Empowering Spaces

An “emptiness” videos for the international policy-oriented programme

“What have deindustrialisation, turbo-capitalism and economic recession done to the Baltics? Together with local urbanists, we set to ACT against detrimental consequences.”

  • Client: Goethe Institute Tallinn
  • Duration: 2015
  • Outcome: 4 videos 
  • My role: researcher, cinematographer and editor
  • Key words: empty space, temporary use, urban development

Empowering Spaces

According to the United Nations, less than a million people will live in Estonia by the end of this century. The population is decreasing even faster in Latvia and Lithuania. This development leads to the emptying of many different buildings and sites.

The project “Empowering Spaces” focuses on finding alternatives to the city’s current urban policy. In the series of workshops and public events, the legal frameworks in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are analyzed and models of temporary use are developed.


Empowering Spaces – Tallinn Stories

The four audiovisual portraits reveal the obscure life of empty spaces in Tallinn, and address the questions of their current existence and imminent future.

Abandoned, unused and exploited ones unleash the threads of memory and provoke our imagination. Who has the right to turn fantasies into reality? 

  • Concept and camera: Pavel Borecký
  • Sound design: Kevin Molloy
  • Color grading: Jevgeni Bõstrov and Aleksei Kulikov
  • Co-production: Vita Pictura

Sitsi Factory: A Canvas (3 min.)

Who are the stakeholders responsible for the initiation of temporal use?

  • Music: Hole in Raasiku – Alex Purdy (Boddicker) 

Helios Cinema: The Awakening (3 min.)

How could the former identity of place be adapted in the creation of a new function?

  • Credits: Kerstin Karu, Alex Purdy, Britt Urbla Keller and NUKU Theatre

Kopli Lines: A Gap (2 min.)

In what way can we stop further segregation and deprivation of the low-income population?

Transformation (2 min.)

How do temporal solutions influence the quality of the city in the long term?

    Behind-the-scenes photographs