By playing exclusively with ‘found’ footage, like news media, documentaries, web pages, movies, commercials, promotional videos, animations, games, maps, YouTube-videos and local historical material, Ørjan Amundsen explores the term “distance” in a much larger extent than just a space between two geographical points.
Different forms of distances in technical, economic, environmental, cultural, political, historical, and artificial terms can easily be seen between the border towns Kirkenes and Nikel or Zapolyarny. By focusing on these three, rather small border towns, the video work offers a broader spectrum of factual as well as imagined events throughout mutual past, present and future.
These events don’t follow any linear (distance), chronological (time) or evolving (speed) narratives or structures – there is no formula of the Barents, but the video gradually dissolves and then recreates the mathematical relation ‘Distance = Speed x Time’ in a debatable rather than a definite manner. Is the distance between Shanghai and Rotterdam shortened by a potential northern sea-shipping route? Can time be defined by the time spans of decay and does the speed of communication refer to connectivity?