Spaces of Trade in Tallinn: Uncertainty and Everyday Life
Abstract:
The everyday survival of the other at
the border between ‘East’ and ‘West’
is the object of this study. The country
in-between, Estonia, is a ‘melting
pot’ of Russian, Western and Nordic
influence, what makes this zone an
active, diverse, nevertheless invisible
in the global awareness.
The process of transition and rapid
neoliberalization, which is characteristic
for the post-socialist country
such as Estonia, brings together
number of side-effects, lots of
redundant people, who could not
adapt to the new regime, who speculate
and trade.
The investigation of ‘Russian’
semi-official spaces of trade in Estonian
capital, Tallinn, reveals the
values and defects of the open-air markets.
The thesis highlights
the need to politicize the processes
around the disappearing and/or
transforming the open-air markets
in the city. In spite of the fact, that
the informal trading is often connected
with poverty, illegality, low
hygiene, distrust and crime, this
work explores the alternative ways
of trading, the power of immediacy
and aesthetics in confrontation to
the global capital.
The architecture as the transversal
practice cuts across the patterns
of trading based on irresponsible
consumerism and desire, and experiments
with the original concept
of the market with the dialogue in
front. The speculative interventions
are the sites of the common life,
production and renewal.
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