Bas emerging lokken

There are no maps for these territories *
The aim for this studio has been to broaden our understanding of complexity –
to learn to use complexity as a planning tool and to extend our intellectual and
practical tools as planners, architects and not at least as human beings. The
recognition that we ourselves, and everything surrounding us is in a
continuous and inevitable transformation, enforces awareness towards the
transforming energies – energies which are unfolding along different
trajectories in time and space - shaping complex spatial patterns deeply
connected to the changes in the landscape – a landscape which holds the
enigma of time and histories as different as the rotation of continental sheets
or the ephemeral conception of a notion or an idea.

Our intention has been to see architecture and planning as on-going and
never completed processes as life in itself is never finished or concluded. If
you really were to take a slice through time - says (the British geographer)
Doreen Massey in her book: for space - it would be full of holes, of
disconnections, of tentative half-formed first encounters. ‘Everything is
connected to everything else’ can be a salutary political reminder that
whatever we do has wider implications than perhaps we commonly recognise.
But it is unhelpful if it leads to a vision of an always already constituted holism.
The ‘always’ is rather that there are always connections yet to be made,
juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction, or not, potential links which may
never be established. Loose ends and on going stories. ‘Spaces’, then, can
never be that completed simultaneity in which all interconnections have been
established, in which everywhere is already (and at that moment
unchangingly) linked to everywhere else. (Massey, 2005)

The studio has been an open and inviting testing ground for experimental
approaches towards the landscape and the practices going on in the
landscape – an attempt to do mapping of even realms that are yet to come –
to use words from (the French philosophers) Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari. In our effort to develop a profound understanding of the landscape
and to find new approaches to the changes explicitly going on, we need to
investigate and experiment – to map and to research along lines and
trajectories that have not necessarily been investigated before – to make
connections and juxtapositions that are not obvious, and to find spatial
connections and openness that are not prejudiced or closed. Make a map, not
a tracing. Says Deleuze and Guattari in their text about the rhizome: What
distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented towards an
experimentation in contact with the real (…) A map has multiple entryways, as
opposed to the tracing, which always comes back to the same. The map has
to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged
‘competence’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980)

This means that the mapping will not be completed or conclusive but be
following tracks or lines of flight. According to (the Mexican philosopher)
Manuel De Landa - Deleuze and Guattari use lines of flight as something to
follow and something expected to redeem new responses – as an operator
which transcends the real and ascends to the virtual (Manuel De Landa,

There are no maps for these territories - lecture by Gisle Løkken at BAS, 20 December 2011 1
http://emergingarcticlandscapes.blogspot.com/

2002). In her essay ’Loosing Control keeping Desire’ (the French/Rumanian
architect and philosopher) Doina Petrescu elaborates the meaning of the
concept: Guattari and Deleuze’s ‘lines’ challenge the usual designer thinking
about ‘lines’. They are an abstract and complex enough metaphor to map the
entire social field, to trace its shapes, its borders, its becomings. They can
map the way ‘life always proceeds at several rhythms and at several speeds’.
They map individual cracks and collective breaks within the segmentation and
heterogeneity of power. The ‘line of flight’, ligne de fuite, is defined not only as
a simple line, but as the very force of a tangle of lines flung out, transgressing
thresholds of established norms and conventions, towards unexpected
manifestations, both in terms of socio-political phenomena and in individual
destinies (Petrescu, 2001).

Emerging Arctic landscapes - Landscapes in Change – Arctic tipping
points
Our field of investigation has been the northern, Arctic landscapes. Until the
beginning of the 20th century the high-arctic landscapes were with few
exceptions seemingly unspoiled and undisturbed by people, while the sub-
arctic areas were characterized by close-nature usage mainly from ethnic
minorities, nomads and settlers that lived of husbandry, farming, hunting and
fishing.

