Kaliningrad, Border Theories, 2009-2013, Elian Somers
Ine Lamers and Elian Somers share a fascination for utopian worldviews. Independently, they investigate what becomes and remains of such utopias—socially, politically, and in the built environment. From their shared background in photography, they develop cinematic installations in which layered stories can unfold, full of paradoxes and friction. For years, both artists have been in conversation behind the scenes; they recently initiated a joint exhibition. Anke Bangma talks to them about dreamed worlds, the ideal city, and the legacies of the Cold War.
Anke Bangma: A recurring motif that you share is that of the ideal city. Can you start by telling us how you approach that idea of the ideal city?
Elian Somers: I have, since 2006, investigated the idea of the ideal city in various projects: in 'Dream if there ever was one' I looked at the modernist city, and in 'Border Theories' at the socialist city. My current research began in 2015 during a residency at Air Berlin Alexanderplatz. From Berlin as a so-called frontline city of the Cold War, I went in search of blueprints for an ideal city and their function as cultural propaganda in a geopolitical struggle. The reason was the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the establishment of the Eurasian Union in 2015 and an article I read shortly afterwards in the Volkskrant about Project Putin. This includes a whole series of fake publications, which were supposedly written by renowned Western authors.
Ine Lamers: I find the use of literature so typically Russian, that happened in the time of the communist leaders and especially Stalin. Journalist Frank Westerman has aptly described in 'Engineers of the soul' how literature was used as propaganda and praise for megalomaniac Soviet projects.
ES: These recent books have titles such as 'How the West Lost to Putin', supposedly written by Edward Lucas of The Economist, and 'Nobody Except Putin', supposedly written by The Guardian journalist Lucas Harding. The article in the Volkskrant analyzed how cultural production is used here as a propaganda tool. That tied in with what I wanted to investigate in Berlin: the way in which East and West had already, during the Cold War, not only engaged in political and military conflict with each other, but also wanted to expand their spheres of influence in the intermediate area between East and West through architecture and urban planning. This research resulted in two works in 2022, 'Ecumenopolis' and 'Capital City'.
AB: What is 'Ecumenopolis' about?
ES: One of the players in the Cultural Cold War on the American side was Constantinos Doxiadis, an influential Greek architect and urban planner. In addition to major projects in places like Riyadh and Baghdad, Doxiadis developed the master plan for the new capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, in 1960. In parallel, he developed an urban planning theory, ekistics, which was to form the basis for a global city of the future, Ecumenopolis. He tried out his mission in the cities where he worked on assignment worldwide. At the same time, the American Ford Foundation saw ekistics as a useful instrument for the Cultural Cold War policy, to promote Western ideology. The Ford Foundation sponsored many of Doxiadis' projects.
I was fascinated not only by this idea of a global future city, but also by the network of people Doxiadis gathered around him. From 1963 until his death in 1975, he organized the Delos Symposia every summer, bringing together more than 250 architects and scientists, whom he called the Delians, on board a ship to think about the future together. According to Doxiadis, in order to be able to think about the urban future, you also had to have an idea of the urban culture of ancient Greece. That is why he wanted to bring everyone involved into contact with it. And so a visit to the island and the ancient Greek city of Delos was central to these symposia, where ceremonies were held and a joint manifesto, the Delos Declaration, was signed. When studying the lists of participants of the Delos Symposia, I recognized a number of names from the book 'The Cultural Cold War' by Frances Saunders. In this book, these people are linked to cultural propaganda and Cold War politics. And sometimes with agencies like the Ford Foundation, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the CIA. Among Doxiadis' Delians you found futurist architects like Buckminster Fuller, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, ecologists, and other scientists, but also people from the intelligence world with an explicitly political agenda. Doxiadis' network took on a different context for me. It was all very ambiguous, and so was Doxiadis' practice, actually.
AB: Can you tell us more about his urban planning theory?
ES: Doxiadis called his theory Ekistics' or 'the science of human settlements', a science for the built world. 'Ecumena' means 'inhabited world'. Within this theory, an urban system was studied from various disciplines that consisted of five ekistic elements: man, society, nature, construction and networks. This system was in turn built up from ever larger ekistic units—from man, to the living room, the house, the village, until you finally arrived at level fifteen, Ecumenopolis, the city for the entire world, which in one scenario would cover 20 billion people and in another scenario even 50 billion. He tried to bring all these different scale levels together in his theory.
IL: And connect them organically?
