Morten Torgersrud: NORTHERN SITES – the landscape in the Barents region in a post national perspective
Research Fellow, Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Dept of Specialised Art
The project is a photographic investigation of the landscape of the Barents Region. The project will explore the area with special attention to how landscape and built environment relate to conflicting aspects of history, culture, economy and politics.
The Barents Region could be described as an area where national, ethnical, local and international levels meet and overlap. And its contradictions seem to challenge ideas about coherence between nation and landscape.
Exotic and romantic representations of the northern areas date far back. Such representations were part of the construction of the nation states. To a certain extent this way of visualising the north is continued within contemporary cultural institutions, including tourism, trade and industry. It is also present in fields like art and science.
The project seeks to understand the landscape as a political and social construction, and it seems that the politically and culturally charged Barents Region is a particularly interesting case-study in this perspective. In this sense the project can be seen as both a continuation and a critique of a national tradition of landscape imaging.