Myths and notions about the Arctic have defined the territory since Pytheas in
Antiquity launched the idea of Thule – a land behind and north of all known
land – so unreachable and unknown that it had to be full of precious assets –
gold and treasures in a mixture of divine elevation and earthly drama, of
storm, ice and cold. The myth holds a vital expectation, but also respect for
the unknown and what is potentially dangerous. In this world of desolation and
infinity - behind the myth - a complex interplay of people, animals, birds and
plants have taken form and developed for several thousands of years. These
are ecological systems that resist large parts of both frost and drama - in an
environment that is ruthlessly lethal to it or those who cannot adapt –
ecological systems, that in their subtle balance have proven extremely
vulnerable when facing the global forces that in our time invade the Arctic with
an increasing strength. Researchers describe the changes taking place in the
Arctic today as a series of changes or ‘tipping points’ that in their extreme
consequence are ‘points of no return’. This entails a permanent extinction of
species – and a permanent loss of known ecological systems. This could be
alteration in marine micro ecology with the consequence of changed sprawling
and migration patterns of fish stocks - or it could be permanent loss of natural
landscapes because of mineral extraction or construction of heavy
infrastructure.

From the first exploration period in the late 16th century, the northern oceans
became an arena for extensive fishing, sealing and whaling - being in reality
equal to Europe’s first oil boom (a direct and dramatic consequence of this
hunt was the near extinction of a large part of the whale stock). While
rationality and myth historically existed side by side – not least in cartography
and descriptions of distant countries and oceans – the conception of divine


mysticism rooted in geographical notions is now certainly gone. In our satellite
age one has on the contrary created modern stories about earth-bound
wealth, hidden inside the mountain, in the earth, in the ocean and in the sea
bed – developed through large-scale investigations and prospects, and
carried out by large multi-national economical interests. The Arctic is not only
the territory of possibilities created by historical expectations and myths, but is
today referred to by modern mining companies as ’one of the world’s last
natural resource frontiers’.

Landscape as spatial condition - Historically, little attention has been aimed
towards these ‘pre-industrial’ landscapes from architects and landscape
architects. Alessandra Ponte describes the Arctic as territories that have never
been traditionally represented as landscapes; they have not been framed,
beautified and represented neither as ‘nature’ nor as landscapes until they
were appropriated by the energy producing industry and mediated as
landscapes of energy (Janike Larsen in http://www.aho.no/en/AHO/News-and-
events/Calendar/2010/Guest-lecture-30092010/).

Within the field of landscape architecture we rather see an increasing
tendency to focus on the ‘design’ of landscapes: as the development of new
uses for post-industrial land or as transformations of existing land into new
park landscapes in connection with strong forces of urbanization. A common
feature that may be observed is how nature becomes artificial, generic and is
reduced to a design object simply through processes of medialization and
conceptualization, and how physical transformations often are linked to
consumption – visual or otherwise.

The major part of the Arctic may still be seen as ‘genuine’ nature and as
cognitive landscapes, and therefore demand a different approach and
different means of investigation than those applied for already ‘domesticated’
landscapes. Global warming, environmental disturbances and political
pressures combine to create a completely new physical ‘ground’ which puts
great demands on the enfolding response of architects and landscape
architects. The need to develop a critical awareness and alternative forms of
knowledge in connection with this development transcends the traditional
design focus.

Landscape as a concept was in its origin a description of a region or a
geographical or administrative area defined by human activity or habitation.
During the 16th century, the term evolved etymological through the use by
Dutch painters to describe natural or rural sceneries, as artistic interpretations.
In the 20th century, landscape has by the (American geographer) Richard
Hartshorne (1899-1992) been defined as ‘the external visible (or touchable)
surface of the earth. This surface is formed by the outer surface, those in
immediate contact with the atmosphere, of vegetation, bare earth, snow, ice,
or water bodies or the features made by man.’ This also includes movable
objects, but it’s ignoring what is under the ground, the ocean or the sky, or
what is perceived by other than sight (like sounds).


The fact that the notion of a landscape includes the human factor opens for a
wide use of the concept including cityscape, or human made, artificial
landscapes, and even interiors. It also makes clear the distinction between
natural or primeval landscapes (as pre-human landscapes), and landscapes
shaped by human impact. In a more resent popular understanding of the
conception of the landscape it is reflected a particular meaning, referring to an
area of the Earth’s surface, and a general meaning that can be seen and
observed. In geography and other disciplines as landscape architecture and
architecture (but also within other social sciences as social anthropology)
there is a tendency to use the conception of the landscape covering all these
understandings – both as an objective assessment and a subjective
perception and experience. Without any seemingly limitations the conception
of the landscape tend to be more liquid and flexible – covering the whole field
of ecology, environment and context – both physically and cognitively. To give
clear meaning to the concept, landscape commonly has to be explained
through an accompanying describing word as a compound-word like:
landscape architecture, interior landscape, polar landscape, tourist landscape
etc. This understanding of the landscape implies a radically different coding of
the landscape then simply something romantic and aesthetic, or something
only relating to natural conditions. It is a conception that implies acceptance of
hidden knowledge and for the landscape as something utterly complex.

