Sensitive mapping
This map shows an enlarged ‚camp area‘, as we understand it: a territory of experiences. The way to draw the map is based on the landscape‘s diversities. The variation in the textures represents also our emotional involvement. This map translates not only pure informations, but wants to give an idea of our contact with the reality there.
LANDSCAPING a cultural affected, subjective perception
Thurid Andreßen, Christine Guérard, Julia Hutzler, Stephan Fiebig
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Ut-Haugan. Family Vodahl provided food to prisoners who have stopped at the farm. Aust-Haugan. Family Augdahl‘s home. Mrs Magda Augdahl and her family connected prisoners and their families (she received and forwarded letters and packets). Harbour Gustad, a farm where prisoners worked. We know that almost one of the prisoner secretly met his family there. Falstad „the upper farm“. Employees helped prisoners. Falstad concentration camp, main building. Quarry Ms Borghild Bjorghum‘s home. She had a grocery store and also operated the phone switchboard. Kjolen, a farm and a forest where prisoners worked. Railroad station
Workplaces outside of the camp and helpers / 10 000
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Norwegian Jews were treated very bad. They weren’t allowed to have any contact with others. They used to live in the cells by themself without daylight. For working they were sent to the quarry and were forces to carry stone to one place and bringing them back. Women, mostly because of their political attitude, were imprisoned in the main building. They had to do the house work and it was forbidden for them to have any contact to male prisoners. Prisoners of war, sowjets, former yogoslavs had to stay in the barracks or sometimes in the area of the camp. They were seen as dangerous. They had to dig the graves in the forest. Hostages and male political prisoners had much more possibilities of physical freedom. Because of their physical mobility, they could buildt up an illegal camp administration and bring news from the outside. There are stories were guards helped prisonners getting in contact with their families, or they had a ‘frindely’ behavio to some of the prisoners. Some of them were just very brutal and mean. People from the village helped smuggling letters and others things. Some cared for prisoners’ families which went to Falstad and couldn’t reach their relative. Sometimes they rusk their own lifes. different categories of prisoners/ involved persons and their contacts with/on Falstad’s territory
„And the choices that each one made of their life and themselves was authentic, since it was done in the presence of death.“ Jean-Paul Sartre, engraved on the Mémorial de la déportation, Paris
The meaning of freedom
The prisoners were separated in groups depending on their cultural or political backgrounds, which implicated different enclosures and thus unequal possibilities of contact with the outside. This entailed a diverse perception of their physical boarders - and also on their threat of freedom. Realising that it is also valid for the guards and the people living around Falstad mainly, the existentialist point of view and the phenomenology influences our project. Due to the fact, that the prisoners worked at a lot of different locations, the camp has to be understood like a constellation of sites.
LANDSCAPING a cultural affected, subjective perception
Thurid Andreßen, Christine Guérard, Julia Hutzler, Stephan Fiebig
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Prisoners were transported regulary through the fjord. At the end of the WWII, several corpes from the forest were sunk there.
Some prisoners did have a direct contact with the inhabitants, working in their farms, fields and forests. They received help there.
farm s‘ smells sounds of workers
More of 200 prisoners were executed there. The way between the camp and the Falstad forest wasn‘t desperately rarely the last one. taste of fresh clear water running water
pucked fruits‘ flavour warmth and growls from animals seasickness
sounds of boats
ringing from animals‘ bell
sap‘s smell clawing branches
sound of the water between the stones
forest‘s crown stroking taste of the wild fruits
smoke from burning garbage
sea smell of the fjord
wind through the ferns cracking boles
colour and smell of the vegetable garden
waves
lapping water
salty haze
metallic sounds of the tools
hum of a tractor
waves meeting the cliff
spreadings‘ odour
touch of the treebark needle on the floor
sound of falling leaves
smell of fresh cut grasses water leaking throught the shingels
rain on the surface
sunbeam on the face warbling birds
wind throught the grasses
steps sinking in the sand muffled sounds
smoke of burning leaves
feet‘s tracks
still water
appearance of the sky
caress of the corncob on the legs
smells from the kitchen
Most of the prisoners arrived at the train station. On the way they took to join the camp, they saw the whole landscape surrounding and probably also inhabitants.
smell of woodfire wood houses cracking
pool of water‘s sound under the feet
playing children screaming
sticking muddy textures odour of stagnant water
Landscaping
This project is about the decentralisation of the memory space to a network, including the landscape, omnipresent. The camp and the history‘s places will be widened to the places of arrivals, of working, of exchanges, of meeting, of dying... The pathway will be on its own, playing with the visitors, ticking his interest, because it is opening his perception. Some „choreographic objects“, spread consciously on the way, will offer to the visitors practical ressources for their actions and engage at the same time his capacities of expression. From this exchange, intimate and generous, physical and sensorial, ensue dialogues with others visitors or with people of Falstadsenteret.
LANDSCAPING a cultural affected, subjective perception
smells from mosses
sounds from the railway
flowing water traffic‘s humming noise feets‘ slamming on the asphalt warmth‘s radiation from the bitume
Thurid Andreßen, Christine Guérard, Julia Hutzler, Stephan Fiebig
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Choreographic object 1
The pathway will be punctuated with objects, sculptural architectures. It should be understood like ‚choreographic landscaping‘. Like spatial allegories, each architectural gestures will influence the body of the observer. These contacts between the object and the body will activate the mechanism of perception, sensation and then memory. The quality of each architectural object will be found in the quality of visual expression, but also in transmission through other senses, as a good balance between demonstration and imagination. These objects will be developed during an Open Call within Norway, but also of the countries been involved. This competition will be used as ‚tool‘ to include participation in our work. It is important for us, that the place and the subject will be discuss with all people concerned, and not only from one point of view. It is a good chance to integrate the acceptance and processing in incur. The choreographic object we propose is the `first step‘ for the `choreographic landscaping`. It defines the entry of the center. Its first well seen gesture is the welcome gesture, nearly as a signal. While coming closer, the visitor has to decide between a comfortable walk along the shiny black painted object, reflecting the surrounding landscape. Or the visitor takes the object itself and walks through two wooden walls which are nearly closing towards the courtyard. It gets very narrow on a certain point but at the very end, the visitor could see the tree in the reflection of the wall. This tree survives to all stories of Falstad and is nearly the only visible trace left. But for us a tree is also a symbol of life and freedom.
LANDSCAPING a cultural affected, subjective perception
1 The structure of the site, with the two rows of trees, used usually to underline an entrance, guides us to a first wall. 2 The two entrances, on each side of the north side of the building, attract us, but they are closed. 3 Finally, a board signalize us the way to follow. 4 The part let for the cars is disproportionate compared with the building. 5-6 We want to produce a dynamic, from inside to outside - guide the people and bring them inside. From outside to inside - to take the element of mapping (landscape and history) and bring it inside. We tent to put the tree in evidence, which lived during all the different periodes and to create a structure able to attract and guide. 7 Our intervention catches attention before all the other structures on site...
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Thurid Andreßen, Christine Guérard, Julia Hutzler, Stephan Fiebig
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