2022

Return to Nature?
The Transformation of a Post-Coal Mining Landscape

Artica Svalbard is proud to announce our major programme event for 2022: Return to Nature? The Transformation of a Post-Coal Mining Landscape.

Lying at the head of Van Mijenfjord in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Sveagruva was one of the largest underground coal mines in Europe. In 2017, after almost 100 years of coal production, Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani embarked on one of the most ambitious environmental projects in Norwegian history. Their goal - To end mining operations, remove all traces of mining activity and return the area to its natural state.

In 2022 Artica Svalbard will collaborate with LPO Arkitekter and UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Arts, landscape architecture programme. Combining both our annual Artica Listens event and Artica Writings essay series we will offer a platform for leading experts from the Nordics in architecture, ecology, archaeology, history and the arts to discuss the Svea project and related issues.

How do you protect and restore nature and the landscape after extraction? 

What was there before, how has it changed and what will be left behind? 

How do you ‘clean-up’ without compromising cultural heritage? 

What would it look like if we worked with nature and design to help solve some of these issues? 

The Return to Nature? programme will include:

Artica Listens - A live public symposium with guest speakers will take place at The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Arts in Tromsø on 16th September 2022 from 09:30 - 17:00.

Artica Writings - Our annual commissioned essay series, inviting leading experts to discuss the Svea project and related issues will be published in Norwegian and English on our website throughout the year. The first essay by Svalbard based architects Ingvild Sæbu Vatn and Lilli Wickström (LPO Arkitekter) is now available to read here.

We are very pleased to share the full list of guest speakers for the symposium:

• Thomas Juel Clemmensen, is Professor of Landscape Architecture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and Head of the landscape architecture programme at the Academy of Arts in Tromsø. He holds a Master and a PhD in Architecture from the Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark. Thomas is a member of the Association of Danish Landscape Architects and has worked in landscape architecture and urban planning for more than twenty years.

• New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė) is a platform that looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth's surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining and acts of counter prospecting. Their work has been shown nationally and internationally, including SIART Bolivia International Art Biennial, Artists’ Film International Season 7, organised by Whitechapel Gallery; Toronto Art Biennial; SeMA Seoul Museum of Art; On Earth, Structure and Sadness, at Serpentine Galleries, UK; the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design, Stockholm; Swimming Pool: Troubled Waters, at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Lofoten International Art festival LIAF 2022. Emilija Škarnulytė (born in Vilnius, Lithuania; lives in Tromsø, Norway) and Tanya Busse (born in Moncton, NB, Canada; lives in Tromsø, Norway).

• Maria Jensen, is an Associate Professor in Arctic Geology at The University Centre in Svalbard and Head of the Arctic Geology Department. Maria is a sedimentologist and studies landscape change in the present to learn about time, scale and causes for landscape change in the past and understand the scale and type of changes in the future. Her work is focused on understanding the natural range of variation and the factors that cause change.

• LPO Architects’ Ingvild Sæbu Vatn, from Oslo, Norway, studied architecture at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and has lived in Svalbard permanently since 2011. She is office manager at LPO Architects in Longyearbyen and works with spatial planning, programming, building design, construction and exhibition. She has a large dog team and goes on long trips after work throughout the year. She also loves taking pictures and watching movies. Lilli Wickström is from Oulu, Finland. She studied at Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation in Copenhagen with a master's degree in architecture in extreme environments with a focus on social sustainability, sustainable development and technological solutions. She works at LPO's local office in Longyearbyen with a wide range of projects in all phases and different scales. She is the leader of the Svalbard Sailing Association and enjoys snowboarding in the mountains and exploring her artistic expression through painting, sculpture and cooking in her spare time.

• Kjerstin Uhre,  is an Associate Professor in landscape architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø and a partner at Dahl & Uhre Architects, who have received awards for their urban and built projects. She took her diploma in architecture at Bergen School of Architecture. Her PhD thesis -  Perforated Landscapes, contested prospects in Sápmi - is associated with Future North at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Through her landscape studio teaching, she explores together with students how Arctic and sub-Arctic world experiences can renew approaches, practices and methods in the field of landscape architecture. 

• Anatolijs Venovcevs, is a PhD candidate in the Institute for Archaeology, History, Religious Studies, and Theology at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway as part of the project Unruly Heritage: An Archaeology of the Anthropocene. His current research focuses on 20th-century single industrial mining communities in northern Russia, Norway, and Canada and most recently he co-edited a special issue Living with Heritage: Involuntary Entanglements of the Anthropocene in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology. He works within contemporary archaeology, industrial and historical archaeology, historical geography and GIS (Geographical Information System). Anatolijs likes long walks through beautiful landscapes devastated by modernity.

Images courtesy LPO Arkitekter