Re-enchanting the Field

Re‑enchanting the Field is a transdisciplinary research seminar developed by the School for Transformation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Bauhaus University Weimar, and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). Structured around a series of online lectures and a five‑day residency during the summer semester 2025, the seminar brought together faculty and students from acoustic ecology, design, transformation studies, and material practices to explore the post‑industrial landscape of oil‑shale extraction in north‑east Estonia.

Through field visits and collaborative research, participants engaged with mining residues and tailings as material witnesses of historical transformation, tracing their entanglements with socio‑ecological change.

The seminar was initiated by Monika Halkort (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Kärt Ojavee (Textile Studies, EKA), Myriel Milićević (FH Potsdam), Mindaugas Gapševičius, and Felix Bonowski (Bauhaus University Weimar). It was made possible through financial support from the Erasmus Blended Intensive Program (BIP).



The Queer Ecologies of Oil Shale Extraction
Research Brief



The north-east of Estonia is exceptionally rich in oil shale reserves, which were exploited by imperial powers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock, rich in kerogen, which can be converted into crude oil and gas. More than 100 years of colonial and capitalist extraction have left vast mountains of industrial ash as well as sludge and pollutants that collectively remake environments, long after mining and processing factories have shut down. The enduring legacy of this extractivist activity created its own queer ecologies of techno-natural relations, in which the received boundaries between waste, residue and resource are continuously renegotiated, reconfigured and redrawn.

During several field visits to oil shale mining sites, we explored the recurrent cycles of decomposition, death, and renewal that shape the ambivalent landscapes of oil shale production in Estonia, making their queer connections and affinities visible for critical inquiry and future research. “Queer” in this context does not necessarily describe something that already exists. Rather, queer inaugurates a particular kind of future intelligibility for beings and collectives not yet available for explication (Liu, 2023). The post-industrial landscapes of oil shale, in this sense, represent post-natural worlds, traversed by imperial and capitalist relations, whose specific mode of geo-chemical sociality we sought to understand.



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Toxicity denotes a specific genre of harm that describes the (re)ordering of living systems across timeframes and scales (Tironi and Liberoin, 2017: 336;). Following Murphy (2017:141-142) it creates shared conditions for what thrives and what is altered, what ‘persist[s] and redistributes[s] ‘ and ‘what is destroyed, injured, and constrained’ both as a premise for other things to thrive.

During the one-week residency in Estonia, we traced this reordering of life across the entire life cycle of oil shales - from extraction and processing sites to power plants, and on to open landfills and riverbeds, where toxic sludge, waste rock, and residue from oil shale combustion have been deposited or dumped.

Together with local field guides, we visited ash mountains, abandoned villages, and processing plants built during the Soviet Occupation (1941 – 1991), when oil shale production was at its historical height. Additional insights were provided by scientific researchers in biology, geology, and environmental history during preparatory online sessions.

The main aim of our fieldwork was to create a living index of liminal relations that sustain the shale oil ecosystem, and to map how they animate, de/recompose and transform social and natural landscapes, organisms and bodies at different speeds, durations and intensities. Drawing on acoustic sensing, environmental mapping, and elemental ethnography, we experimented with transdisciplinary approaches to reveal the less noticeable tensions, collaborations, and attunements emerging from the ‘non-consensual inhabitations’ (Masco, 2021) of objects, environments, organisms and bodies. We also explored how they facilitate and/or disrupt land-body relations against a backdrop of shifting geopolitical borders and energy regimes.

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The outcomes of our material probes and observations are documented on this website. They include short essays, visual maps, and material experiments developed through media such as sculpture, film, photography, poetry, letters, animation, and installation.

Working across disciplines, these works engage with biochemical processes and relations as critical infrastructures of geopolitical and ecological transformation, grounded in an understanding of socio‑ecological change as the reconfiguration of life and responsibility beyond the individual body (Murphy, 2017, p. 479), while remaining attentive to the enduring structures of violence and extraction that render land and bodies sacrifice zones.

The website brings these perspectives together, linking projects to the specific locations in which they emerged.



References:

Masco, Joseph (2021). The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bhg2sq

Murphy, Michelle, 2017 Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations. In: Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 4: 494–503. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.02.

