Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the changes and continuities in the environmentalism of the post-socialist transformation period through the prism of Estonian art and visual culture.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the changes and continuities in the environmentalism of the post-socialist transformation period through the prism of Estonian art and visual culture. In the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, both the Eastern European art scene and environmentalism witnessed dynamic or even dramatic changes. Nevertheless, I would argue that next to ruptures, also forgotten continuities with the late Socialist period deserve attention. While it has been often argued that in Eastern Europe, including Estonia environmentalism lost its social relevance and resonance, the local environmentalists themselves often recall the 1990s as a particularly dynamic period. The environmentalism of this decade may not have the appeal of the 1980s perestroika-period mass movements, but it experienced major institutional reorganizations and new conservation initiatives in pair with relatively greater freedom from bureaucracy, as well as the changes in the very environment itself due to the closure of several industries and the introduction of new norms and technologies. Art practitioners tend to remember the 1990s with a similar nostalgia for creativity, freedom, and new opportunities despite the challenges of neoliberal capitalism. What these (hi)stories often tend to lack still is the acknowledgment of earlier local environmental practices and experiences in the face of the Western authorities of environmentalism and eco-themed art. Thus, examining the handling of environmental issues in the Estonian artworks, exhibitions, and other events of the 1990s and early 2000s, I also seek to investigate the forgotten connections with late Soviet art and environmentalism.