Formation and Disappearance as Being–in–the–World (original) (raw)
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After having become a part of the Soviet Union territory as a result of the Second World War, Vyborg turned over time from a prosperous second largest city of Finland into a small provincial border town of Russia. The impact of traumatic history, as well as the influence of different cultures on Vyborg, turned it into a kind of palimpsest. The ruins of buildings destroyed during the war are still present in the town, causing ambiguous feelings among the visitors. This study seeks to understand how the presence of the ruins affects the experience of modern Vyborg and how this experience can be understood and transmitted through the practice of contemporary art. This study applies the theories of feminist new materialisms, hauntology and ruins. These theories outline the key concepts, problematise questions of space-time-matter relationship and help to understand the experience of Vyborg. This study approaches the subject with the methodological framework of artistic research. It util...
The bog: living body and narrative actant
CASA 2021 Annual Student Conference Archaeology , 2021
This paper explores the idea of bogs as living bodies and narrative actants, in a liminal context. Analysing two materialities: the Gundestrup cauldron and the Eutin figures, the aim is to answer two questions; 1) what significance do bogs have when it comes to liminality, passage, and transformation, and 2) how can we use the bog as lens to study broad, general social practices? From a relational perspective involving a conceptual framework of actant, liminality, nomadic subject, emotional charge, and mythemes, I argue that bogs play a vital role in burial practices as well as other social practices in Scandinavia and northern Europe during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Considering bogs as bodies, they embody human thoughts, intentions, and perceptions. As such, bogs become not only living 'bodies', but living actants and co-actors in social practices. Based on movement, as common denominator, bogs, and humans are in constant relation and interaction when dealing with birth, life, death, and rebirth. Bogs are also designed as a natural, liminal 'room' involving both an emotional as well as spatial context in the relation to social practices of life and death.