TRANSITIONS

#2 Imbrication | Skyscrapers and Scraping the Sky

#2 imbrication: How history changed the landscape of Lofoten | Samping

Key Word: Economic Activities

#2 Influential Freshwater

#2 Diversity of Nature

𖠹sponge forest 

𖠹agriculture

𖠹marin, bunnstrømmavsettning

𖠹productive forest

𖠹unproductive forest

𖠹sand

𖠹shell sand

𖠹bare ground, fresh vegetation 

𖠹bare ground, barren vegetation

𖠹umbellula

𖠹habitation

𖠹corals

𖠹sea pens
𖠹bare mountain
𖠹marine suspension provisions
𖠹fjord landscape, under water
𖠹landslide material
𖠹steep hills
𖠹marin valley

𖠹morain, thick

𖠹diakmiton

𖠹svampsikel

𖠹hexactinellid
𖠹strandflat
𖠹marine ravine
𖠹fresh water
𖠹clay
𖠹marsh
𖠹amphibolite
𖠹mangerittynitt
𖠹diorite to granitic gneiss, migmatite
𖠹granite, granodiorite
𖠹glimmergneis, glimmerskifer, metasandstein, amphibolite
𖠹gabbro, amphibolite 

older version

Map sites:
Norgeskart - geodata
NIBIO - Kilden
mareano
geo.ngu.no

#2 / ornithological map / diving seabirds

Lofoten Landscape Cultivation

traces

The automatic identification system (AIS) is an automatic tracking system used for collision avoidance.
AIS integrates a standardized VHF transceiver with a positioning system such as a GPS receiver. Vessels fitted with AIS transceivers can be tracked by AIS base stations located along coast lines



Live vessel traffic in Lofoten:



_________

What's the north talking about - a look in the local media

#2 // Anna Liisa // Desire for transcendence

Beacons

Prezi

[under]water roads. in three dimensions.

 

[under water]roads in three dimensions



the road under water.
In three dimensions.
In water, it is possible to move in three dimensions.
Outer space on earth.
What happens when the map is in three dimensions?
Something crosses.
Roads crosses.
There are fields on different layers.
There's a field on top.
There's a field on the surface.
There's a road from the surface to the bottom.
The road continues from the ground to land.
From land to people.
The road goes through different places.
Others homes.
Others grocery store.
Others habitat.
Creates new spaces.
Old roads get destroyed.
Ruins old.
Never to be replaced.
Never to be restored.

review #2: imbrication + assignment #3: vulnerability

Layered Landscapes Lofoten

6 1/2

January 31 Tuesday - Review assignment #2: imbrication

all students and teachers

11.00-17.00  Individual reviews in plenum, 15 minutes each

February 1 Wednesday - #3: vulnerability

store auditorium

09.00-09.45  Introduction #3: vulnerability     Gisle / all teachers

09.45-10.00  Break

10.00-11.00  Lecture The three ecologies      Kristine Hognerud Træland

11.00-12.00  Lunch

12.00-13.00  Literature seminar                     Kristine Hognerud Træland / all teachers
13.00-13.15  Break

13.15-14.00  New assignment #3: vulnerability               

#3 vulnerability

Keywords: vitality / global forces / ecosystems 

Literature: The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari

Lecturer: guest lecturer; Kristine Hognerud Træland

"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale (Melville 1922: 517).

The most enduring hunt ever in literature is the iconic battle between man and nature described in detail by Herman Melville in his classic novel about Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, the late 19^th century whaler, almost insane by anger and agony against the great White Whale that had taken his leg, has only one goal in his mind; to kill the whale – chasing it for months over half the world’s oceans. 

"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man- In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone- all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:- what more wouldst thou have?- Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,- Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"(Melville 1922: 521)

The encounter with Moby Dick brings a tragic end to the affair, killing both captain Ahab, the crew and the whale, with only one of the sailors; Ismael surviving, using his friend Queequeg’s coffin as a floating device. 

The scene is evocative and pictures the extremely exposed position of the sailors on a small vessel alone on endless stormy oceans – in addition they are fighting a gigantic powerful sperm whale that has shown its devastating aggression at several occasions. It is a classic depiction of human vulnerability and mortality - and how humans have exposed – and have been willing to sacrifice them selves, and others, to deadly threats encountering strong natural powers. But it is of course also – seen on the basis of contemporary experiences – an example of human ignorance and arrogance, and the never ending urge for battling and prevailing nature. 

Captain Ahab’s fight against the great Leviathan can be read literally as a fight for survival against strong forces, but is for us more useful as a metaphor for how humanity has to fight todays Leviathan in the picture of evolving global, ecological crisis.

