Usually, this triennial takes place in Lithuania, as it has since its foundation in the year 1979. But now, due to the celebration of the centennial of the restored three Baltic states, Kestutis Kuizinas, the leader of the Contemporary Art Centre, decided to suggest that they work collaboratively. Thematically, the 13th Baltic Triennial’s three-part format also shaped the way it was realized.
By
Charlotte Bydler
March 7, 2019
This paper traces the emergence of various digital technology-driven policy ideas in Estonia during the last two decades. The article is specifically concerned with the idea of e-Estonia, a signifier that is widely used as shorthand to denote Estonia’s success in developing digital solutions in government, public management, business, education, etc. The paper analyzes the idea of e-Estonia to disclose, contextualize, and critically explain the particular discursive practices that constitute the e-Estonia discourse. It offers a discourse-theoretical reading of e-Estonia in terms of different types of discursive ‘logics’. Finally, the paper argues for the importance of recognizing what is at stake in the act of naming e-Estonia.
By
Rene Mäe
June 19, 2017
The article discusses the writing of architectural history in Soviet Estonia in the late socialist period as a particular form of historiographic practice in which the contact between “history” and “reality” is pursued through avant-gardist practices of merging art and life. The case is built on the “historical depictions” or the short texts on the history of Estonian modern architecture written by Leonhard Lapin.
By
Epp Lankots
January 30, 2017
Kersti Kaljulaid is the youngest (aged 46) and the first female president of the Estonian republic. According to an opinion poll that the Baltic News Service (BNS) agency conducted throughout the first half of October, the new President enjoyed an approval rate of 73% among the respondents. However, there were also these voices which hinted at the new president’s alleged lack of experience.
By
Vassilis Petsinis
October 24, 2016
This article examines the construction of Narva and local spatial identity formation from the perspective of Russian-speaking Estonians in Narva, as elucidated in their own discourses and perceptions.
By
David J. Trimbach
June 23, 2016
This article explores how several key museums discuss the Holocaust in the wider context of Estonian history, including Estonia’s traumatic past under Soviet occupation. It is argued that the Estonian narrative of victimhood still dominates collective memory as displayed in museums, and Jewish suffering in the Holocaust takes a much less prominent place despite an increase in Holocaust awareness among the Estonian political elite since the country’s “return to the West”.
By
Paul Oliver Stocker
June 16, 2016
The evolution of political contacts between exile activists in Sweden and the occupied homeland sheds light on the largely underresearched phenomenon of anticommunist cooperation between capitalist and communist societies and challenges the narrative of the impermeability of the “Iron Curtain” between the Soviet Union and the West.
By
Lars Fredrik Stöcker
May 13, 2015
The Estonian electorate rewarded the incumbents granting the Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas' Estonian Reform Party approximately the same amount of support as in the latest election 2011. The foreign affairs certainly played a role in the electoral campaign, but we should not forget about the government’s economic record.
By
Péteris Timofejevs Henriksson
March 9, 2015
Like many other modern states, both the Soviet Union, with its authoritian socialism, and Sweden, with its social democracy, strived to shape their citizens' lives for the better. Both states considered it their duty actively to plan, organize and control housing.
By
Jenny Björkman & Johan Eellend
October 20, 2014
In 2004, eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and two Mediterranean countries entered the European Union (EU). Hailed by some as the “New Europe”, the CEECs seemed to have finally affirmed their European identity. Ten years later, one is naturally tempted to examine whether the CEECs’ EU membership has indeed made them more “European”.
By
Péteris Timofejevs Henriksson
June 17, 2014