Trash, Culture, and Urban Regeneration in Tallinn, Estonia
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Francisco Martínez ‘THIS PLACE HAS POTENTIAL’: TRASH, CULTURE, AND URBAN REGENERATION IN TALLINN, ESTONIA abstract The article analyses the use of cultural programmes and trash as tools for urban speculation in Tallinn, Estonia, naturalising an urban strategy that entails extensive spatial revaluation and socioeconomic intervention. Through an anthropological perspective focused on concepts of potential and trash, the analysis shows how the central-north shoreline was mobilised discursively as a wasteland and a zone of unrealised potential to justify capitalist development of the area. The way it was framed, both moving towards completion and as a playground for cultural activities and young people, increased the value and accessibility of the area, but also allowed real estate developers to exploit the synergies generated and make profit from the revaluated plots. Tropes of potential and trash appear thus as discursive tools for urban regeneration, co-related with a formal allocation of resources and official permits. As the case study shows, when an area is classed as having ‘potential’, it becomes defined by the fulfilment of that restrictive conceptualisation, which allows the economy to dictate urban planning and also cultural policy. Keywords: politics of potentiality, urban regeneration, European Capital of Culture, waterfront of Tallinn, temporary uses, wasteland 1 INTRODUCTION to connect the place with an image of moving towards completion while emphasising its What does it mean for a place to have potential? negative associations. I start by investigating Potential for what? And cui prodest (to whose the relations occurring there and then develop profit)? This article examines how discourses of an analysis of the recent discussions and public ‘potential’ and ‘trash’ have created the conditions statements on the topic, arguing that discourses for a speculative regeneration of an industrial of trash and unrealised potential were used to area of the Estonian capital. Data are drawn represent the space negatively, as not belonging from research into recent practices taking place to the urban geographies of the present. In on Tallinn’s shoreline and discursive uses of this sense, trash and potentiality appear as an labels such as ‘trash’ and ‘unrealised potential’ intrinsic part of neoliberal spatial restructuring, suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 3 autumn 2017 4 Francisco Martínez since a discursive shift in the conceptualisation trash talk entails both emotional and material of the shoreline produced a new set of spatial consequences, naturalising links between dirty practices and representations, which have been places, disorderly people, and the need to used for a speculative type of redevelopment of remove or regenerate them. Trash appears thus the area. as both an analytical category and an ethno- The article considers how the concepts of graphic one, intermingled in relations of power potential and waste are applied for spatial uses, and ownership (Argyrou 1997). as well as the politics of naming and framing In Tallinn’s shoreline, discourses of potential urban areas. It contributes, therefore, to current and trash acted as the framing process that debates about the parallels between urban preceded a public recognition of the area as regeneration, symbolic waste-making, and the insufficiently utilised and in immediate need of abuse of temporary artistic and recreational redevelopment. The transformative vitality that activities. It specifically shows how discourses discourses of potential entail was reinforced by of potential and socio-political hygiene as well narratives presenting the area as a wasteland. The as youth-led cultural practices are precursors of virtuality of the discourse became fulfilled in the speculative regeneration in these spaces, also actual, following a process of deterritorialisation raising the rate of eviction in the neighbourhood. and reterritorialisation with very limited lines Some novel aspects introduced by this Estonian of possibility, organised to take control over the case study include the alleged weakness and becoming (Deleuze 1966). impotence of the city hall to negotiate with real The fulfilment of potentiality in the space estate agents and prioritise public wellbeing was achieved through a portfolio of cultural over private interest, as well as how categories events, temporary uses and public statements such as Soviet or European were re-spatialised. organised around the European Capital of The analysis looks at the processes of urban Culture, which provided the right impulse for regeneration through an innovative anthropo- it. In this light, the way the shoreline of Tallinn logical perspective focused on trash talk and was framed, as ‘having potential’ and being concepts of potential and waste. The theoretical a playground for artists and cultural events, not scaffolding relies on previous studies about only increased the public visibility and symbolic how symbolic waste-making is correlated with value of the area, but also created the very cultural and economic devaluation (Douglas conditions that situated its users in a precarious 1966; Gordillo 2014; Glucksberg 2014; McKee position, allowing real estate developers to 2015; Furniss 2017). The ensuing trash talk is exploit the synergies created with ease and here understood as a mechanism generating profit from the revaluated plots. systems of speculation and dispossession that We could define this mode of intervention are rendered invisible through a naturalisation as politics of potentiality, referring to how of the place as waste, establishing a false naming and framing something in terms of equivalence between the kinds of things potential has political effects in the world disposed of. As pointed out by Luna Glucksberg (Montoya 2013). The case study also draws (2014), symbolic devaluations of specific areas attention to how discourses of potential might are often precursors of the demolition and depict changes as natural and unavoidable, as removal that characterise regeneration processes. something that with or without intervention Emily McKee (2015) also foregrounds that has its future built into it (Taussig et al. 2013). suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 3 autumn 2017 5 Francisco Martínez Fig. 1: Studied area marked in red. Tallinn City Map. Creative Commons. Evaluations of dirty, trashy, and disordered that capitalism generates the same abstraction spaces carry social and political weight, having in space yet for commodification, reducing the implications for inequality, inclusion, and existing consistency of places to homogeneous exclusion (McKee 2015). Further, this case shows abstractions to be sold and bought. how city symbols and abstracting processes are not apolitical or merely reducible to concerns THE CENTRAL-NORTH with taste and the branding of neighbourhoods; SHORELINE OF TALLINN they articulate the lines between what is visible and what is not, establishing a particular The waterfront of Tallinn is long (46 km) and distribution of functions in relation to them diverse, nowadays showing mixed land uses (Zukin 2005; Rancière 2006). after centuries of industrial and military occu- Concepts and symbols are not simply the pation. I focus on the central-north shoreline, outcome of historical or physical conditions; where many of the uses have had a temporary they can also be discursively constructed, character until recently. Various projects to becoming the framework for social practices and develop the area are already in construction or articulating the cultural and material dimensions on the municipal table, from the new adminis- of urban transformation. In her study of how trative building of the city council to the res- urban ‘renewal’ links the production of space idential project for Kalarand and Kalasadama2 with the construction of symbols, sociologist and the announced privatisation of the Kanala Sharon Zukin (2005) foregrounds that these municipal plot.3 Noteworthy buildings in the practices tend to mask a commercialisation of area include: the Maritime Museum; the Pata- culture and the privatisation of public space. We rei prison complex; the former military shipyard can also refer to Henri Lefebvre’s reflections factories of Noblessner; the Linnahall concert (1991 [1974]) on the societal production of the hall and energy complex nowadays occupied by space as a dialectical interaction of practices, a Cultural Incubator (KultuuriKatel); the Esto- representations, and symbolisations, arguing nian Museum of Contemporary Art (EKKM); suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 3 autumn 2017 6 Francisco Martínez the gallery of the Installation, Photography, and public domain in Tallinn. In fact, the Sculpture Department of the Estonian Acad- uncanny but public character of the area emy of Arts (ISFAG); and the Kanala recrea- could be the key to future development. tional space. The strength of this area is its marginality, The central-north shoreline can be its mystery and the accessibility for social considered a strategic area of Tallinn, affecting minorities; maybe even a kind of threat, a both urban development and how the public touch of discomfort, precisely what caused realm of the Estonian capital is constructed the quality of suspense in Tarkovsky’s overall. Historically, the energy complex Zone. This authenticity of the location is (presently the KultuuriKatel) has also had likely to be killed by too rigid commercial a relevant impact on the modern development developments—as it is