spend

All the lines, my mind, I’m blurred I have to have some certainty But I think I’m part of her Inasmuch as she is of me

She’s the most domestic thing I’ve met And always on the turn to sun And when I go into my bed She probably just comes undone

And maybe it’s a trick but still She doesn’t like to talk to me I’m getting ‘past’ and original It can’t be far for me to be

All questions she has ever posed Never fell into their place I just unlearned to speak to those Green domestic plants with grace

Whatever overcomes me now I wish it would be on everyone That they could feel it all somehow That plants are just ‘another one’

ALEKSANDRA DOROFEEVA

Reliving Death At the outset of the given ethnographic project, two flowers were brought out as the symbol of some invisible urban layer death culture with all its customs, infrastructures, legislature and imaginaries.

While the first issues are found stable due to human unwillingness to touch the topic, the latter imaginaries is here the aim in changing the attitude to the entity. The final output a book of questions and answers on dying and burying in Tallinn is focused on the precise location and answers the imagined questions in a strikingly easy, sitespecific and personal way to let the reader rethink both the very potential of himself becoming invisible in the city and the possibility of leaving traces that in the end would contribute to the successive production of chronic or novel imaginaries.

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Please write on the opposite side of the notes, where it’s clear.

Look at the wallpapers with those mumbling plants.

So chronic!

Knock on the wood of the wardrobe, Indistinct!

So full of stuff you left over there.

Hold what had never been held Last weekend, You are in coffin, my friend, but do not panic, You are possessing some imagination That will import you the highest affairs.

Now it is time to get drunk before noon

laugh in no fear to cry again, what you had never allowed yourself on over-the-wardrobe side of the moon.

Are there more souls in coffin than one, And is it another no-named Sitsi-bar, So you will take whatever you want, Leaving you wish to forget outside.

Hey I can hear you breathing slam-bang There, what gives me a lot of Smile, Keeping on battling the boredom that makes All other folks tremble meanwhile.

NINA STENER JØRGENSEN

‘Lubjakivi’ (2017) Or 48 Limestone Constructions in Tallinn, Estonia ‘Lubjakivi’ began as a virtual collection of limestone in the cityscape of Tallinn with the intention of creating a “wall” by depicting the various constructions by video next to each other – frame by frame, as if the whole city situated itself behind a wall. The aim was to present a way of categorizing something that is both visible and invisible. Drawing on the text ‘Imagined communities’ by Benedict Anderson (1983) I was inspired to spark the conversation about national discourse embedded in the built environment.

The radius of the “wall” being from where the Danish flag fell from the sky, in Tallinn during a particular rough battle in 1219, situated within the “first” wall or fortification – another great example of an imagined basis for a society. The execution of the project was to mimic an anthropological “rational” and systemizing approach to a seemingly irrational topic. As Anderson underlines that national discourse is hard to grasp and subject to scientific research, I wanted to reflect that claim in my own research.

However as the film progressed, it became clear that my method was losing its efficiency when the project was carried out. The video recordings of limestone gradually become empty containers for a story I was desperately trying to convince myself existed. This realisation led me to record more than the limestones and to reflect on how to mediate this struggle of interpretation to my fellow students.

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In an interview series entitled ‘Voices’ from 1983, Susan Sontag and John Berger discus “How to tell a story”. The pair is disagreeing on one topic in particular: universality and its related displacement from time and place. Berger argues that the universality of a story makes it accessible for all “readers” whereas Sontag questions the claim that everything abstract can be interpreted in any way we are able to. That some things are in fact tied to and nested in reality. I came to realise that the meaning of the “wall” was not only restricted to national discourse and that the method of investigating it was more complex and required more than a collection and video-showcasing. What Sontag and Berger debated was also what I was forced to face when dealing with ethnography in creating an artistic project, I included the most precise formulations of the two opposing statements as a voice over in my film (00.08.14:00.11.04). Hal Foster describes in the following the same struggle but in relation to its ideological base, which is a useful guideline for future projects:

“A strict Marxist might question this quasi-anthropological paradigm in art because it tends to displace the problematic of class and capitalist exploitation with that of race and colonialist oppression. A strict poststructuralist would question it for the opposite reason: because it does not displace this productivist problematic enough, that is, because it tends to preserve its structure of the political-to retain the notion of a subject of history, to define this position in terms of truth (...)”. (The Artist as Ethnographer? 1995, p. 303).

Unrequited love

“And then I started to invent, but in relation to the truth”.

