After a long trip through the north of Norway it was a special experience to cross the historical borders of Norway and Russia, where you immediately feel the huge culture difference in these two countries. Suddenly we were in Nikel, and all its cruel presence of industry touched every sense of my body. I even felt how the ground collapsed under my feet when I was walking around in this wasteland.
With my mind full of thoughts around the question of the embodied beauty of Nikel, we went into the bus and kept on driving to Murmansk…
When we were approaching Murmansk we drove with the view over the city for a long time, and I instantly felt like I was in a movie where machines had taken over the city. I was entering the Machineworld.
With every inhale I took I could feel the breeze of coal and the pollution hovering around in the air, I felt how my lungs filled up with toxic waste. Even the colours around me seemed diffused because of the pollution.
The sounds around me were not pleasant, but bursts and boom noises from the machines on the harbor. I can hardly remember hearing an animal sound, nor the sound of the sea that the people in the city should have access to. I felt like the machines had placed people and all living things in an “appropriate” place for them. Like tools in a toolbox. When looked over the city it looked like the railway and the trains where some kind of border or a barrier between where the machines live and where the people were placed.
“Sight isolates, whereas sound incorporates; vision is directional, whereas sound is omni-directional.”
-Juhani Pallasmaa
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