This chapter examines the ecological memory of Soviet modernity through the case of oil shale mining in Eastern Estonia. It advances a method for studying extractive afterlives by reversing extraction itself.

I practiced deposit as a counter gesture, placing archival materials from a local school into toxic sites in Eastern Estonia so that humidity, pollutants, and microbial life inscribe them into a damp archive. These altered objects—stained, swollen, and retextured—function as ethnographic matter that makes infrastructural harm perceptible.

The protocol, undertaken at the former uranium plant grounds in Sillamäe (21 days, burial) and the blue lagoon at the Auvere power plant (24 hours, immersion), treats matter as an analyst and exemplifies a disobedient epistemology that resists human mastery in favor of collaboration with the territory.

The resulting installation reframes the ecological memory of Soviet modernity as an ongoing afterlife that shapes sociality, governance, and energy imaginaries today.

Keywords: Expanded ethnography; Soviet Modernity; Experimental collaborations; Art & anthropology; Ecological memory.