While looking towards the future we are convinced that things won’t be that bad. We prefer cute architectural models, preferably clean and white, presenting new harbor areas, industrial zones, fancy buildings. Humans, if present in this kind of animation, are mostly faceless. Numbers define facts.
The collapse of the mining industry in Kirkenes was in 1996 and again in 2015. Meanwhile, it is a short ride across the border to the former mining town Prirechnyi that, today, is a ghost city with empty schools, allotment gardens, a shop, playground and several large housing estates. We seem to think that this can happen only in Russia and easily forget about Sulitjelma in Northern Norway, Salla in Northern Finland or Kaunisvaara in Northerm Sweden. The Barents region shares big challenges.
Reconstructing Deconstruction offers a dystopic view on the city of Kirkenes – but not necessarily a negative one. By visualizing negative development we address emotions which, in return, can work as an eye-opener and catalyst for the right questions about responsibility for places, its maintenance, deconstruction and the possibility to avoid it.
Pikene på Broen AS
Storgata 8
Kirkenes Norway
+47 78 99 38 79
www.pikene.no
pikene@pikene.no
