Gabrielė Dužinskytė together with mentor Paula Veidenbauma in the project Economies of Wasteland delves into ghosts of efficiency, or what happens after the landscape. Her gaze is directed towards the Baltic Sea and its islands – especially man-made ones – and the extractive, sometimes absurd processes that lie behind their emergence. During her residency at the Experiments’ Platform in Helsinki, Gabrielė explored the Kruunuvuorenranta project (literally translated as the royal hillside) being developed on the island of Laajasalo – a newly built massive residential area, for the construction of which the island’s territory is being artificially expanded. This project is being developed on the former industrial territory of the oil terminal but it also expands into the natural territory of the island – part of the forest which has long been a recreational oasis for local residents is being cut down. This process has been intensely opposed by local activists for a long time, but without any clear results.

Gabrielė Dužinskytė’s experiment in Helsinki, Laajasalo „Economies of Wasteland“. Pictures by Ikko Alaska

During the Helsinki residency, using a role-play format game, Gabrielė invited the Experiments Platform team to step directly into the construction site of the Kruunuvuorenranta project being developed in Laajasalo and discuss the ghosts of the place. What are the values ​​of this territory? What actors are involved in this process? Who creates the reason for the miscommunication? Each participant embodied a different character – a bird, a local resident, an activist, an oil company employee, a developer, a fisherman. Pairs of these characters set off to wander the boundless construction site, among soil, sand, gravel hills, piles of blasted rocks and working machines. Having detected the spirit of conflict at play, the characters marked the chosen territory and left a building permit document there. This experiment involved reflections on the inertia of large scale construction projects, the course of miscommunications that arise in the process, responsibility and agency of the architect, the indifference of residents, and raised the question – how to find a point of dialogue between residents, developers, activists, builders, and non-human beings?

Gabrielė Dužinskytė’s experiment in Helsinki, Laajasalo „Economies of Wasteland“. Pictures by Ikko Alaska