Creating a fiction was never my intent, YOUTH: “You will get lost looking for universality” Thinking you already know it all, suddenly displaced from time and place: “Spring. Saturday. He is 25”.

Years later you keep an eye out for the village where you lived – In particular for where it really took place.

ANASTASSIJA MALKOVA

The Case of The Paldiski Relocation Project It is usually possible to follow the progress of design when an architect grabs a pen or a computer mouse. There is a tendency that every design progress is trackable by different stages due to computation, but quite little is known about what happens before this process. This project deals with the relocation of Paldiski and the non-materialistic phase of the project – forming the new design during conversations, discussions, presentations, readings and case studies. The meetings were conducted in the discussion format, where the documentation of a particular stage was produced and new input information was discussed. Documentation material was collected and a timeline formed. The collected material is available here: http://prezi.com/ybldcct54p_4/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy . Documenting the most theoretical part of the project process influenced the next stages of the project development.

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Wondered, what is in your mind Town’s afterlife you need to find Do you believe in new beginning New chance, a new way of living

Imaginaries that are created While reading Lynch or Gehl outdated Catch process on the piece of paper I will trap it - in time scraper

Thinking this, imagine that Now select what’s wrong, what’s right Loneliness won’t soothe your doubt Precious time is running out

Hope, you won’t forget your progress Even if your final process would be judged by real poster More than mind-full rollercoaster

Stop, forget the modern planning And discuss the human being How habitats will be located How realize dreams that decades waited

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Shift in Customs We live in a digitalized world, a new information era. We can neither deny it nor withdraw ourselves from the immense load of information pouring down on us in urban environments.

Whether we like it or not, it’s basically everywhere and invokes a feeling of being connected within the framework of global outreach. The internet with platforms like Facebook, YouTube, snapchat and twitter, to name only a few, offers a platform for the exchange of any kind of (personal) information and a stage for all sorts of narcissistic behaviour. The line between public and private is slowly dissolving and the way we acquire knowledge and apply filters has shifted to a great extend due to the dislocation of information from time and space. Google is your friend.

The way that different generations adapt to these new benefits and challenges is vastly different and we can observe a drastic shift in forms of communication, customs and in the production of new spatial relations and behaviour in public. Older generations pass on traditions and their everyday routines remain mostly unaffected by social media and smart technology, whereas the generation of millennials emerges in a pool of data and connectivity; they became transparent projections of themselves, online and offline. The image of the city and the dynamics in human relations changed due to these invisible infrastructures that become very visible in the way we navigate through and claim/produce public space.

GÜNGÖR GÜNEŞ

Youtubers in Estonia Social media has recently eventuated an indispensable piece of the societies in the wake of an increasing amount of accessible technological materials. It has an influence on almost each individual who interacts with that medium, culminating in alterations in behaviours, then in communities, societies and in the environment. The project obtained its inspiration from the transforming habits of people and the rituals of the communities. On that account, it contextualized its main focus point on one of the most popular social media platforms, which is YouTube, by narrowing it down with a spatial frame of reference: Estonia.

The primary objective of the project was to comprehend the motivations behind sharing contents, to examine the impacts in today’s societies and to determine possible future conclusions. The logic behind designating YouTube as the central social media platform on this exploration was that it is the second biggest social media platform in terms of the number of utilizers, which has one billion monthly visitors consuming six billion hours of content per month, which means 46,000 years’ worth of content annually. 1 As a procedure, 50 YouTube channels in Estonia were selected in terms of their popularity, and a database was created with regard to uploaded video quantity, total subscriber number, total views, years of activity, content, description, featured channels, as well as personal information such as name, age and contact information. Throughout the observation phase, not only the perspective of content producers but also that of content viewers were taken into consideration. After hundreds of contents with hours of monitoring, it was detected that five major categories could be mentioned as the contents of most famous Estonian YouTube channels: game, music, daily life, reaction, and makeup-beauty-fashion-lifestyle.

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What makes YouTube such a powerful machine is that it is a video-based platform. Brain waves switch from the Beta wave to Alpha wave phase within less than a minute of watching video content. Alpha wave stage is a kind of deep meditation time zone; in which conscious thinking activity is not adequately dominant. 2 This means that the information coming from a video product is absorbed without deliberate evaluation in a comprehensive way. For this reason, the ingredient of a video plays a crucial role in reshaping the subconscious mind. The reason why this knowledge is substantial is due to the existence of cognitive dissonance.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” 3 Since safeguarding the essence idea is vital for the brain, and video contents have powerful impact to shape the core beliefs, YouTube has become a crucial component in daily life, which is also the reason it became the focal point for the research.

