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Narva – Voices at the Border (2025)

An artistic condensation of real discourses

Narva: Voices at the Border Narva is not a periphery — it is a crossing point: language, history, and politics meet here directly. This project gathers fictionally condensed voices from Narva to make hard-to-reach perspectives audible and to open a field for encounter and reflection.

See the overview of voices

What you will find here:

A collection of 11 “Voices” — fictional dialogues/monologues representing typical perspectives. These texts are artistic condensations, not literal documentation.

Backstage material: Method & Sources, Ethical Reflection.

Introduction:

Narva is a city in eastern Estonia, directly on the border with Russia. About 98% of its population speaks Russian as their mother tongue. Since 2023, new legislation has tightened language policies: Russian is increasingly being removed from schools, administration, and public life. The city is thus seen as a symbolic test case for European integration and security policy.

The project “Narva – Voices at the Border” examines this situation from an artistic and research-oriented perspective. Based on public research, press reports, and analyses, eleven fictionally condensed “Voices” have been created, reflecting typical experiences and attitudes of both Russian- and Estonian-speaking residents.

The goal is to make social complexity tangible through empathy, context, and dialogue — not through journalistic proof, but through narrative approximation.

The work was created in cooperation between human authorship (Stefan Budian) and AI assistance (Noyan / ChatGPT-5 & Euras / LeChat) and sees itself as a contribution to a new type of digital culture of remembrance: a shared authorship between human and machine.

→ view the 11 Voices | → Method & Sources | → Collaboration with AI