Knutsen, Nils Magne(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2007)
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Abstract:
Knut Hamsuns sterke binding til Hamarøy og Nordland kommer
fram på flere måter i hans forfatterskap. I dette foredraget skal jeg
peke på noen av de trekkene som viser hvordan Hamsun forankrer
sine bøker i et nordnorsk folkeliv og i en nordnorsk dialekt han
kjente fra innsida. Hans solidaritet med landsdelen kom iblant
fram som en ganske aggressiv polemikk mot usynliggjøringa av
Nord-Norge og mot den hovedstads-dominans som var like tydelig
i norsk offentlighet den gang som i dag. Gjennom sine bøker og
artikler bidro Knut Hamsun mer enn noen annen i hans samtid til å
endre det negative bildet av Nord-Norge og nordlendingene.
Denne artikkelen undersøker paratekstens betydning for resepsjonen av den tyske filmen Das Leben der Anderen (2006) som autentisk og dermed som en troverdig fremstilling av historiske hendelser. Artikkelen viser at autentisitet ikke nødvendigvis er en objektiv kategori som kan etterprøves, men like mye en subjektiv følelse av at noe er fremstilt i samsvar med egne erfaringer og opplevelser. For å opprettholde tilskuerens illusjon om å se en autentisk film, brukes det – i tillegg til parateksten – en rekke virkemidler som blant annet skaper en følelse av umiddelbarhet hos tilskueren. Når tilskueren lever seg inn i historien og i livet til hovedpersonene, glemmer han/hun filmmediet og opplever det Owen Evans kaller for ”authenticity of affect”.
This article investigates public architecture in Sápmi from the 1970s until today, with particular emphasis on building materials and their discourse. Although the materials chosen for clothing or for revealed construction follow Nordic and inter¬national architectonic trends, the wood, stone, concrete and glass are ascribed a set of meanings to fit the Sami context. The question is to what degree these materials mediate conventional and even stereotypical understandings of Saminess, or produce awareness of new Sami architecture and identity.
In M. Ju. Lermontov's novel «A Hero of our Time» almost every person
is wearing a «mask», trying to conceal his or her real intentions—or, on
the contrary, taking advantage of the mask, doing or saying things
otherwise condemned by the prevailing social conventions. This paper
offers a brief analysis of the phenomenon and its function in the structure
of the novel.
This essay discusses the Oslo Opera House building designed by Snøhetta (inaugurated 2008) as one of three monumental buildings in EU's Eco Culture Program and a so called demonstration building for ecological solutions in architecture. The most visible result in the Opera building is a large-scale glass wall with integrated solar cell panels, producing electricity as well as providing sun shading. The real ecological values, however, are hardly to be measured in money or watt, nor in reduced emissions or climatic change. This solar wall is first and foremost putting a strong ecological intention on display.
With its giant ecological footprint Snøhetta's building can never be defended within a rational, environmental discourse. It is a contradictory example of sustainable architecture measured up against crucial factors like situatedness, construction and materials, energy consumption and costs. But this spectacular monumental construction which presents a new urban space in a former industrial part of the city, needs to be studied in accordance with deep ecology theories like Félix Guattari's Les trois écologies (1989). Guattari's extended definition of ecology, including sociocultural conditions and human mentality, gives an opportunity to discuss ecology not first and foremost as a rational and ethical challenge in architecture but as an aesthetical.
Knutsen, Nils Magne(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2012)
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Abstract:
In his book from 1865 Johan Kulstad tells the story of a hunting expedition to Spitzbergen in 1853. The mother ship disappears, and in desperation Kulstad and his six men starts rowing their small hunting boat back to Norway. After six days of incredible suffering, they are rescued by a Danish ship a few miles off the coast of Finnmark.
After outlining the main sides of this story, the article comments briefly on the way Kulstad tells his story: There is a mixture of pre-realistic and naturalistic narrative, there is a mixture of genres, and the text is without the heroism which is so prevalent in later Arctic narrative. Interesting detail: The way a Sami member of the
expedition is portrayed.
The Arctic has often been regarded (its various indigenous groups notwithstanding) as a desolate and silent void to be explored and defined by Euro-westerners, usuallyin terms of a masculine competitive ethos and an ethnocentric rhetoric of WesternEnlightenment and progress. Surprisingly, even many Norwegian arctic expeditionsof our own time tend to embody similar narratives of conquest and athletic prowess.Among contemporary North-American writers, however, this kind of discourse isprofoundly questioned, particularly by focusing on the problematic function oflanguage itself in our constructions of the Arctic. This article focuses on three North-American books in which the issue of the Euro-western linguistic appropriation ofthe Arctic, its natural environment as well as its peoples, is a major concern; they areall reflections on the issues of writing and silence with reference to the far north. Thethree books are: Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a NorthernLandscape (1987), Aritha van Herk's Places Far from Ellesmere (1990), and JohnMoss' Enduring Dreams: An Exploration of Arctic Landscape (1996). Central in allof them is the following issue: how to make the wordless landscape or the alienculture speak from under, as it were, the enormous compilation of centuries of Eurowesterntext. The article discusses four major strategies by which these three booksattempt to counteract and subvert earlier Euro-western ethnocentric and monologicnarratives of the Arctic: by the inclusion of feminine and indigenous voices; by thelegitimation of the sensuous life-world of the Arctic itself; by the self-reflexivesubversion of the authority of the language of their own texts; and by the use of astyle of paradox and contradiction. By way of such techniques, the books above try to create more open, dialogic and pluralistic readings of the Arctic.