For a more extensive analysis, 10 YouTubers were randomly selected for interviews in order to find clear results for research questions, to communicate deeper on the observation results and to understand their life better. Each selected YouTuber was individually contacted by e-mail, in which the purpose of the research and the privacy statement were explicitly declared.

However, none of the YouTubers responded back to their emails. For this reason, the results of research questions are based on the deep video investigations, general observation and further research on the topic.

The outcome of the whole process seems to have two dominant aspects. The first one is capital. YouTube provides legal tender to YouTubers according to their channel activities. Considering the fact that a YouTuber in the United States earned $37 million with a channel, it is not surprising to make an inference that Estonian YouTubers would also expect analogous results.

The second aspect is fame. Fame has become an increasingly considerable fact especially for teenagers due to the new comprehension of life brought by social media. Sharing the same platform with celebrities makes individuals feel that they are also a part of it, and this urges them to invest more time also in their channels.

In brief, the aforementioned case is a 21st century phenomenon, which did not exist before the millennium and even in the early years of the new century. While it has already modified the world in a dynamic way within a very tiny period of time in human history, the future is open to any kind of further adjustments, behaviours and rituals.

“YouTube statistics directory,” Socialbakers, accessed April 2, 2017, https://www. socialbakers.com/statistics/youtube/ 2 “Theta Brain State,” ThetaHealing, accessed April 2, 2017, http://www.thetahealing.com/about-thetahealing/thetahealing-theta-state.html 3 Rick Wallace, “Understanding Cognitive Dissonance and How It Impacts African Americans,” The Odyssey Project, last modified May 2, 2016, http://www.theodysseyproject21. top/2016/05/02/explaining-cognitive-dissonance-theory/ 1

Digital Detox # Activity Book

FRANCES KOWALSKI

Digital Detox Hello and welcome to my tutorial on how to keep yourself busy offline in a digitalized world! Today I’m going to reflect upon how online activities affect human behaviour in public spaces and everyday life and touch upon the topic of invisible traces of Bits and Bytes, Apps and Data. They do become visible in our choices and interactions.

The aim of this booklet is to illustrate observations regarding spatial effects in urban environments, digital heritage in terms of customs and language and of course choices.

The city is a place that gives us almost unlimited liberty in terms of consumer choices- supply and demand. To some extend the internet and the digitalized world show similar kinds of structures. It’s like a mega city developing and growing at the speed of light, except there is no master plan, no boundaries or anyone or anything protecting you from being run over (or is there?) Supply overtakes demand; feedback is the currency accepted by most vendors.

Like and subscribe!

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Cutout Facebook Like as a form of digital currency of appreciation

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Cyber Slang crosswords to represent how language has changed due to digital communication

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Connect-a- dot map of open Wifi hotspots in the inner city of Tallinn to make an otherwise invisible infrastrucutre visible

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QR Code that will only work when it has been coloured in

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A colouring in image of people using their smartphone as a ‘protective shield’ in order to avoid boredom or having to talk to each other

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Another illustrated observation of a shift in customs included in the activity book is the habit of ‘stacking’, often viewed in restaurants. When a group of friends catches up over a meal at a restaurant, the phones are stacked on top of each other, screen down. The rule is that who picks up their phone first, has to pay the bill. A method to not let technology get in the way of face to face conversation.

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KAAREL OKS

Invisible Domestic Production

The object which everyone had to bring to the first class of Urban Ethnography determined their research topic and I had to do quite a bit of thinking. The everyday environment is full of interesting objects that could be traced and studied. My topic sat in my pocket without me even realizing it before.

The item was a mitten made by my grandma. This had a good possibility of an ethnographic approach as I could study her methods of production and the environment where she works in.

The second one was an important factor as the task of getting into other people’s personal environment can be tricky in Estonia. I composed my initial idea to try and find various production patterns happening around the place where she lives – the pre-fabricated building and one of its corridors.

The research took me to the city of Tartu where my grandmother lives. Her name is Tamara and she has been a pensioner for a long time already. She has been filling her time with knitting and what was interesting for me was that it is a form of production – invisible domestic production, as I named it.

Looking further, perhaps the pre-fabricated building contains many different types of this invisible production and I tried to see the systems and patterns behind it.

