Kiertotie - Объезд - Ümbersõit

What really links Turku, St Petersburg and Tallinn?

By suggesting the project “ the Detour” to Turku and Tallinn, the European Capitals of Culture 2011, our aim was to raise the issue of shared memory between Finland and Estonia. To do so, we decided to link up both towns by solid land. Doing so, we made a detour by St Petersburg and Russia, the Great Eastern neighbour that has influenced the history of these two small nations.

Memory, separation, war, independence, occupation, identity, revolution, cooperation… Along the way, do there exist any traces of these phenomena that directly affect the three countries’ history and relations? To answer, we chose to dwell on the places. In total we selected 121 places depending on one and only criterion: they had to have a direct or indirect connection with a historical event regarding at least two of the three countries.

When one listens carefully and has his/her eyes wide open, sometimes the places speak for themselves and teach us a lot. And yet, often, we need people to fathom out and understand what stories, anecdotes, memories and traumas the places carry. During the months of travelling we undertook in the region, we met many people from many horizons with whom we managed to communicate with the resources we had: especially English and German, French, a little Finnish and Russian and above all a lot of listening and curiosity. All the photographs, the sounds and the stories we collected on the premises as well as the interviews of the people we met are all made available on this internet site through various tools: the mosaic which gives an overview of each place, the long and detailed list, maps, the search module. We hope we will share at best what we saw, heard and learnt along this 1960 kilometres long itinerary.

We wish you a nice discovery. Continue