Basement Whatever

…I came to know Kurvitz and Rostov, the creators of Disco Elysium. We were idealistic back then and wanted to live this romantic life, having an art collective and a political commune, etc. But in reality, some of us moved in together as flatmates and started a blog; it was like 2010 when blogs were huge. Because it was difficult to break into the institutions of Estonian cultural life, we created a space to share what we had to offer. And that’s where the name ZA/UM came from. It was what we called the blog, our collective, and all our shared ideas. We wrote about politics, but also published short stories, poems, artwork, etc. Even though the collective was Left-leaning ideologically, we didn’t limit it to Left-wing writers. That would have been impossible as there are so few of them in Estonia. To make up for this, we encouraged debate and discussion. We would have a writer representing one side of an issue publish their article, and then another who would argue against it. Sometimes there were 50 comments in a row.
— Read on platypus1917.org/2025/02/01/forward-looking-return-an-interview-with-disco-elysium-writer-helen-hindpere/