Elian Somers
Constructions of History
In the years preceding the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Elian Somers worked on the project 'Border Theories,' about three urban experiments in the outer border zones of the former Soviet Union. The project explored the Socialist (Stalinist) Utopia, but more than that, political attempts to write, rewrite, and manipulate history by means of architecture and urban planning.
One of the urban experiments was Kaliningrad, the former East Prussian city of Königsberg. In 1945, after the Soviet Union had already defined East Prussia as 'original Slavic soil,' the Soviet Union took over the city of Königsberg. Subsequently, the ruins of Königsberg were turned into the city of Kaliningrad, and plans were made for a new city of Russian history.
Today, with the Russian annexation of Ukraine, similar arguments and strategies on the restoring of historical rights are used to justify actions of occupation, resulting in comparable de- and reconstructions of history and identity in the cityscape.