According to Bruno Latour the deep contemporary crises are based in a western ignorance to nature – rooted in Christianity and liberal capitalism, and where man has abandoned the idea of being part of nature, and ascended into a state of distance or superiority to nature; we [the modern western man] are the only ones who differentiate absolutely between Nature and Culture, between Science and Society, whereas in our eyes all the others (…) cannot really separate what is knowledge from what is Society, what is sign from what is thing, what comes from Nature as it is from what their cultures require  (Latour, 1993).

The fact that we are facing innumerable and incalculable crisis is something that we all are aware of. This reality will influence our profession and our existence to an increasing degree the coming years and will also demand a high level of complex understanding - because the systems evoking the problems are complex, and the causal connections are not always obvious. Researchers monitoring changes in ecological systems – like changes in ocean ecologies in the North Atlantic due to heating and acidification - more often, not only talks about thresholds and tipping points, but of points of no return – which means extinction or total changes in known ecosystems. 

In the culture of the Tersky Pomors (before the Russian revolution) at the white sea on the Kola peninsula, there was a far developed system of religious beliefs and taboos connected to over-exploitation of natural resources. For centuries the Tersky Pomors were dependent upon nature for survival, and developed a unique traditional system of resource use that made it possible to balance the needs of both man and nature. The community regulated the use of its natural resources on two different levels. First, there were direct limitations on hunting and fishing. But the Pomors also relied on hunting and fishing charms, and this reliance on magic created a mystical respect for nature and a special gratitude for all that it provided. Their traditions enabled the Pomors to live in such a manner that the natural landscape which they inherited from the Urgo-Finnish peoples remained unaltered (Lyapaeva et al. 2007: 14).

With the Soviet expansion on the Kola Peninsula in the beginning of the 20^th century, and also further east in Siberia and Yamal, the brutalism of a dogmatic industrialized culture, have through mining, metallurgic industry and oil and gas exploitation, erased most of the inherited knowledge from the Pomors, the Nenets, the Sami and other indigenous entities. 

Vulnerability can be an abstract and vague concept because it has so many connotations – but it is at the same time extremely concrete and tangible experienced on a personal level. This is also the reason why an increasing amount of scientists and scholars demand a shift, using Latour: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern (Latour, in Critical Inquiry 30, 2004: 225). Knowledge calls for awareness where we can not claim that we don’t know or understand the consequences of miscalculations or defaults – and that what ever small effects in separate parts of a system, it might have the potential of endangering the whole system with a self-reinforcing effect. Most scientists believe that [global] warming is caused largely by man-made pollutants that require strict regulation. Mr. Luntz [a Republican strategist] seems to acknowledge as much when he says that “the scientific debate is closing against us.” His advice, however, is to emphasize that the evidence is not complete. “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled,” he writes, “their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue.”(Latour in Critical Inquiry 30, 2004: 226).

In an article in El País, March 10, 2007 the Spanish architect Iñaki Ábalos elaborates the essence in Herman Melville’s essay about the clerk Bartleby that has a recurring habit of saying; I would prefer not to (Mellville 1853), when asked to perform certain tasks. Ábalos points at the obvious that now there is a need for consolidation and not for expansion – which is the track the world has been on since the enlightenment. He shows how architects can play an essential role in a new and possible post-capitalist world-order where: Architects must refuse to bow before all the pomp and fuss [and must rise the] dimension of sustainability by questioning the very need for action (Ábalos in Natural Metaphor III, 2007: 162).

Ábalos formulates a critical approach that can count for all planners with an encouragement; 

A credible map of sustainability has yet to be drawn, but there can be no doubt that other aspects already trailed and trialled have run out of whatever credibility they had (Ábalos in Natural Metaphor III, 2007: 163).

Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 1991

Bruno Latour, Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, Critical Inquiry 30, 2004

Herman Melville; Moby Dick or The White Whale, 1922

Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener, 1853.

Iñaki Ábalos, I would prefer not to in Natural Metaphor 2007, Architectural Papers III, Pp. 161-163 (originally published as ‘Bartleby, the Architect’ in El País, 10 March 2007.

Olga Lyapaeva, Irina Zaitseva and Lada Kalinina, Tersky Pomors, Traditional ecological knowledge, 2007.

Cod connections

Lofotfisket & fiskehjell - you can see these fresco paintings by Axel Revold at Matbørsen in Bergen - the links to Lofoten are everywhere.

seminar #2 - imbrication

We are privileged to have John Pløger introduce us to the concept of imbrication - so much inspiration during this interesting lecture / seminar / discussion.
A few links to references mentioned:
Aspen & Pløger: Den vitale byen
byensrum.dk
Lacaton & Vassal: Place Léon Aucuc
AAA - Atelier d'Architecture Autogerée
Teleférico in La Paz and the Mega Apthapi (the original article I referred to is in swedish and not available online, but I found this - in french, see the second last paragraph.. + photos from Mega-Apthapi)

+ Henri Lefebvre, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Tim Ingold, Richard Sennett, Jane Jacobs, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Sarah Pink, Jonathan Raban..