The first step was to investigate and document Tamara and how her workflow is organized. The apartment has two rooms, one equipped with a table where she reads the news or books and this is where she has also made most of her works. The area is seen in the images.

While documenting the various objects that she had produced she revealed an interesting

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workbook. The workbook included pages upon pages of “saved presets” or more interesting and desirable mitten designs and different patterns for proceeding with a specific knitting technique.

The system behind a “simple” mitten became clearer. It involved hours and hours of time spent polishing the techniques and upgrading the workbook as well as storing various supplies such as knitting yarn and tools of different shapes. It was a pattern developed over time.

Moving on from Tamara, my next step was to contact other residents of the same corridor. For that, I wrote a note introducing myself and what I intended to document. I attached the note near the main entrance where there is a space for notes or information about the building cooperative meetings.

Unfortunately, I did not receive any feedback on my email address.

In conclusion, this photographic research became a realization about patterns of behaviour and the deeper context behind it. Skills are acquired and polished, different systems set up that at first glance don’t meet the eye. The mitten is a representation and a reminder of an underlying pattern that coexists with the digital one.

A house under construction on the Sivens dam site, Tarn, France. Picture by Alain-Marc Delbouys, 2014

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Claiming Space The Re-apropriation of Land and the City In the following works the question of urban and rural land claiming was explored. This exploration has been conducted at different scales and in different locations : urban gardens in post-soviet countries, rural areas across France and towns affected by the 2009 earthquake in Italy.

Taking the form of inhabitants creating collectively a shared garden, of activists building villages in the wilderness to protest infrastructure projects, or the form of reconstruction in the aftermath of a natural disaster; these works seek to showcase the existing intricate links between nature, inhabitants and the built environment.

ELENA BOLKHOVITINOVA

Modern Vernacular ZhEK-art is a relatively recent phenomenon that spread over post-Soviet territories.

The patches of greenery near apartment blocks, which usually include a lawn, some bushes and trees, belong to the people who live in the nearby house - though it is not a common knowledge.

This lack of understanding of what land people have a claim to does not, however, stop the inhabitants from truly claiming it and leaving some sort of imprint of their personalities.

The inspiration behind ZhEK-art can be traced, perhaps, even to the pre-christianity vernacular art such as sculpture, which was later prosecuted by the Church and disappeared for quite a long time. It also marks a freedom from ideology of many centuries, be it Russian Empire or USSR, and so, complete freedom of creativity.

Today, those who create ZhEK-art do not think of anything other than “improving� their surroundings, however questionable the aesthetics, and leaving some sort of their personal trace in urban space.

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The process can be described in three steps: 01 An unused green patch becomes an outlet for gardening skills of some individual, usually an older woman with no summer house or private garden. There are examples of vegetable patches created.

02 A middle-aged man, who seeks some creative outlet, but lacks certain skills, can be seen making sculptures from old car tyres.

03 During spring cleaning, some inhabitants find themselves with a few old things like toys that they do not want to throw out, so they put it outside, creating installations. The tyre sculptures and flower patches multiply.

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The process goes on indefinitely from there, with some things disappearing and new ones coming in their place.

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THÉO MORIER

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ZAD- Zones to Defend A New Urbanity at The Service of “Nature”?

In the past ten years, new urban forms have appeared. Described as spontaneous, informal or anarchic, these urbanities have sprouted in rural places initially intended to host large scale infrastructure. Environmentalists at the origin of such initiative thus use their own presence on the sites, materialized by the structures they build there, to show their opposition not only to those large infrastructure projects but also to the forms of governance that initiated them.

Which imaginary do convey such highly political urban forms bluring the distinction between nature and the cities?

Three sites across France have been researched to conduct a research :

Sivens

Between 2011 and 2014, Sivens, in the Tescou Valley, became home to activists opposing the construction of a dam on the river. Planned as soon as 1969 to water large farms, the dam would have caused the destruction of a 13ha wetland home to 94 protected species. After years of confrontation between the environmentalists and the local authorities, the project was finally cancelled and the camp destroyed, after the tragic death of an activist, Rémi Fraisse, during a police operation.

Roybon

Occupied since November 2015, the Chambaran Forest was planned to host a holiday resort. Intead of holiday homes, the forest and the nearby wetland are scattered with house built between the trees by environmentalist using local materials. As of march 2017, the “village” is still ongoing, its fate now residing in the highest levels of the State.

