Noise Environment: Jüri Okas's Reconstructions and Its Public Reception
Noise Environment: Jüri Okas's Reconstructions and Its Public Reception

Summary/Abstract: This article looks at Jüri Okas's works on the environment, particularly his series Reconstructions (1974–1978) and the exhibition of that series in Tallinn Art Hall in 1976. Okas's position is considered first by comparison with Leonhard Lapin's work on the urban environment. Next, I consider discussions concerning the signification of the city and show that instead of a fixed relationship between places and their meanings, Okas presents the viewer with unstable relationships, deconstructing the urban signifieds. I argue that the reception of Okas's images during the 1980s was influenced by their having been read formally, and find that the references of the images were incompatible with the prevailing forms and symbols which were at that time involved in efforts to construct a coherent national identity. I then interpret Okas's perception of the environment via notions of entropy and noise – concepts applied in information theory, popular throughout the decade. In contrast to the idea of escape, which is often thought to characterise the works of so-called 'unofficial' or 'non-conformist' artists, Okas's interest in the entropic or noisy environment presents a paradigmatic shift in which ambiguity and indeterminacy become understood as characteristic of a maximal state of information.

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