The Atomic City: Power and Politics between the East and the West
Ongoing collaboration with researcher Dr. Maarit Laihonen
Artist Lauri Lähteenmäki (MFA, M.Sc.) and researcher Maarit Laihonen (D.Sc.Econ., M.Soc.Sci.) investigate the geo and social politics of an energy system, as they examine the decommissioned Ignalina nuclear powerplant (NPP) in Lithuania. Built in 1975, the NPP provided most of the electricity in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic with the RMBK type reactors infamous for the Chernobyl accident. The NPP draw workforce from all over the Soviet Union to the newly established town of Visaginas, which carried the name of the Communist Party’s First Secretary. However, the Soviet dream of harnessing the atom came down in 1991, when Lithuania regained its independence and later joined the European Union. Shutting down the hazardous Ignalina NPP was given a prerequisite for Lithuania’s membership. The Russian speaking community of Visaginas lost their techno-scientific ‘elite’ status, thus becoming an isolated community next to the Belarussian border.
Lähteenmäki's photography of the Ignalina NPP and Visaginas focus on traces of the processes that shape societal reality, which can be seen in the environment. Laihonen interpretes the images basing on research publications. In addition, archival materials are used to contextualize Lähteenmäki's observations of the place.
The series reflects not only on the societal processes embedded in energy systems, of which the Ignalina NPP provides a case, but also compares the differences of artistic and scientific knowledge. What does photography, which relies on the visual, tell about the reality that constitutes of complex social processes? What are scientific discourses unable to express of the processes they analyze? Instead of differences, we actually emphasize complementarity: The Ignalina NPP case demonstrates how social and political are also material, of which artistic analysis can concretize. At its best, the series offers ingredients for human perspective examination of the politics that materialize in the border zones of the East and the West.
Decomissioned Ignalina Nuclear Powerplant
Abandoned powerlines
Now defunct central heating powerlines from Ignalina NPP to Visaginas
Bus stop
Welcome to Visaginas
Raben – Lithuania – Europe
New school building and a soviet block house in the background.
Lake Visaginas
Exhibition: Claws and Connections – All the World’s Senses, Kuva/Tila, Helsinki, 26.1–25.2.2024
The project was exhibitited in the first artistic research themed exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. My photographs were accompanied with text fragments written by Maarit Laihonen and historical, technical and geographic archival materials about the Ignalina NPP case.
Table no. 1 with archival materials and texts from Maarit Laihonen
Table no. 2 with archival materials and texts from Maarit Laihonen
Links
Maarit Laihonen, University of Eastern Finland