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Notre-Dame-des-Landes

Occupied since 2008, the site of the Great Western Airport is the largest occupied site in France. Opposing the construction of an airport planned for now fifty years, the site made of woods, wetlands and small farms has seen in almost ten years thousands of activits. Learning from events occurring in places such as Sivens, watchtower and barricades have been built on access roads to block local authorities from reaching the camp. The airport project is now on hold.

01 By confronting directly the natural species present on the sites and the structures built in order to protect it, we wanted to introduce this paradox : in those areas, we build cities to protect nature.

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Sivens, Tower in the middle of the camp (tree branches and rope), picture by P. Pavani for AFP, march 2015 Orange-spotted emerald, Oxygastra curtisii, Corduliidae, extinct in UK and the Netherlands.

Roybon, House (straw on a wood structure and various recycled materials), picture by P. Chignard & Hans Lucas.

Eurasian Kingfisher, Alcedo ispida, Alcedininae.

Notre-Dame-des-Landes, Watchtower (branches, pallets and various materials).

Marsh gentian, Gentiana pneunomanthe, Gentianaceae.

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FILIPPO STAGNINI

Homeless After Earthquake Community : a group of people bound together by social relations, linguistic and moral, organizational constraints, interests and habits.

What happens when a community is struck by a catastrophic event that provoces rapid and sudden changes?

What happens when the city is destroyed and thousands of people remain homeless?

Seismic situation in Italy allows us to observe that the community is a shapeshifter, it can adapt itself to new contexts, breaking ancient rules and creating new ones, strengthening some bonds and severing others.

This timeline proposes a panoramic view of the community changes after the earthquakes in Italy. It starts from the panic of the first moments till the new shapes, after years from the event. Furthermore, it shows also the relation between the community and its city, highlighting a centrifugal movement that brings people outside their city.

We notice that the descripted events are becoming more sparse; switching from the first moments of general interest, in which we are assaulted with news, until the lack of news already a few months later, resulting in a lack of interest.

Photos by : ANSA, Republica.it, versolaquila.wordpress.com, Francesco Andresciani

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01 Escape: 00years 00month 00day 00hour 00min 24sec Accumuli, Lazio A man helps an injured man to escape from the old town during the moments immediatly following the first quake.

02 Awareness: 00years 00month 00day 00hour 23min 07sec Amatrice, Lazio A young boy on the ruins of his home after the earthquake. Also common people struggle to help rescue workers in finding people under the ruins.

EST Pildi Pealkiri .tavad on, seda enam tuleb just ak adeemilises õhkkonnas neis kahelda. J

03 Street: 00years 00month 00day 22hours 43min 24sec Amatrice, Lazio Women in the street during the first day after the quake. The collapse of the houses forces in the street even lot of elders and sick people.

04 New shapes: 00years 03months 03days 23hours 45min 02sec Macerata, Marche.

One of the first “containers city” in the suburb of Macerata. Lots of these structures are settled up around the city and they can host two-houndred people each.

05 Ghosttown: 00years 03months 03days 23hours 45min 02sec Macerata, Marche.

One of the first “containers city” in the suburb of Macerata. Lots of these structures are settled up around the city and they can host two-houndred people each.

06 Newtown: 08years 11months 27days 13hours 46min 41sec Riolo, Abruzzo.The new town of Riolo,L’. Lots of prefabricated houses are built miles away from the city, that is still visible on the background.

Artefacts In the beginning of the seminar we were asked to bring an artefact or image that would represent, what we would like our research to be about. Some of us have moved away from what we originally wanted to work with, while others had a clear idea of their project from the begining. To document the process, here is an overview of the objects discussed at the very start of the ethnographic research and what sparked the interest of the individual observations.

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Elena Bolkhovitinova Example of ZhEK Art

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Tom Brenneke “In the last more than 100 years, experiments on plants were conducted from scientists around the globe regarding the question to what extent plants feel like humans. The picture shows a scientist injecting liquids into and cutting leaves off the plant.”

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Aleksandra Dorofeeva “From an early age I was quite confused with that strict choice of number of flowers (even or odd) one is bringing for different occasions. That is why I showed two red carnations, strongly associated with death in my culture, as an artifact. I wanted to investigate death as an everlasting producer of space (cemeteries) and traditions.”