Alterations through time, forces the global ecology towards a constantly
increasing complexity. While there in science in the nineteenth-century
according to John Lechte, was a concern to create equilibrium and stasis with
the above all aim to eliminating chance – it was by the end of the century
developed an acceptance for science as a concept of open systems,
irreversible time and of indeterminacy (Lechte, 1995 in Massey, 1005). This is
creating the basis on which the landscape has to be investigated and
understood as spatial narration of events and practice. An open and
progressive reading of the landscape as both an objective and subjective
experience gives validity to the multiplicity of practices connected to the
landscape – also including natural processes and history – the landscape can
be seen as an assemblage of spatiality and interconnecting trajectories – a
time space derivation. What if [space] presents us with a heterogeneity of
practices and processes? Doreen Massey asks. Then it will be not an already
interconnected whole but an ongoing product of interconnections and not.
Then it will be always unfinished and open. This arena of space is not firm
ground on which to stand. In no way is it a surface. This is space as the
sphere of a dynamic simultaneity, constantly disconnected by new arrivals,
constantly waiting to be determined (and therefore always undetermined) by
the construction of new relations. It is always being made and always
therefore, in a sense, unfinished (except that ‘finishing’ is not on the agenda).
(Massey, 2005)

This way of reading landscape and practices as an infinite dynamism
correlates with the Deleuze/Guattarian idea about the rhizome: unlike the
trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its
traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play


very different regimes of signs, and even non sign states. (…) Unlike the
graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to
a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable,
connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and
its own lines of flight. (Deleuze and Guattary, 1980)

Our entrance in the Arctic is an undefined field of explorations, and it opens
for spatial connectivity both to landscapes and to people. The investigations
are subjective and individual experiences but have to be made evident to write
the future stories of the Arctic – again using Deleuze and Guattari: Writing has
nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, [and again:]
even realms that are yet to come (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980).

Mapping of the unforeseen - In the studio we started with the utterly
individual expectations towards the territory – tested and developed along a
road trip from Hammerfest to Murmansk – as a narration and a movement
through a cross section of seemingly remote arctic landscapes and intrusive
developments: From the oil-driven growth of Hammerfest which already has
entered the oil economy through the 50-billion ($1billion) base: Melkøya – we
could study the city evolving as a mono economy based on the fishing
industry through annihilation and regeneration during and after the WWII, and
most recently the entrance into a new phase of mono-economy based on oil
and gas. Via the new urbanization and entrepreneur based growth of Alta with
a history rooted in 7000 years old rock carvings, we entered the core areas of
the surviving sami culture in Kautokeino and Karasjok – deeply dependent on
unspoiled landscape pastures for herds of reindeers, and also bearers of
profound knowledge about durable, close to nature living. We visited the
decaying and mythical city of Vardø, which seems to be facing a new era of
attention, initiatives and creative undercurrents. We encountered the silence
and presence of great nature in the abandoned but slowly renovating fishing
village of Hamningberg. The trip took us to the highly multicultural Kirkenes –
struggling between the old mining industry and a pending new oil economy –
passing by the mined and destructed landscapes of Bjørnevatn – crossing the
Russian border and the anticipatory border zone, into the remote and
desolated landscapes, cities and settlements on the Kola-peninsula - via the
heavily polluted landscapes in Nikkel – not to say dead and retarded to a post
glacial condition. The trip ended in Murmansk – a city in decline and
transformation, from an industrial harbour and soviet military stronghold with a
population of nearly half a million – to an expected population reduction to a
quarter of a million in few years - a city in desperate need for renovation of the
building mass – and with a unresolved future political significance and an
uncertain transition to a modernized economy.

