They Come After Us
2016/2026
I filmed this video in 2016, documenting the beginning of the demolition of the finishing factory, one of the buildings of the Kreenholm textile mill, where both my parents had worked. Only ten years later, I returned to the footage and edited it for Borås Art Biennial.
Since the closure of the Kreenholm textile mill in 2009, many of its Soviet-era buildings have been demolished, deemed to have insufficient historical value to warrant preservation. Their disappearance marks not only the end of an industrial era in my hometown, but also the loss of a particular social and working environment, along with the histories embedded in its architecture.
When I revisited the footage a decade later, it spoke to me beyond the specific history of Narva. The demolition became a lens through which to consider the technological, ecological and social crises shaping our present, and the consequences of how we value progress, labour, heritage and the environments we inhabit.