along the wall, down the stairs, outside, 2023
Text written for ‘along the wall, down the stairs, outside’, an exhibition by Anu Vahtra at Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn (May 2023)
Leaflet designed by Elisabeth Klement
along the wall, down the stairs, outside, 2023
Text written for ‘along the wall, down the stairs, outside’, an exhibition by Anu Vahtra at Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn (May 2023)
Leaflet designed by Elisabeth Klement
along the wall, down the stairs, outside
Anu Vahtra is an artist who photographs cities. The works in this exhibition are both products of perceiving these cities and vantage points from which to view these cities.
These cities, here, are not so much geographical entities or even specific places. Rather, what they stand for here is some sort of an amalgamated city: a cityscape in the western world, which is formed from gathered situations, moments and reactions to what goes on in these cities, often under the influence of powers that are both meticulous and ridiculous and lead to processes such as standardization, gentrification, brusselization.
Then down the tunnel
to the on-ramp for the freeway. Geryon was bored and said he couldn’t see any
good spaces left,
got out his camera and went off towards the sound of traffic. Up on the overpass
the night was wide open
and blowing headlights like a sea. He stood against the wind and let it peel him
clean.1
A crane is in the process of unbuilding WTC 1 and WTC 2.
A mended window overlooks WTC 3.
A burrow of bricks and cement interrupts a marble façade,
the skeleton of a corner building both obscures and frames the neighborhood that lays behind it,
the leftovers of a crate do the same thing,
so do the gashes in the glass.
Soil is flung from the roots of trees, the billboard rolls from one message to the next.
We move parallel to a tower that’s appearing and disappearing.
A mechanical arm selects, then rips, elements from a house,
windows,
chunks of bricks.
A peephole to a square which is being redeveloped beyond recognition.
Life continues on the other side of the fence.
OXI ΜΕΤΡΟ
Once I went to South America to look at the edges of shadows. It was July. I was living in a small town near New York. The moon waning. Night after night unable to sleep because of the shadows, I got up, followed them along the wall, down the stairs, outside. They lay stretched across the lawn like a sound, blacker than any sound.2
The Brussels World Trade Center was first imagined during the 1970s as a 400 meter tower, modeled after the Manhattan World Trade Center. The ‘Manhattan Project’ (not to be confused with the 1940s research project which led to the development of the first atomic bomb) led to the displacement of 15000 inhabitants from the Northern Quarter of Brussels in order to redevelop it into a business district. Because of its vicinity to Brussels Airport, the 400 meter tower would obstruct the final approach for aircrafts landing there and the plan was ultimately rejected. Instead, four separate towers of 100 meters each were to be constructed, of which three were ultimately built. This indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighborhoods has since been dubbed ‘Brusselization’.
In the garden of the house on the corner of Cruquiuskade and Panamalaan in Amsterdam East, birds return each year to nest in the crown of a conifer tree. In early spring 2020, the crown was covered in a green gauze to avoid birds nesting, as Dutch law prohibits cutting down a tree while it is inhabited by nesting birds. After the trees, garden and house have been demolished, a 62 meter housing tower was built in its place. The tower, which markets itself as a trendy co-housing project, is named Fibonacci after the Fibonacci Sequence, a recurring pattern of numbers, also found in nature.
Exarchia is a neighborhood in Athens with a long history of leftwing activism. In 2022, its main square became surrounded by a corrugated steel and chain link fence. This fence, in turn, was guarded around the clock by an out of proportion police force. The fence and the police force block the public’s access to the square in order to safeguard the contested construction of a new metro station for the proposed expansion of the Athens Metro system.
OXI ΜΕΤΡΟ
(NO METRO)
When the commuters and the tourists leave this amalgamated city, people live there, together. They make do, solve problems creatively, disregard or bypass institutional power, fix shit up, have fun.
When Anu Vahtra repeatedly showed up around Exarchia Square in summer/fall 2022 in order to document the situation, she was questioned and then briefly detained by Athens police.
What are you doing here?”
– “I’m an artist, I photograph cities.”