Pulp to pulp [1925-ongoing]
70 paper book covers & slips printed in Estonia, Sweden & Canada sitting atop an acyrlic book stand borrowed from Estonian House, video ‘Leap’, 2:32minHighly Commended, Kudos Emerging Artist + Designer Award 2022
Salvaged across a period of two years, this levelled library presents a fraction of a collection once housed in Sydney Estonian House’s Reading Room and former office of Meie Kodu “Our Home”, our locally printed Estonian-Australian newspaper which ended in 2019. Collected for over 100 years by the former volunteers at the Estonian Society and printed as early as 1878, these texts were designated for rejection, sale and eventual disposal by the Archives throughout arduous community working bees (talgud) between 2020-22 to assist in the relocation of the archive downstairs.
Predominantly published by the Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv publishing house operating in Lund, Sweden from 1950 to 1994, this Cooperative operated as the largest Estonian refugee publishing house (alongside Eesti Kirjastus Orto) which operated as a joint venture of diasporic Estonian writers who fled to Sweden during the Great Escape of 1944.
Arriving in Australia since the 1920s, these books helped popularise and maintain a connection to Estonian culture abroad through an evolving shared language, a sense of nationhood that escaped Soviet occupation and connected individuals across continents to a network of diasporic writers and readers. The texts are interspersed with reprints of English and other ‘Western’ writers from the canon, whose works at the time embodied aspirational goals and nationalistic values aligned with the then recently independent Estonia.
Now redundant, these hollow cases and covers now take the role as a pictoral library following their disembowelment. As a graphic designer and typographer, these slips are more evocative than the texts inside could ever be. Stories left untranslated, truncated, history flattened, texts condensed, language proficiency faltering, the covers are all we can judge these books by now. You can view the scanned sleeves of these books here.
A bittersweet hollowing of the archive continues as they work towards building a library consisting of texts relevant and relating to Estonians in Australia. What does it mean to take part in this destruction as a young community member. How important is the object when nobody reads it. How am I supposed to respond when people turn their frustration towards myself as a willing participant? And how can we dispose of history ethically and most of all sustainably.
I hope to continue this project, salvaging what can be, and use the remaining internal paper as pulp for future projects in effort to reduce unecessary waste. I have also started deaccessioning some of the covers since deinstalling the work at Kudos Gallery, as part of my own effort to democratise the collection process and pass on knowledge to others who promise to care for the covers.
