Unsettling in Norrland

Carless, Tonia; Serjeant, Robin

Abstract

This research uses film, photography and projection to analyse the changing space of Northern Sweden (Norrland). 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 are part of an archive of the 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. It is understood to be a distinct process of what David Harvey has described as “remaking capitalism’s geography”

Images analyse the material conditions, ideology and power in this frontier economy. The project considers an architecture of de-growth , challenging ideas of the expanding urbanisation of Norrland. As land values and modes of occupation change, buildings are displaced from the urban centre to increase occupation density through speculative investment. This process displaces social space and previous land formations. The city of Kiruna has been entirely displaced by expanding mine workings. The practice of relocation also has the capacity to shift large-scale historic architectures, as a distinct form of care-taking.

In this moment of new waves of investment in mining and forestry, of urbanisation of parts of the region, predicated on an underlying and largely uncontested agenda of ‘development’, the archive makes other conceptions of space and architectural production.

The images consider the wrenching of a house from its location and moving it to another location, documenting this process of detachment. It records the re-arrangements of space between land and building. Displacement is illuminated through projections to unsettle, by superimposing architectures onto previous conditions.

Citation

Carless, T., & Serjeant, R. (2023). Unsettling in Norrland. Sophia, 8(1), 219-232. https://doi.org/10.24840/2183-8976_2023-0008_0001_16

• Journal Article Type: Conference Paper
• Conference Name: Landscapes of Care: photography, film, modern architecture and landscape heritage
• Conference Location: University of Porto School of Architecture Porto Portugal
• Acceptance Date: Oct 20, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Dec 20, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 22, 2024
• Journal: Sophia Journal Architecture Art and Image
• Print ISSN: 1390-3861
• Publisher: Universidad Politécnica Salesiana
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 219-232
• Series Title: Landscapes of Care: photography, film, modern architecture and landscape heritage
• Series Number: 8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.24840/2183-8976_2023-0008_0001_16
• Keywords: Unsettling, de-growth, relocation, house-moving, displacement.
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11533346
• Publisher URL: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/issue/view/75