In addition is the studio's online library under construction and you will soon get an invitation - here you'll find the texts to each theme / literature seminar, and several other articles we are referring to.

seminar #1 - Lofoten introduction & complexity

We thank Sissel Tjosaas, Sigve Olsen and Anniken Førde for a very interesting introduction to Lofoten and coastal complexity.

Sigve Olsen's
Lofoten matpark

Sissel Tjosaas' master thesis:
Felles fjord - ulik fremtid?

Anniken Førde's film:

Så bygg vi oss en foss / Let's build a waterfall

"West Coast Tendencies."

# 1 Complexity Pernille- Boys Don't Cry to Fibonacci

Supplementary review #1 Complexity

We invite those of you who were not able to present your work during the review of #1 Complexity for a supplementary session 9 am - 10 am, Monday 23 January.

We strongly recommend that those of you who were not present both days at the opening seminar also attend this supplementary review.

Please organize a space in your studio suitable for presenting the work. We begin at 9 am sharp.

- Tone and Magdalena

Tutoring Monday 23rd January

Dear students, we meet at your studio for conversations about your ongoing work and common reflections around the current theme, #2 Imbrication. We split into groups of 4-5 students, and sessions start at 10 am, ending around 3.30 pm. See you there!

- Tone and Magdalena

#2 Imbrication - Please sign up for tutoring here
(if you have problems opening the link, 
make sure to add 'http' in the beginning of the url)

assignment #2 - imbrication

Make a map, not a tracing:

/ a map that is not already alleged competence / entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real / a map representing imbricated and layered information and findings / that tell stories made out of a heterogeneity of practices and processes / connected to Lofoten

#2 - imbrication

Keywords: connectivity / layering / overlapping information 

Literature: Becoming Places, (Dovey 2009: part I, chapter 2; Place as Assemblage) 

Lecturer: guest lecturer; John Pløger

The concept of imbrication signifies literally overlapping and intertwining of different materials as concrete as tiles or textiles or overlaying geological structures. The concept is useful in understanding of complex layering and connectivity in society, introduced to planning by Henri Lefebre in his involvement with the project Novi Beograd (1980s) with a broader social science or philosophical approach [than architects] (Kofman and Lebas in Lefebvre 1996: 23).

Imbrication, assemblage or folding are expressions of multiplicities of concepts that constitutes society; In assemblages you find states of things, bodies, various combinations of bodies, hodgepodges; but you also find utterances, modes of expression, and whole regimes of signs. The relations between the two are pretty complex. For example, a society is defined not by productive forces and ideology, but by ‘hodgepodges’ and ‘verdicts.’ Hodgepodges are combinations of interpenetrating bodies. These combinations are well-known and accepted (incest, for example, is a forbidden combination). Verdicts are collective utterances, that is, instantaneous and incorporeal transformations which have currency in a society (for example, ‘from now on you are no longer a child’…) (interview with Gilles Deleuze by Catherine Clément 1980, in Lapoujade 2007).

Society as assemblage is an approach that looks at the whole as an inextricable combination of interrelated parts. But if the rhizome is the foundation from where an assemblage is built, it also connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. (…) It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. (…) Unlike a structure, which is defined by a set of points and positions, with binary relations between the positions, the rhizome is made only of lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions (Deleuze&Guattari 1980: 21).

In an open end experimental approach to planning we need to consider any kind of knowledge, to make maps that are rhizomatic rather than tree-like, mapping networked connectivities rather than stable territories (…) mapping as an open and inclusive process of disclosure and enablement (Dovey 2010: 29). Mapping possesses a way of transforming and evoking findings, knowledge and understanding, and even what is to become, into spatial graphic representations. However using complex approaches of overlapping information in planning requires knowledge of the nature of different kind of mapping. 

Doreen Massey emphasizes that we have to be aware of the possible impact of mapping; I love maps says Massey; They carry you away; they set you dreaming. Yet it may well be none the less that our usual notion of maps has helped to pacify, to take life out of, how most of us most commonly think about space. Maybe our current, ‘normal’ Western maps have been one element in that long effort at the taming of the spatial (Massey 2008: 106). When Massey talks about the spatial, she also points at the danger of mapping being used for political purposes, as a tool for reduction or colonization. Therefor we should make maps and imbrications that are not predictable or prejudiced, but maps that tell stories made out of a heterogeneity of practices and processes (Massey 2008: 107).

