tupilakosaurus - Print matters!

Skandinaviamiit. 1998
vik Skandinaviamiit suliarigamiuk
qeqqanit isikkiveqarneq avammut killinganut
inissippaa taamaalilluni pisinnaasai
tamakkerlugit. Una tikillugu
tamaat isigisinnaanera malugitillugu
misissorsinnaalerlugulu, isikkivimmiit
tamakkiisumik takusaqarsinnaaneq
isikkivimmit assiliinikkut qanoq
pilersitaanera. Illoqarfik naammaannartutut
isikkulik assilissani tallimani
qalipaateqanngitsuni takutinneqaraluartoq
sunniunnera tammanngilaq,
immaqa nuiapiluit illoqarfiullu avammut
ersikkunnaalernerata killingani
malunnarnerpaajulluni. Killingusaap
titarneraniit tamanik takunninnermik
takorluugaq siammartarpoq, tigullutit
illoqarfiullu avataata tungaannut
pulatillutit.
Ullutsinni assiliisutit digitalit amerlanerit
isikkivimmik assiliisinnaapput,
isikkivinnillu assilisat nittartakkami
angalallutik, taama assilisat tamani
tamaanersut takuneqarsinnallutik.
Tamanna taama annertutiginngilaq,
Arkep 1998-mi Isikkivik Skandinaviamiit
assiligamiuk, taamaalilluni
assilialiornikkut nutaalioriaatsip
takkutilerneranik aamma malussaataasinnaalluni,
tassa kinaluunniit
sumiluunniit imminut qitiusutut
takorloorluni saqqummersitsisinnaalerluni,
ulluinnarni inuunerup illoqarfinnilu
pingaannginnerusuni nalunaajaatit
nittartakkani allaaseriffinni,
Facebook-imi aamma Twitter-imi
amerlaqisut ikkussuunneqartarlutik.
Søren Bro Pold
Pia Arke. Scandinavian Panorama. 1998
In his The Arcades Project the
German philosopher-sociologist
Walter Benjamin describes
how the panoramas of the 19th
century are an attempt at bringing
the country into the city – to
see the city as a landscape. The
panoramas began to appear from
the beginning of the 19th century
at a time when cities like Paris,
Berlin and London had become
so large that one could no longer
get an overview of them. The
major cities had lost their locus
and were spreading out more and
more and faster and faster as a
result of industrialisation and
the development of the infrastructure.
The panoramas were
therefore established in response
to this increasing complexity, in
which it became increasingly difficult
to actually see the city. As
a medium for obtaining an overview
at a time when the overview
had been lost. As a way of capturing
the intoxication and dizziness
of the overview and bringing it to
the mass audiences of the city.
Pia Arke’s Scandinavian Panorama
consists of five black-andwhite
photographs, which were
reproduced on five front pages of
the Danish Literary Magazine
Standart during 1998, so that
the entire volume formed the
panorama. Arke’s panorama,
however, is different from the
original panoramas, which
established symbolic, mediated
overviews of the city. Where
the original panoramas denied
the overflow of the city into the
neither-nor of the suburbs, she
chose precisely to focus on a suburban
space of this kind. Instead
of taking her picture from a wellknown
and established point
of vantage, she takes it from a
random rooftop in the Scandinavian
periphery. Rather than
endowing the urban space with a
centre, her picture demonstrates
the artificiality of the centre and
of the overview.
In her work Arke often reflected
critically on the technology of
photography and the making of
pictures in such a way that she
opened up the technology at the
same time as she confronted
the camera with new motifs.
An example that comes to mind
is her “pinhole” pictures, for
which she built a camera casing
so large that she could be inside
it herself and thus obtain a
print of her body on the picture.
With Scandinavian Panorama
she places the panorama’s
overview in the periphery and
thereby challenges it to the
utmost. To the point where one
can both sense the overview
and investigate how the overview
is created as a product of
the panorama. In spite of the at
first sight uninteresting urban
space depicted in the five blackand-white
photographs there is
an effect, perhaps most closely
localised in the area between
the dramatic clouds and the
suburb’s disappearance. From
the line of the horizon the illusion
of overview will unfold,
grip you and draw you into the
suburb’s urban space.
Today most digital cameras
have panorama functions, and
the panorama photograph flourishes
on the Internet, where
you can find panorama pictures
of just about any small town or
suburb. This wasn’t so much
the case in 1998 when Arke
photographed Scandinavian
Panorama, which can therefore
also be seen as foreshadowing
an era of the media in which
any-where and any-body can
form an illusory centre in their
own medium bubble, and in
which testimony from everyday
life and the provinces is posted
on a large scale in blogs, Facebook
and Twitter.
Søren Bro Pold
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