ES: Yes, with the intention of including all relevant dimensions: economic and social structures, but also the climate, because he was ahead of his time in this and was already thinking about air pollution and other climate issues that are now urgent. At the same time, he largely ignored the cultural and political dimensions of his plan, while they are frightening and impossible to fathom. If you want to make the whole world one city, but you live in the reality of the deeply divided world of the Cold War, what does that mean in practice? While studying his theories, the question quickly arose in my mind to what extent Doxiadis attempted to project the Western ideal image onto the entire planet. Was Ecumenopolis, in addition to a progressive plan for world improvement in the areas of climate, social inequality, etc., also a cultural instrument in Cold War politics? Incidentally, he himself never explicitly claimed that the Delians worked with him on Ecumenopolis—I made that connection.
IL: But he was the one who brought them together. Maybe there was more room for free thinking and gathering input by not explicitly giving them the task of designing Ecumenopolis?
AB: Ine, how do you approach the ideal city?
IL: I am actually increasingly realizing that my long-term research into the ideal city or utopia is a very personal project. When I first heard about a secret closed city in Siberia, built in the 50s as a socialist model city, it connected with a desire that was present as an undercurrent in all my projects up to that point. Since 2001 I have been traveling to Russia and Eastern Europe for photo and video projects. During long-term work stays I investigate the traces of socialism, in the built environment, the culture, the social structures, and in the minds of the people. I am driven by the idea that the Russian Revolution, and especially the part of it that the avant-garde artists also joined, must still resonate in the present. In the 20 years of research it became increasingly clear that socialist Russia is like an 'unborn society', as poet Dmitry Bykov says about the Russian Revolution. Only in the people did I occasionally find remnants of collectivity, and a melancholy about that lost togetherness. It is also striking how, in contact with Russian people, you become a participant in the idea that there is more to the world than things that are worth money, which is also called the spirituality of Russia or 'the Russian soul'. I actually want to stay away from that loaded term. But I dare to admit that I recognized something in it and that this brought about a feeling of 'coming home', in a similar way as I can also feel that 'coming home' in Russian literature and philosophy.
Looking back, I see that in my first projects I focused mainly on that melancholy and the poignant sense of loss. In my film 'Ustala' from 2009, which is set in the former model city of Tolyatti, for example, I portray how people are tired of waiting for the return of the utopia. And 'MOLDOVA' from 2004, a photo series about billboards in the capital of Moldova, Chisinau, shows that socialism has capitulated. The brightly lit billboards are the only sources of light in the dark city that has had to sell its electricity to a Spanish project developer. They colonize the city with flashy advertising messages, while everyone whispers. In later projects I also filmed and photographed dystopian scenes and worked a lot with local (amateur) actors, musicians and writers. But the moment I heard about that closed model city in the Siberian taiga, I was given renewed hope that perhaps there was, or was, something of the socialist ideal somewhere that had been protected.
Zheleznogorsk is one of the last 12 closed cities in Russia. The city was built in the 50s, during the Cold War. With the best architects, an extraordinary urban development plan was realized: an ideal socialist city with wide boulevards, an artificial lake in the center, many parks. The city provided the best schools, the best social plan and a leading role for art with free cinemas, theaters and a large cultural palace. It was a city of science and labor: it housed a scientific elite, recruited to do research on the latest technology, space experiments and satellite development. At that time, science fiction-like stories appeared about the fantastic technological possibilities that would be reality in this city. This utopia on the Yenisei River was intended as an ideological activator. For those who were allowed to live there, it held the promise of realizing the socialist ideal. At the same time, the city was closed off from the rest of Russia. You can only enter it with an access pass, even now. The official story is that the residents decided by referendum to keep their city closed. Unofficial sources speak of secret investigations, why this city will never be able to open. And that of course seems extra real in this day and age.
Because you can also look at this city differently. Zheleznogorsk was built around a secret military base, to strengthen the nuclear power of the Soviet empire. Three nuclear reactors for the production of plutonium were placed underground in the Ataman mountain massif, and formed a nuclear cave. The Yenisei provided cooling water. The city was a state secret. Besides Russia, during the Cold War, such closed 'atom cities' also existed in America where people were doing well. Kathryn Brown wrote the illustrious 'Plutopia' about these closed communities. One of the reasons why people moved to Zheleznogorsk with full conviction was to defend the Soviet Union against the atomic missiles that America had aimed at Russia. There are also stories that the city was built very quickly out of panic about this threat. That the city was built under horrific conditions, by prisoners from the gulags who also had to dig out the underground spaces, 300 meters deep from the granite.
Footnotes:
Kathryn L. Brown, 'Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Oxford University Press, 2013.
CA Doxiadis and JG Papaioannou, 'Ecumenopolis; The Inevitable City of the Future'. New York: Norton, 1974.
Francis Stonor Saunders, 'The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters'. New York: The New Press, 2013.
Frank Westerman, ‘Engineers of the Soul’. Amsterdam: Singel Publishers, 2014.