However the tendencies in modern Western reductionist use of maps Massey reminds us that maps can constitute a whole; a rhizomatic imbrication; Maps vary of cause. On both sides of the Atlantic before Columbian encounter maps integrated time and space. They told stories. While presenting a kind of picture of the world ‘at one moment’ (supposedly) they also told the story of its origins (Massey 2008: 107). The map can be either tracing of already alleged competence, or a complex spatial assemblage. The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. (…) What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. (…) The map is more than a simple ‘tracing’ of an existing form because it is infused with a desire to understand how the place might be navigated or changed. Deleuze&Guattari 1980: 12-13). 

Mapping time-space sequences, Vardø: Marianne Lucie Skuncke 

(Emerging Arctic Landscapes, BAS 2011)

Kim Dovey, Becoming Places 2010

Gilles Deleuze, interview by Catherine Clément 1980, in Lapoujade 2007

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 1980

Doreen Massey, for space 2008

Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities 1996

Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen and helmut Weber, Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade 2009

Marianne Lucie Skuncke, Emerging Arctic Landscapes, master course by Magdalena Haggärde and Gisle Løkken, BAS 2011

shallow thoughts on Lofoten

Island connections

#1 complexity | Samping

Key word: Home


Let's start with a simple question: Can you tell when is this pictured?

You might believe me if I say it is from the 70's. In fact this is a picture I took few days ago, and simply edited it on computer - What I am trying to bring out is, my impression of the city of Bergen, or in fact, Norway itself, it is an alive historical book. It has been living in the same way as it was built on day one, and will stands in the same way forever. Its stories can actually be told by its current urban tissue, landscape, economical and cultural activities. As Messy written on "For Space", 'the "presentness" of the horizontality of space is a product of a multitude of histories whose resonances are still there, if we would but see them, and which sometimes catch us with full force unawares.'

This is somehow lacking in my hometown, Hong Kong. After decades of high-speed development, the city is now a total concrete jungle, with still increasing huge amount of population and lack of living space and public space, turning into one of the most unlivable city. All historical and valuable memories were buried down, so as our place attachment to our living place - how can we consider a place as our home when we face only concrete and high-rise buildings everyday, breathe no fresh air and not seeing the sky, and all the memories of the city were wiped out?

So when I start looking at Lofoten, it is actually cordial: Lofoten and Hong Kong shared some much in common. However as mentioned earlier, the space was changed, mainly by the choice of the people living there, Lofoten was the one to be able to last. I keep wondering if my birthplace could have been last like Lofoten, to be close to natural, to be live in a place with all the connection with history and present and future... I wonder if I were born as a fisherman in Lofoten. I wonder if Lofoten is actually my true home.

Heading to Lofoten is like homecoming.

#1 complexity | Arnulf Mårdalen Hasle

#1 - connecting | Livie

#1 complexity | STORIES SO FAR

STORIES SO FAR

   

          

           

#1 complexity | Stefanie

#1 connections of my perception

1.//Complexity//ChristianSolbakken

Alone and together

I want to talk about us or them? the group mentality, and the way we put ourselves in a lot of different categories throughout our life.

We begin as someone's Baby

Then friend, brother sister.

Classmate

Norwegian

Maybe you are a football player or a gamer

Maybe religion is a big part of your life

What education do you take, are you a nurse or a police? what you do will soon be one of the big question people are going to ask you.

maybe you become a wife and a mom and this will surely be a big part of your life.

But then you watch this political debate on TV.

And some politician says, I am Christian first and than Norwegian. And you think Hey? that cant be right. I am Norwegian, but I'm not religious. Can a politician who are speaking for the people in Norway speak for the Christians before he speaks for the Norwegian. Muslims, Christians, non believer, and all kinds of people?

And that is the point where things start to go wrong. 

I had this conversation with a Muslim in Morocco. She said that the people starting terror and war, the one that call themselves Muslims, have no regard for other Muslims. Or other people that don't believe what they believe. In other words, they are Muslims that have one truth. They are religious before all else. To look at it this way, It is the same through the Norwegian politician had. 

When you don't identify yourselves with people, war and discrimination is so much easier.

And we really like to think about them and us, to divide everything in groups. 

But the mistake I think is to start with the smaller groups.

But it's an easy mistake.

I remember in Lofoten Nature and youth summer camp we met people from all over Norway and some came from Russia as well. We always asked where are you from, that was the main question to get to know each other. And we answered Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim, and a few Russia.

When I am out traveling in Asia or Africa I get the same question. and its mostly the first of all the questions. Where Are you from. I know it would be stupid to say, I am from Askøy, or Bergen. most people don't know where that is. So my answer is Always Norway. and if it sounds like now where. I say, North of Europe.

But this is the problem, you can never get far enough away to see yourself as who you are above all.

I would have to meet an alien in space, only then I would think and look at my self as human.

I am a human from earth.