Cold War Coast: The Transnational Co-Production of Militarized Landscapes project
On July 28-29, 2020, Cold War Coast: The Transnational Co-Production of Militarized Landscapes project has held its first public event - Lahemaa Military Heritage Days in Lahemaa National Park, Estonia, right in the heart of the former Soviet border exclusion zone and the most emblematic of Estonia’s national parks.
The event was co-organised by the Environmental Board of the Republic of Estonia, NGO Hara port, citizen societies MTÜ Parim Paik Suurpeal, Juminda Poolsaare Selts and Eru Lahe Rannarahva Selts, as well as Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn University and ICOMOS Estonia.
During three days, more than a hundred participants walked in heavy rain through different installations of the Suurpea military complex as well as surrounding border guard installations. Local communities gathered on the second day to exhange and record their memories of life in the border zone and reknown Estonian artists reminisced about their careers as military artists in the Soviet army on the third day.
As a part of the Military Heritage Days, the Estonian Academy of Art conserved one of a handful of remaining Soviet military art works: a sailor's portrait in Hara port. For Cold War Coasts project and its Estonian partner KAJAK, this was an important occasion to get in contact with the local communities whose environment has been profoundly altered by the Cold War militarisation but, equally drastically, by the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will keep on collecting their stories of living in a national park together with the Soviet military until the next year.
KTH is represented in this collaboration by Kati Lindström.
Read more: coldwarcoasts.org