Encountering human energy - Along the journey we met people living and
working in the landscape – with different anticipations – within fields of
planning and preparation for new economies, or within different performances
of everyday practice:
Among many we met: Snorre Sundquist, director Husbanken Hammerfest:
explaining the role of Husbanken in a historical and contemporary perspective


- Reidar Nilsen, journalist: giving historical background of Hammerfest's
shifting monocultures; whaling, fishing and now oil & gas - Sunniva Skålnes,
architect / dr, senior advisor at Samediggi Kautokeino: untangling the
misconception of northern landscapes as untouched, enabling us to read its
inscribed signs of history, narratives: cultures, or Unni Steinfjell, duodji
teacher Kautokeino: elucidating how practices and survival are connected to
the ability to read details in the landscape.

We met people like Svein Harald Holmen, project manager: highlighting the
importance of committed engagement and synergetic processes for
renovation of historical buildings and sites or Tormod Amundsen, architect:
exemplifying how a special interest and expertise can develop unexpected
potentials; finding, facilitating and promoting ornithological sites.
Thomas Nilsen from the Barents-secretary talked about the large view and
prospects in the Barents region: namely a new border relation of unknown
potential – and not at least the Fisherman in Kiberg: running high on king crab
economy. Jhonny Andersen: the true northern multiplicity man: fireman, fish-
farmer, crab fisher, tourist guide, our excellent bus driver, and a lot more - or
Vanja Madsen & Guro Vrålstad, project managers at Pikene på broen
Kirkenes: presenting mind the map; cultural complexity and initiative as a
subversive act in a masculine environment – the Swedish mining engineer in
Bjørnevatn iron mines: representing the modern migrant worker and the
structure of resource extraction in remote landscapes. Igor Shaitanov: our
24/7 indefatigable guide and gate opener to the undercurrents of Murmansk
culture and night life – introducing Dimitriy Borovkov, owner of Power Hit
Radio and planner in the governor’s office: an overwhelming source of
information and critical reflections about life in Murmansk in combination with
a multiple involvement in cultural and political undercurrents – the anonymous
garage man: representing the Russian man in his kingdom; the garage, and
even Evgeny Goman, theatre producer and director, teacher and idealist:
working day and night for the idea of realising the first youth house in
Murmansk – in spite of a continuous bureaucratic resistance.

The studio has brought us experts and storytellers of different kind and of
different background: In Bergen we started out with Professor Paul Wassman
presenting geopolitics and ecology in the Arctic - Magnus Jørgensen, architect
and researcher with experience from students work in the Barents region and
Joar Nango, architect and artist unfolding the indigenous peoples use of the
landscape. Through a seminar with former diploma students at BAS: Tone
Berge, Olafia Zoega, Anette Basso; Ina Bakke Sem-Olsen and Iwan
Thomson, we experienced architectural approaches to various Arctic contexts.
As a mid term reminder we met geographer and historian Peder Roberts,
leading us back into a geopolitical understanding of history and conflicts, and
not least architect and professor Catharina Gabrielsson refreshing the
theoretical foundation for the studio: field work and practised space as
architecture and how findings can apply to a context.

DAV: In between the different assignments of more conceptual nature we
searched a deeper encounter with Sami philosophy and mysticism. The


modern shaman and Dr. juris: Ánde Somby led the students to a different
understanding of space and landscapes through his joik-thinking, and through
his rhetorical practice - gathered around the bonfire in the circular space of the
lavvo. The Sami understanding of the landscape, the specific knowledge, and
the language used to describe the complex content of the landscape is so
closely connected to survival that disturbances now appearing in the
landscape threaten to wipe out not only a way of living, but a profound
understanding of natural processes that have linked humanity to nature even
through history of heavy industrialisation and alienation from nature. Without a
profound understanding of the landscape, and without a language to validate
its consistency, the landscape could easily be redefined into a commodity and
laid open for exploitation.

What we are mapping is the extraordinary and peculiar, but also the everyday
normal – the layers of everyday experience and everyday practices which
eventually forms the spatial performance in the landscape; the hyper normal.
A hyper-mapping might be more subjective and give focus to values related to
the context of the plan, than being strictly neutral and objective. We consider
the studio as a comprehensive learning and a thorough investigation on layers
of information that often reach beyond the immediate reading or perception of
the landscape. To be able to see and understand, we study various
phenomena trough different concepts to charge the investigation with
expectations:

Vulnerability: The notion of vulnerability is invariably related to the concept of
life – either it is human life or life in nature as such. The consciousness of
mortality is disturbing and exposes life as fragile. Life does not exist in closed
systems, but does always relate to other life forms or systems of varying
extent and size - in these relations dependency occur, and not at least a
continuous struggle for a position of surviving. It is a slow drama that has
been going on since the creation of earth, and encompasses all natural
systems of all scales from the smallest biotope to global circuits.

