Landscape Journeys
LANDSCAPE JOURNEYS
PROJECT LEADER:
Janike K. Larsen
FUNDER/DURATION:
Norwegian Council for Research/SAMKUL (Cultural
conditions underlying social change), Fritt Ord.
NETWORK:
Alessandra Ponte (Université de Montréal), Bjørn
Gunnarsson (CHNL), Luis Callejas (GSD, Harvard),
Lateral Office, Aileen Espiritu (Barents Institute),
Gisle Løkken (70
°
North Architects), Territorial
Agency, Smudge Studio (NY).
ACTIVE RESEARCHERS:
Peter Hemmersam, Janike Kampevold Larsen
The “Landscape Journeys” project was conceived as an
ambulating meeting place for an interdisciplinary group
of researchers from several countries: architects, media
scholars, artists and landscape theorists. The project
employed the journey format as an exploratory tool for
investigating energy landscapes, flexible infrastructure,
large scale territories and the significance of movement
in landscape. Finally the project sought to explore the
potential for in-field seminars discussing investigative
tools for addressing contemporary landscape change.
Traveling through northern energy landscapes, we
traversed a series of past, present and future industrial
landscapes. We chose two of the most densely devel-
oped industrial landscapes in the north so far: Iceland
with its geological dynamics and geothermal energy
sources, and the Kola Peninsula, home to substantial
resource extraction activities.
Northern landscapes are to an increasing degree
caught between resource extraction, preservation and
recreational agendas. We wanted however to address
a fourth and often overlooked feature – the landscape’s
own agency which represents strong, inescapable
and often devastating forces to which humans have
to respond.
On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, the landscape is
formed and reconfigured by activities that relate to its
geology. Structures and settlements are the result of a
layering of forces – geological, economical, political
and social. On Iceland, landscape installations need
to respond to the dynamics of the ground, to flowing
and eruptive forces related to volcanic activities and
geo-thermal reservoirs. Of special interest was the flex-
ible infrastructure in the south, built to yield to the
streaming landscape and indicating an alternative way
of landscape habitation.
Two seminars were organized, and some of the mem-
bers of the project’s network were actively involved in
the application for SAMKUL project funding, which
was ultimately successful, with the Future North pro-
ject starting in 2013.
◂
The remains from the now
postponed Schtockman gas
field development in Teriberka
(Russia) – the proposed land
hub for the project.
◂
Observing from hot water
pipelines in front of Hekla.
▴
Flexible infrastructure,
southern Iceland.
