What remains in a city when its inhabitants, landscape, purpose, or even the place itself changes? Can a solar eclipse cause a fire while at the same time bringing nature back to life? Can the loss of ancestral islands become a form of ‘productive’ mourning? Noise Portals is an attempt to bring together two very different ports – Klaipėda in Lithuania and Kotka in Finland – which emerge as changing spaces where noise alternates with the silence of loss. These dissimilar yet kindred Baltic Sea ports are connected not only by their geographical location, but also by a complex geography of memory. On Kotka’s horizon remain traces of the lost islands of the Gulf of Finland, while in Klaipėda there is a rupture in the continuity of its population and urban history. These losses remain present today in the landscape, buildings, and memories.

The philosopher Andreas Huyssen argues that ‘cities and buildings can be read as spatial palimpsests, in which time becomes visible through what has…