The Finnish city of Turku shut down its tram network in 1972. However, after five decades since their closure, trams keep haunting the city with their absent presence. They circulate in the city as archival photos reproduced on postcards and souvenirs and as computer-modulated visualisations of new trams whose implementation has been considered and debated in Turku for already twenty years. Therefore, Turku trams are hauntological objects which traverse the past, the present and the future, investing the city with its phantom atmospheres. I investigate this claim through artistic methods of participatory installations, sketching walks, and walking performances. These methods allow for accounting discursive, representational, and embodied layers of the cityscape haunted by the phantom of missing trams. They also offer a means to sense the ghostly presence of Turku trams and make them appear in and through artistic works.

Aleksandra Ianchenko
Tallinn University, Åbo Akademi University

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ID Abstract: 492