PRESS PLAY/ scroll down
by
janne flora
kristian krarup frandsen
martin demant frederiksen
anders sybrandt hansen
maria elisabeth louw
rasmus kryger mondrup
regine skotte ryttov
sofie aarup vestergaard
nina holm vohnsen
the project brings together ethnographic cases from denmark, georgia, greenland, finland, low-earth orbit, kyrgyzstan, norway, sweden and taiwan
we depart from the fact that numerous countries have responded to the ongoing war in ukraine by focusing on the potential of escalation, for instance through military rearmament.
such political decisions are based on speculations about what the relation between russia and its surroundings might be in the years to come, and can be seen as anticipated futures that work back on the present in very concrete ways
but how do similar forms of speculation take place on the level of everyday life, which forms do they take, with which consequences? and what do they look and sound like in comparison comparison?
this site intervweaves some of the first sounds, images, texts and drawings from the project
georgia. october 2025
none of us have slept much during the last days and nights. we sit huddled up together on the couch in the apartment in tbilisi. he has his computer on his lap, the digital audio workstation open. ‘hum something’, he says. ‘what?’. ‘just anything’.
it’s early afternoon. people are lying in their beds or on their couches across the city. exhausted. catatonic. protests aginst the pro-russian government has been ongoing for a year by now.
for a while i dont say anything. i’m suddenly not sure whether i know how to hum. we did i last hum? do i ever hum?
i must have, surely. but not here, and certainly not recently. it hasn’t been a humming kind of place. it has been eerily silent lately, as if nothing has happened
even the revolution didn´t take place
greenland. may 2025
in ittoqqortoormiit, speculation is part of daily life. futures both near and distant; press in on a landscape already marked by the past. the war in ukraine and the united states’ renewed attention to greenland thus add new layers to an older story, one shaped by shifting national borders, colonialism, and outside interests, and one which is part of greenland’s own long work toward independence from the danish realm.
time lies exposed. rusting remainders of american weather stations linger in the nearby qinngaaiva (walrus bay) are reminders of earlier conflicts and alliances. nearby, weathered survey stakes placed near the large rock between town and the now forcefully depopulated uunarter (kap tobin), outlines bygone plans of a future airport. still visible enough to imagine a buzzling future of tourism and moving ittoqqortoormiit closer to the rest of greenland, and weathered enough by the passing winters, to cast disappointment, dismay, if not outright distrust. between what was once here and what might one day become, residents navigate a space where abandoned structures and unbuilt infrastructure coexist as parallel forms of speculation.
four phones take up space on the table in nurbek’s living room. i don’t know much about phones, but i imagine the oldest amongst them – with a heavy metallic receiver – to date back to his youth in the 1950s. then there is another stationary one, in red plastic and with a rotary dial which i suppose is from the 1970s or 80s. there is a push button nokia and, finally, a new smartphone which he is still learning how to use. nurbek says they are all still in use.
there is nothing superfluous in nurbek’s apartment, and everything is in its proper place so that he can move around his 86-year-old body which sees poorly and walks with the help of a pair of crutches, without hurting himself or damaging anything.
the first time i heard the sound was in the fortress and museum island, suomenlinna. the sound was vague and distant, yet unmistakable. a thud moving echoing through the damp sea breeze. war is upon us, i thought to myself. noone around us seemed to notice; neither did my partner. it can’t have been war then. i stood still for a moment to see if any additional sounds would respond to the thud. nothing. we went on with our business.
a few weeks passed before i heard the sound again, this time in the city centre. again, no one in the busy streets seemed to stop or look up from their everyday lives. the sound now transformed into a more urban environment, was slightly louder and a bit more crisp – probably, or so i assume, due to the wind direction and the air humidity. it had also gained a new characteristic, as it filled the streets of downtown helsinki. as if blending perfectly with the sounds of a bustling nordic metropolis. i had since discovered, that the sound came from artillery practice at the garrison in the opposite side of the bay, who shot at their target on an designated island some many kilometres down the coast. for only a moment, the sound of military practices had occupied the busy everyday conundrum of downtown helsinki. and no one seemed to notice.
“i really feel like loosing myself in a fiction”, bercu tells me at the military training area this sunday afternoon in may. “i’m really yearning that”, he continues, “to be an actor in a fiction. to actually not represent the truth but the product of my head”.
he takes a sip from my water bottle while I ask him what it means to work with fiction. “fiction”, he says, “that’s giving our hands the power to shape a reality that is otherwise impossible”. and so we began loosing ourselves in a science-fiction set in 2110. he a reporter from the future and I a command center.
me: what year is it?
bercu: 2110.
- where are you?
- i think I’m in a location called gotland, command centre.
- what do you know of this gotland?
