Paper short abstract:

Novel strategies of coping with loss created new forms of communities in northeastern Russia. Focusing on improvised designs that make creative use of available objects of a contiguous world, the paper explores the materiality and artefactual strategies of belonging in a remote post-socialist world.

Paper long abstract:

The coastal population of northeastern Russia (Chukotka) was subjected to a twofold loss in the twentieth century: the large-scale, state induced and enforced closures of many native villages, the subsequent, resettlement of the population to centralized villages, and the following collapse of the Soviet economy and infrastructure. Revitalization of traditional hunting technologies and the resettlement of formerly abandoned native villages is only one aspect of the current realities that gave rise to new forms of habitation in the ruins of a volatile past.

Yet, extraordinary resilience as well as novel strategies of coping with loss and industrial collapse created new forms of maritime communities, where the self-led reuse and rebuilding of previously abandoned village sites play a paramount role. The architecture of these new camps, characterized by the creative re-usage of artefacts and building materials from the formerly destroyed villages, represents a case in point for the widespread use of "proximal design", a phenomenon of creative, local adaptation of imported technologies in the constraining environment of the North. Marine debris, abandoned shipping containers, and salvaged materials thus find their way into the contemporary coastal architecture. Focusing on improvised designs that make creative use of available objects of a contiguous world, the paper explores the materiality and artefactual strategies of belonging in a remote post-socialist world.