“The project is interwoven with European standard planning, technology, visual sophistication and craftsmanship. The manuscript of classic and relaxed forms fits perfectly into the urban environment, yet it diminishes the sense of intrigue. (..) Hidden within the project concept is an intrigue that can perhaps be explained by the project authors’ search for new village-environment values. The developers’ ambition to create the project as a cohesive and stylistically balanced building complex is commendable. (..) The architects have very successfully and organically combined the surrounding early 20th-century architecture with a differentiated contemporary architectural language, demonstrating clear virtuosity in the planning of the developing territory and spaces.”

Ilvars Metnieks, Head of the Real Estate Developers Association, “Diena”, 28 March 2007.

“To be a source of expertise in the real estate development market, leading society into a qualitatively new phase of spatial environment development.”

Goals and objectives of the Real Estate Developers Association

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share,” says Princeton University professor emeritus Harry Frankfurt in the introduction to his popular philosophical pamphlet “On Bullshit”, published in 2005. This essay, in the author's own words, attempts to lay the foundations for the study of the theory of bullshit. I read it and liked it very much. It would be cool to translate it and send it to Latvian public relations agencies, copywriters, cultural critics, heads of real estate developer associations, and others whose texts are often filled with both anger and a sense of guilt. The kind of guilt that takes over when an accuser rises within you, but nothing comes out – because you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. It is impossible to accuse what they say of either lies or empty talk: if you cannot prove in court that it is a lie, keep quiet; and if you don’t understand, then you are likely a fool. What do you understand about real estate, you who have not been christened a “source of expertise”. That is why I like how Frankfurt puts it – it all has a name, and that name is bullshit. How to translate bullshit – the word is too sharp and stylish to be translated as nonsense or prattle. One could say rubbish, but in Latvian slang, rubbish is applied too broadly to any nonsense. One could talk about pouring lead or water, but these words again sound very sterile. Then I remembered tufta. Of course, it is not strictly Latvian, but I like it. And it also aligns with the first thing I thought after reading the text quoted above – in my neighbourhood, they’d punch you in the mouth for that. The Russian philologist and researcher of prison jargon, Alexander Sidorov, believes that tufta originated in the Gulag labour camps in the mid-1920s. It happened by replacing one vowel in the word “taft”, which means “a thin, dense, dull-shining artificial silk or cotton fabric” – as it became tufta, a term for any synthetic material fabric, and soon after – anything fake used in place of something real. The only thing of which there was no shortage in the daily life of the labour camps and the whole system at that time. In prison slang, tufta really took hold during the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal in 1931–1933, where for the first time, with such shamelessness and in front of everyone’s eyes, eloquent reports were produced with the aim of concealing the true state of affairs. It turns out that the 227-kilometre-long canal, which was planned to have 19 locks, 15 large dams, 51 small embankments, 12 rapids and other hydro-technical structures (real estate projects), was impossible to finish within the given two years under the provided material and technical conditions. Consequently, the Chekists who supervised the work ordered the canal to be dug much shallower than designed. Its depth in the end was about five metres – much too shallow for large ships, and until 1976 the canal was not used in full for navigation, that is, for the purpose for which the prisoners were tormented and worked. From this place then came the once-popular Soviet proverb – “Russia stands on three pillars, their names are blat, mat and tufta”. Pushing tufta – eloquent speaking for the purpose of pulling the wool over people’s eyes – had become part of the system. Frankfurt says that tufta is by no means a lie; its intention is not to conceal the truth. The essence of tufta is characterised by an indifference to the truth, and thus the categories of “truth” and “lies” no longer have meaning. The sole purpose of tufta is to reveal something about the speaker themselves, for example, the fact that they are a “source of expertise”. A person who pushes tufta is freer than a liar, because they are not constrained by the truth. Tufta is a ticket to true freedom, freedom from responsibility before the truth. The pusher of tufta is an artist, because tufta is neither analytical nor calculated like a lie, but is rather aesthetically refined and leaves ample room for improvisation and plays of imagination. In both truth and lies, a person is led by their belief in the true state of affairs. When an honest man speaks, he says what he believes to be true; a liar says what he believes to be not true. A liar hides the fact that he is trying to lead us away from the true state of affairs. The pusher of tufta hides the fact that neither the true state of affairs nor the truthfulness of his statements is important to him. If truth and lies play on opposite sides of the field, tufta runs onto the field like a striker, showing off and ignoring the rules of the game. Consequently, “tufta is a greater enemy of the truth than lies,” says Frankfurt. Frankfurt would have tarnished his academic honour if, at the end of the book, there hadn’t been a disclaimer that a human by nature is incapable of complete honesty even before themselves, so that in a certain sense, everything that can be said is merely tufta. I do not agree with that, because I think everyone should at least try to talk about what is essential. I have nothing directly against real estate; I actually like it. Although everyone who knows what is currently happening in the new project market also knows that all marketing efforts are devoted to selling imaginary, not real, houses. Most of the houses they sell us are only planned, and it is hard to believe that they will really be built. Therefore, there is a clear necessity to first build them with one's mouth. That is all normal. It is just that there is some paranoia lately; it seems to me that I am being forcefully torn away from the essential, first and foremost by cleansing the language of its presence. I am afraid that, wrapped in tufta, I might miss something important, that I might be taken somewhere against my will, or that I am already being taken, trailing a thin, dense, dull-shining artificial silk or cotton fabric train behind me, being led into a qualitatively new phase of spatial environment development.
Article first published in the May 2007 issue of Rīgas Laiks magazine.