- according to my observations, i observe metal containers torn by strong shell. strong compared to the available ammunition in the year of 2024. according to my analysis, this bunker has been used by the defending forces. and a huge amount of ammunition was used to tear through the metal walls. i understand that no one survived.
think of a coin. it reflects blinking lights as it keeps spinning around and around. it could be about to fall in a moment and pin the future. but, on edge, it just keep spinning. lisa and i are sitting in a pair of comfortable armchairs. to my left the stairs go down to the library-entrance, and to my right I can see shelves of russian, very colourful, books which i deem to be children’s stories. the coin is a good image, lisa begins, because… nothing is determined, for better or worse, and sometimes it could be nice with some predictability in society. to know in what direction we headed.
at the edge of northern norway, squeezed in between finland and russia, there is an acknowledgement of the possible negative turn that the geopolitical situation might take. as a consequence, lisa notes, we are building up the military defence to strengthen the borders. borders that closed after the full-scale invasion in 2022, followed by shops closing down and disappearances of civil jobs. lisa briefly turns her face against the windows. now the public debate is circling around what we no longer have, she continues, accompanied by a loss of faith in the future which is tied to something that no longer exists. if you are to understand our time and the future, she continues, you need to understand the different stories about what has happened in this area. because it might continue to happen, there are echoes of former cross-border collaborations, for example when the military employees drop of their children at kindergarten in the care of russian citizens, and at work they shake hands with a fsb border guard – although prepared to take the guard’s life if the situation requires so. lisa looks at me as if over a pair of glasses; it is not that she is afraid, she emphasise. we don’t feel threatened up here, but we are afraid of the rural depopulation. with the lack of russian people traveling across the border and the geopolitical situation, sør-varanger has lost its identity as the border-bridging peace-project it used to be, leaving a directionless movement of attempts towards development. everyone seems to wait, silently pondering; what now? tourism? military city? did our collaborations even matter or did we act as naïve putin-puppets?
the coin is not falling. It keeps spinning, and spinning, and you get the sense of it being stuck in this movement of nothing happening. a sort of stillness is humming in that monotone movement, marking the continuum of various outcomes sustained in possibility.
“bang, bang, bang, bang”. the echoing sound of shouting voices cuts through the otherwise seemingly peaceful summer day. a large military helicopter flies low overhead. hair flutters gently. a cacophony of sounds. if you turn around and exclude the sounds, the purple lupine field in which we are lying in resembles a painting from the golden age. the birds fly away in fear, and i wonder how any creature can live in this inferno. is this what you think about when you are at the front? a voice behind me shouts: "we are shooting at suspected enemies. we don't know what's out there. fire!”. we continue to shout: ’bang, bang, bang, bang".
‘who is the enemy?’ i ask a soldier after the exercise. ‘we don't really concern ourselves with that. we just have a task to complete. wut, of course, we all know who we think the enemy is.’. it is evident that we all understand this as russia. together with a unit of the danish home guard, i am on exercise in a danish military field. it is an exceptionally warm day. the soldiers have been preparing to fire live ammunition all day, and the patience is slowly running out. i suspect that it will be the highlight of the trip. the faces around me are painted dark green from the camouflage provided by the home guard. we are sitting in uniforms against the trees in the coniferous forest, taking a break. there is an overwhelming smell of gunpowder and monster energy drinks. a loudspeaker plays techno music, and the atmosphere is light and friendly. a sense of excitement is building; soon, live ammunition will be fired. many of the soldiers are close friends privately, and the conversation moves casually between internal ‘masculine’ jokes and serious talk. ‘you could say that we are preparing for a future that we hope will never happen,’ says a younger man. another man interrupts: ‘i don't equate what we do with war. i mean, i know that if, if, if there is war in denmark, then we must get going.’ the others around us fall silent and listen carefully. techno music functions as a background soundscape. a third man interrupts and explains that to him it's about keeping everything at arm's length, ‘otherwise you can't function. you'd have to be completely crazy to sign up for this and not think about what it could mean. if you just think it's just a game, you are completely crazy. you must keep everything at arm’s length so that you don’t become scared or take all of this too seriously”. other soldiers nod. “but there is also a sense of protection”, a broad soldier, a little older than the others, explains. “in the beginning i thought a lot about becoming a soldier voluntarily to protect denmark. now it is more about protecting my family. i don’t want to be one of those who doesn’t know what to do or how to protect your family or neighbourhood in case of a crisis”. the nods around me reveal a consensus. you need to be prepared for an uncertain future.
“damn that was awesome!”. the mood is euphoric after today's highlight. white smiles spread across green faces. my ears are ringing after the many shoots of live ammunition, but the soldiers don’t seem to care. the sun is setting; it is getting late. a reddish-orange sky opens before us. after having been highly focused in the latest exercise, the soldiers now share a friendly break. while walking in the orange forest a soldier explains to me: “honestly, we are just playing war. it is sort of a game. but it is constantly with a backdrop of seriousness and solemnity. what if”.
the project is funded by auff: aarhus university research foundation