One of the highest peaks in Stockholm is the Vårberg mountains. Designed by Holger Blom in the shape of a massive amphitheatre. Man-made by demolition materials from the city center and expanding subway system in the 60s and 70s. A period in time when immense social and urban transformation was conducted and debated in Sweden as abroad. When a long chain of events led the government in Stockholm to wipe out large parts. Replacing its gaps after some years with mainly banks, offices, shopping centers. Big, high, square. The Trumpet Blows, some were called. The Vårberg peaks got covered in soil from many directions, a flora and fauna that was versatile originated with time. A landscape that both feels charged somehow and of indifference today. They also work as ruins, a material testimony of transgression and rebirth one could say. Created oblivion? The term agnosis (latin - not knowing) early entered my research, described as a political tool of using conscious actions to make us forget. To replace the old with the new, to cover up, to lose history. To make it fast so we don’t get too sentimental about our cities and places of belonging.  

A city resembles a stage in some ways. A shape shifting scenography that we are required to follow. We create so much matter and trails with every shift, geological as social. I need to re-visit some of these remnants I notice. Like a strain cat. Why I wonder? Maybe to make meaning of it all. To understand our drive to make things fall apart and wonder again.

Here I wanted the mountain's origin and life to physically affect the material. To make a document of some of us that exists here today alongside these passings and visions about Stockholm; A new city for the new man, as it was spelled out some decades ago, when parts got demolished and others shaped.  

The films presented here have been processed by hand with plants from the mountains that’s been harvested during their cycle from May to August.  Clover, rosehips, apples, nettles, elderflowers... During the beginning of summer the tone gets ochre or light pink when I pour the boiling water on them. Towards the end of summer the nuance resembles umbra, like the soil itself.  

Landskap med solar (Landscape with Suns) lends its title from the poet Tranströmer (1931-2015), a poem he wrote after a seizure and writer's block that deals with disrupter and continuations. The beauty and hardship in that. I think about crisis as a recurring narrative of our time but also of all our personal lives. The feminist thinker and historian of science Donna Harraway, speaks in relation to our alarming present  about the responsibility to never think it's too late. What is left already carries the seeds to endless possibilities and places that we can only reach through unexpected collaborations and combinations. We must become with each other, otherwise not at all, she says. A point of view, here presented in pink, purple and blue.


Camera Vladyslav Kamenskyy
Plant developing / editing / sound
Sofia Romberg
Scanning Mutascan Service, Helsinki
Discarded dance carpet from the Royal Opera, 1970s
Photo Jean - Baptiste Béranger