04

Güngör Güneş No displayable object

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Nina Stener Jørgensen “I brought “Three Skulls from Convento dei Cappucini at Palermo” painted by L.A Ring in 1894. It was painted during the Golden Age of Scandinavian painters travelling to warmer climates chasing the light as well as foreign motives. I like how seemingly anthropological this capture envisions itself to be: 3 stages of deterioration accompanied by detailed notes explaining who the person was before he ended up in this state. Despite the tragedy of the situation, a humorous tone has also found it’s way in there.”

06

Frances Kowalski “The photo shows some children playing in the streets of Mannheim on a warm summer day. There were no adults helicoptering over them, yet they had a sort of self governance that really impressed me. During the course of my observations, I was wondering to what extend the internet would change this kind of invisible structure.”

07

Anastassija Malkova “Imagine to live in a closed city for more than 50 years - is it image of a prison or a cage that protects you from the danger?”

08

Théo Morier “A barricade built by activists on a muddy country road blocks the entrance to the planned construction site of the Great Western Airport, France, winter 2012. “

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Kaarel Oks Example of a handmade mitten with typical Estonian patterns

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Filippo Stagnini “The Baltic Route: The refugees, forced in the new environment, adapt themselves to the new reality; the station, the docks and the tracks become new homes, connected by an invisible network of roads.”

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Supervisors Hanna Husberg Hanna Husberg graduated from ENSB-A, Paris in 2007, and is currently developing her doctoral research project ‘Troubled Atmosphere: On noticing air’ at the academy of fine arts Vienna. Her research has developed through several art projects, such as Human Meteorology (2012), Being With (2015), The World Indoors (2015), In the Vast Ocean of Air (2016), as well as the research project Contingent Movements Archive (2013-14) conceived together with Laura McLean for the Maldives Pavilion (55th Venice Biennale). Through a focus on air these projects inquire into how humans perceive and relate to their immediate, and expanded, surrounding. She is a participant of ‘Frontiers in Retreat’, a research platform in Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ecology in Contemporary Art, and HYBRID MATTERs, an art & science network program.

Agata Marzecova is a researcher and ecologist, with a background in photography. Her academic research was published in Die Erde, Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, Boreal Environmental Research and Anthropocene Review. She has contributed to several artistic exhibitions and conferences, including the IX biennial conference for Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES), Nordic Geographers’ meetings and Helsinki Photomedia conference. Her essay ‘Vernacular geology of the Baltics” was featured in the exhibition catalogue of the Baltic Pavilion in the 15th International Architecture Venice Biennale (2016).

Hanna and Agata met at the interdisciplinary workshop Anthropocene Campus (2014) and its second edition Technosphere Issue (2016), organized by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. In 2017, they are both affiliated researchers of The Seed Box: A Mistra-Formas Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, at LiU, Sweden.

Department of Urban Studies LOCATION AND CONTACT Pikk Street 20, Tallinn 10133 arhitektuur@artun.ee +372 6420070

ISBN 978-9949-594-34-4 ISBN 978-9949-594-35-1 (pdf) ISSN 2461-2359

The 2-year Master’s program in Urban Studies combines rigorous academic research with intensive field-work. The program is situated at the trans-disciplinary crossroad of critical urban studies, urbanism and urban planning, architecture theory, sociology and urban ethnography. Our students have previous academic background in architecture and/or humanities. Integrating critical interrogation and experimental practice, the program has a triple focus on social uses, spatial programs and urban forms.The form of assignments includes termlong research studios, intensive workshops, lectures, seminars, and field trips. The distinctive mark of the Master in Urban Studies is its reliance on theoretically informed action in the field.

We take students’ effort seriously: the program engages ‘real’ actors and create opportunities for public presentation, discussion and publishing of best works.The Master’s program is fully in English and it has a strong international orientation. We cooperate with a network of partner institutions in Europe and we are connected to regional partners in Finland, Baltic countries and Russia. Curriculum includes number of workshops and lecture courses by international scholars and practitioners. The education prepares students to engage with urban issues at the intersection between design practice, political practice and theoretical knowledge. The program prepares graduates for further study at the PhD level.

TOIMETAJAD: Frances Kowalski, Nina Stener Jørgensen// Kujunduse Makett: Arhitekt Must OÜ // KEELETOIMETAJA: Kerli Linnat// © Eesti Kunstiakadeemia Arhitektuuri ja Linnaplaneerimise osakond // Tallinn 2017 EDITORS: Frances Kowalski, Nina Stener Jørgensen // Layout: Arhitekt Must OÜ // PROOFREADER: Kerli Linnat// ©Estonian Academy of Arts Department of Architecture and Urban Design // Tallinn 2017