Still from animated movie "Frank and Wendy" (Eesti Joonisfilm, 2005)
The follow-up grant’s research project builds upon the themes of the PRG team grant „Patterns of Development in Estonian Culture of the Transition Period (1986–1998)“ (2020–2024, PI Virve Sarapik), focusing on the contentious process of (re)integration with the West in the 1990s and 2000s. The project aims to trace the circumstances and specific expressions of this process in arts and visual culture, paying specific attention to two narrow and less-researched categories: comics, which acquired unprecedented national popularity during Estonia’s transition period, and (auteur) animation, which elevated its reputation by gaining international renown and became a prestigious cultural export. The project will investigate multiple layers of the reintegration process: analyzing the artistic reflections of era-specific tensions stemming from having to adjust to a post-Soviet, Eastern European identity; positing reintegration as an influence on the era’s formal and stylistic transformations, as well as observing cultural production’s adaptation to the realities of a market-based economy.
Principal investigator: Mari Laaniste
Duration: 2025-2026
Project type: EKA Personal Research Grant
Financed by EKA