Liboiron, M., Tironi, M., & Calvillo, N. (2018). Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world. Social Studies of Science, 48(3), 331–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312718783087

Liu, Petrus. 2025. “Queer: A Term from/of the Global South.” The Funambulist (50).

Sessions and Impulses by guests:


Linda Kaljundi, Prof of cultural history, EKA, Tallinn[1]
Cultural imaginaries of oil shale production in Soviet visual culture and the Arts.

Riho Mötlep, Institute for Geology and Earth Science, University of Tartu
Mapping Oil Shale Mining Landscapes: Topography and Environmental Impacts

Ain Kull, Geo-ecologist, University of Tartu (Field Visit)
Revitalising the Aidu Canals: Floating Islands in Post‑Quarry Waterways



Kadri Tali, Chair of Biodiversity and Nature, Tourism, Estonian University of Life Sciences (Field Visit)
Exploring Kukruse Mountain: A Field Visit to an Oil Shale Waste Dump

EESTI Energie/ENEFIT (Field Visit)
Auvere Ash Mountains in Transition: From Oil Shale Waste to Wind Energy Landscapes
Maros Krivy, Department of Architecture, EKA
Politicising Minerals: Environmental Discourse in Estonia’s Transition from Soviet Occupation to Post‑Soviet Statehood

Karina Vabson & Aleksei Ivano
Navigating Socio‑Political Transitions: Perspectives from Russian‑Speaking Communities in Estonia’s Mining Towns


Saraa Mildeberg, PhD researcher Cultural Studies, Tallinn University
Valorising Soviet Spatial Heritage: Ida‑Virumaa’s Post‑Industrial Landscapes as Dark Tourism Sites

SEMINAR TEXTS


Gavrilova, Olga & Vilu, Raivo & Vallner, Leo. (2010). A life cycle environmental impact assessment of oil shale produced and consumed in Estonia. Resources Conservation and Recycling - RESOUR CONSERV RECYCL. 55. 10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.09.013.
Kesküla, Eeva, 2018. Waste people/value producers: ambiguity, indeterminacy and post-socialist Russian-speaking miners. In Indeterminacy: Waste, Value and the Imagination.Alexander, Catherine; Sanchez. Andrew. London and New York: Berghahn.
Mildeberg, Saraa, 2024 A Post Industrial Adventure Land
Anna Tsing Living with Feral Ecologies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvEHQp7ry58
Krivy, Maros, 2016 From Mining to Data Mining In: Berzins et.al.(Eds), The Baltic Atlas. London: Sternberg Press, pp. 191 - 202
Marzecova, Agata, 2016 The Vernacular Geology of the Baltics XXV In: Berzins et.al.(Eds), The Baltic Atlas. London: Sternberg Pres, pp. 202-213
Printsmann, A.; Sepp, M.; Luud, A. 2012. The land of oil-shale: the image, protection,and future of mining landscape heritage. In: Häyrynen, S.; Turunen, R.; Nyman, J.(Ed.). Locality, Memory, Reconstruction: The Cultural Challenges and Possibilities of Former Single-industry Communities. (180−196). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Stengers, I. 2021. Receiving the Gift: Earthly Events, Chemical Invariants and Elemental Powers. In: Papadopoulos, D., de la Bellacasa, M.P & Myers, N Reactivating Elements (18-34).Croydon: Duke University Press
Murphy, Michelle, 2017 Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations. In: Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 4: 494–503. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.02.
Nova, N. & Disnovation.org (2023) Chapters ‘Anthropogenic Landscapes’ & ‘Recombinant Commons’ & ‘On Temporalities’ IN: Bestiary of the Anthropocene. Set Margins'




Project lead:
Monika Halkort, Ass. Prof Transformation Studies, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Kärt Ojavee, Prof. Textile Design, Estonian Academy of Arts
Myriel Milićević, Prof. Department of Design, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam
Mindaugas Gapševičius, Artistic Associate professorship Media Environments, Bauhaus University Weimar
Felix Bonowski, Artistic Associate professorship Media Environments, Bauhaus University Weimar

Thank you
Janne, Astrid, Alex, Kersrtin, Ursula
NART


Website
Jennifer Schnurr
Juliane Müller
Myriel Milicevic
Tilmann Finner (coding)