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If we think of Machu Picchu, of the Acropolis, of La Alhambra, it seems like obvious that we are talking about heritage. However all these fantastic sites were neglected and abandoned for centuries, basically until the random moment when some romantic foreigners pointed out the value of these heritage-in-the-making. Indeed, it is this abandonment what concedes to them an affecting presence, since material decay talks back about other lives and different modes of being.

As any ruin, the Linnahall does not stand completed stories. This building recalls the past from multiple voices and trajectories. The material and immaterial features of the place are recollective, capable to bind multiple times and narratives. In an article for the Estonian exhibition of architecture in la Biennale di Venezia, Eero Epner argues that the Linnahall could have reflected a democratic character, since the complex was free of consumerism and too gigantic to be defined by a single discourse. We can add other reasons that support the idea of the Linnahall being ‘democratic’, such as the location and the shape (inviting people to stroll on the roof and visit the seaside) as well as the variety of events that occur there (milestones of the Estonian independence, music gigs, exhibitions, school visits, spontaneous picnics, punk gatherings, urban explorations… and even praying). All in all, the place encapsulates too many meanings and associations to be appropriated by any official discourse. Indeed, the Linnahall appears as a hetero-memento site or an anti-lieu de mémoire.

Past events always collide in the encounter with material decay, inversing each other like sediments dislocated by a quake. Events and symbols without any apparent relation slide then together, disclosing non-accomplished projects and bringing back unexpected stories. The visit to the Linnahall unlocks biographical, historical, social and physical remembrances all together. It is thus iconic.

Iconic buildings demonstrate an improper standing, like churches during the Soviet time. They are simultaneously an event and its own document, something that reminds and something to remember. This kind of buildings are valuable not only because of their architectural or physical dimension, but also because of their rich semantic charge, accumulated as strata through several generations and textures.

Almost from its inauguration, the Linnahall has not been what it was initially planned to be. The description of this building as ‘Soviet’ over-simplifies the own biography of the place. In the Linnahall we can also notice how obsolescence is not always preceded by a period of full usefulness. Ironically, that doesn't mean the end of the venue, but a starting process of acute contestation and a new availability.

The Linnahall over-passed the use life, becoming a heritage in the making, a Machu Picchu. It has gotten its own biography beyond totalitarian fantasies, functionality and ruination. Indeed, the current shape of the building enhances even more its iconicity, producing a large timescale experience. The encounter with the Linnahall has a threshold quality, enhancing perception, relating the experience with events temporally remote and triggering personal consciousness. It is a redeeming experience that cannot escape from the present but speak up about vanished worlds and untold stories. The Linnahall stands as an involuntary heritage. It lingers on as matter out of place, telling life not how it was, but how it has been forgotten.

 

 (The article was also published in Postimees, 21 May 2014)

Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist from Tallinn University. To know more about anthropology in Estonia please check the forthcoming and the