Unsettling in Norrland

Carless, Tonia

Abstract

This presentation is of research using film, photography and projection to develop analysis of the changing space and architectures of Northern Sweden (Norrlands). This peripheral region is one of the most rapidly reconfiguring spaces in Europe, with on-going programmes of corporate and state investment to exploit space and natural resources for settlement and extraction.

The images and films are part of an archive of the wholesale moving of buildings, a common practice in the region. Buildings are moved in relation to changing environmental conditions and now urban land values and global property speculation.

The moving is understood to be a distinct process of what David Harvey has described as “remaking capitalism’s geography”

Photography and film have been used to understand details of the material conditions, to analyse the ideology and power of regional development and settlement, and consider notions of unsettling in this frontier economy.

The project recognises the potential for an architecture of de-growth to challenge ideas of expanding urbanisation of Norrlands. As land values and modes of occupation change, buildings are displaced from the urban centre to allow for a new density of occupation and speculative investment. This process has the capacity to unsettle, and displace social space and previous land formations. The most extreme example is the city of Kiruna, which has been entirely moved and displaced by expanding mine workings. The practice of relocation has the capacity to shift large-scale architectures, to relocate them as a distinct form of caretaking, retaining architectures of historic or heritage value.

In this moment of new waves of investment in mining and forestry, of urbanisation of parts of the region, predicated on an underlying, and seemingly largely uncontested agenda of ‘development’, the photographic archive develops other conceptions and representations of space and architectural production. Photography is used to analyse knowledge of settlement and occupation.

The unsettling images consider the wrenching of a house from its location and moving it to another location, documenting this process of detachment. Images are collaged onto its original location, in addition to its multiple re positions along the route of its displacement.

The work records the re-arrangements of space, objects, and devices in the process of moving:
Photographing what is left behind at the site after a building is moved, and several months later.
Photographing the events of transporting the building as social event.
Photographing the building at new location in the process of it being settled.

Images have been constructed through collage and assemblage to further analyse the space between land and building. The displacement of the building is bought to light through image projections
to unsettle, make uncertain, be less fixed through material and by superimposing architectures onto a previous state

Citation

Carless, T. (2023, September). Unsettling in Norrland. Paper presented at Landscapes of Care: Photography, Film, Modern Architecture and Landscape Heritage, Porto University School of Architecture

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Landscapes of Care: Photography, Film, Modern Architecture and Landscape Heritage
• Conference Location: Porto University School of Architecture
• Start Date: Sep 15, 2023
• End Date: Sep 16, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jan 9, 2024
• Keywords: Unsettling de-growth occupation relocation house-moving caretaking displacement
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11598020
• Publisher URL: https://sophiainternationalconferences.arq.up.pt/