Sculpting In Time e g in
r F . 24 n i g r a M . 5 2 1.End 2.Brin k 3.E 4.B dge an d
:Reorientations
e g r e V . 5 d n u 6.Bo
t kir .S h 16 .Pat 17 imit 18.L gion 19.Re 20.Division 21.B o u n 2 d 2 a r y 2 .Area 3 . R i m
r tie on n .Fr itio 10 rans T 11. ne 12.Zo 13.Begining 14 . C o n t o u 1 r 5 . O u tl i n e
7.Border 8.Defi nition 9.L ine
Border Definition: The point beyond which an action, state, or condition is likely to begin, or occur... Through the course Emerging artic landscape I have tried to focus my assignments on this the artic regions so-called border landscape. By using the term border landscape I am not only talking about national or international boundaries, but pointing out the different actors in the landscape, that occupies various and specific parts of this region – everything from the big mining, fishing, oil- and gas operations, to the smaller microcosm of an animal habitat. There are not just borders for political, economical systems, but phenomenological borders through culture and language, stretching thousands of years back in time. The civilizations have set their visible and invisible mark on the landscape, through domestication and artificial selection of the nature surrounding them. There were no border guards back then, no customs officials. The frontier was everywhere. They were bounded only by the earth, the ocean and the sky. In For Space, Dorren Massey argues that, “places do not have single identities but multiple ones, places are not frozen in time, they are processes, places are not enclosures with a clear inside and outside”. This reflection on space, as something constantly moving and changing, is for me the quintessential notion that space can only be tamed in a few moments in time. Perhaps we human beings have always been constructing, shaping and measuring our environment, to understand it and to make use of it. This could be through the territoriality of one clean waterpond or one good geographical point on a coastline for fishing. When the climate was congenial, when the food was plentiful, we were willing to stay put. Most of us have abandoned the nomadic life. We’ve domesticated the plants and animals. Why chase the food when you can make it come to you?
This sedentary life, with all its material advantages, has led us on the path to our present understanding of a segregated world: a world divided into nationalities, political systems, cultures, industry and military. What about the earth, the ocean and the sky – the only real boundaries on the planet - have we forgotten about them? Through our journey from Hammerfest to Murmansk, I got fascinated by the complexity and vulnerability of the landscape in this region; so many overlapping activities, interests, considerations and entangled systems. I have through my assignments Borderland and Overlapping activities, tried to focus on mapping the different actors in the landscape, their position and role in the system; which zones, limits, edges or patterns do they cover? How does space and time affect the borders in the landscape? And what are the limits of a border it self? From working in map to section, I have now made three posts physically (virtually) in the landscape – discussing the border structures and trying to give a physical experience of the subject.
Sculpting in Time: Three projects with a beginning and an end...
Hammerfest
Alta
Karasjok
Kautokeino
Vardø
Kirkenes
Murmansk
Natural Boundaries: “The Thief” In Hammerfest the polar nights lasts for 60 days a year. From November 20th till January 20th the sun will not rise above the horizon at all. On the day of its return, it is a tradition in Hammerfest to celebrate. Though the sun could have been back earlier, haven’t it been for the mountain called “the thief”. Its position makes it block the light for hours and days. And it gives the awaited return of the sun a dramatic character, when the first ray of sunshine slips above the mountaintop. To mark this very first sunrise, I have placed an observers corridor on the plateau above the city, marking the exact position where the sun will return every year on the 20th of January. The returning of the sun is not just a transformation of space, from dark to light, but it tells us something fundamental about the nature of space and how this space is entangle to one exact moment in time. Everything depend on everything else. “The one contains the many and the many contain the one”.
The First Sunrise
“The Thief”
Cultural Borders: Duality of Space The installation reflects the duality and the separation between the modern and traditional Sami culture – the Sami and the Norwegian identity; one body - two identities. This duality does not only affect the individuals living between and together with the two cultural identities, but it also marks the landscape surrounding them and the way the two cultures use and think about the landscape they live in‌ The installation is showing a shift in shape when you drive or walk around it. The inner part is changing from looking like a triangle (a symbol for the Sami culture) to a square (a symbol for the Norwegian modern culture) to a triangle again. Entirely when or where the one is ending and the other is beginning, is impossible to catch. The idea is to create a feeling, a connotation of a change or a link between something from the past and present, reflecting the landscape and the individual.
National Borders: Just an illusion? What changes when you cross a national border? The language, the social codes, the culture? The landscape? National borders are the results of thousands of years with war, power shifts and our need to define, give names and concur a geographical point. Norway borders in Finnmark to Sweden, Finland and Russia – yet the landscape shows no sign of change when you cross the border. It remains, as it was, unaffected of its new name. Through my third post I am trying to illustrate this very fact. The poles will look like they are randomly placed in the landscape – until the viewer reaches the exact point from where you will see the strait line. Driving the car, this point will only be seen for a second, before the border again will dissolve. It is a comment about how space can be conquered, segregated and defined only for a brief moment in time, in the case of national boundaries, who knows?
Seen outside of the constructed position
Seen from the constructed position
Seen outside of the constructed position
...So with these, the sense of the world`s concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible, of something clear and closer to us: of the world, no longer as a journey having to be remade, not as a race without end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, nor as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors. - G.Perec To me this relates to a great positive potential in space, because it can be written and rewritten as one likes.