New Hierarchies: The ascendance of information industries and the growth
of a global economy are inextricably linked, and have contributed to what
Saskia Sassen calls: a new geography of centres and margins (The global
city: strategic site/new frontier, 2000). This means that former structures of
economical or political hegemony have radically changed (and are still
changing rapidly) with the consequence of a displacement (in economical
sense), in both geographical significance of cities and places, and in the
valuation of different kind of labour: Financial services produce superprofits
while industrial services barely survive. These are phenomena that are clearly
observed in the geography of the north – and have caused historical
alterations in demography and migration patterns – tendencies that in every
way increase.

Flexibility: When adverse global forces and global economical fluctuations
influence even the most remote places, it seems more than ever necessary to
build a flexibility outside the global consumer economy - to be resilient to


economic alterations, to be prepared for devastating environmental impacts or
to foresee future effects from expected climate changes. (The English
anthropologist, biologist and cyberneticist;) Gregory Bateson expressed the
need for flexibility in his book: Steps to an ecology of mind: There shall be a
matching between the flexibility of people and that of the civilization. There
shall be diversity in the civilization, not only to accommodate the genetic and
experimental diversity of persons, but also to provide the flexibility and
‘preadaptation’ necessary for unpredictable change. (Bateson, 1972/2000).
Even though Bateson wrote this paper in 1970, it contains a strong prediction
of the coming climate changes and a foreseeing of the challenges that
planners and architects have to deal with concerning profound ecological
matters. Bateson prescribes the survival of our civilization as closely linked to
our understanding of natural processes; We are not outside the ecology for
which we plan – we are inevitably a part of it. (IBID) The new invention gives
elbow room or flexibility, but the using up for that flexibility is death. (IBID)

This notion of flexibility leads forward to the studio’s final assignment
conceived as reorientations, which gives ideas about new openings through
new cartographies – and layers of disrupted knowledge. This means that our
findings and learning appears to be exercises in new dynamic approaches
and entryways to the landscapes and to the complexity of spatial practices. A
dynamism that Stan Allen expresses so well (in his dialog with Florian
Sauters): Bateson talks about survival not in resisting change, but in terms of
accommodating change. It means that your thinking has to be every bit as
fluent and adaptive as the kind of systems you are talking about. In other
words you cannot apply rigid or dogmatic principals to systems that are
themselves fluent, adaptable, changing and always incorporating feedback.
(…) It is a way of thinking that mirrors the dynamism of ecological systems
themselves. (Allen and Sauters, 2007)

One general objective for the studio has been to address crucial questions,
and create a platform for critical discussions about the changes that are going
on in the Arctic landscapes. We have been discussing the role of the architect
in these matters, and the need for investigations of openness and
experimentation – in a way that also consider the subjective, the trivial or the
unexpected as relevant for a spatial understanding of the landscape. There is
an atmosphere of seemingly euphoric global expectations to the prosperity of
the territory - a rationality that kills the Arctic myth. We are past the point
where rationality has substituted the definition of reality in a desire for political
hegemony and economical profit. The colonization of the Arctic coincides with
the fall of the myths – and a decline in the conception of nature as holy. Like
Odysseus who tied his body to the mast and blocked out the effect of the
seductive song of the Sirens, we have blocked out our ability to be influenced
by songs that may break down our rationality and our modern conception of
reality. Without myth, all becomes trivial, and without respect and
attentiveness the wonder of everything that cannot instantly be translated into
numbers disappears.


It is a challenge for the future to dare to open for a dimension of mysticism
and wonder – to open up for literature and poetry that narrate stories about
reality, which are totally different from the rationality, we today are familiar
with. If a turning point for new ideas about the Arctic were to surface, the
rational and the mythical must once again meet and intertwine into a hitherto
unknown story – a tipping point for a new way to appreciate and observe the
country beyond.

* The title of this lecture, There are no maps for these territories, is borrowed from William
Gibson (No Maps for these Territories, 1996).


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