Catalogue > At random

In the mountains and valleys of Sokndal, Norway, the BlackRock(US)- owned mining company Titania AS extracts the mineral ilmenite to create titanium white pigment. Sokndal is the most mined area in Norway, starting from the 1800's. Most of the region's inhabitants work in the mining industry. Titania A/S's quarry, based on open pit mining, is the world's largest ilmenite deposit, accounting for ten percent of the world's production. The black rock ilmenite-noritt is turned into titanium white pigment through different processes and branded as a product with "maximum whiteness". It is in everything from paint, paper, toothpaste, food, medicine and more. Hansen and Lie interacted with the landscape over several months and talked with many locals closely linked to the industry and the geography. Included in the film are a local activist who has taken action against Titania's waste dumping in the ocean, Titania's retired former geo-engineer, and a local mountain guide who knows the landscape and history like the back of his hand. 'Moving Mountains' follows traces of past and present mining in the landscape. While following the interventions in the landscape, the film asks how humans could act as supporting characters where the landscape is the protagonist.

The practice of artist and filmmaker Nanna Elvin Hansen (b. 1989, DK) moves in the murk between art and activism. Building audio and film projects via local, collaborative processes, her works unveil structural violence that impacts on human rights and displacement. Hansen graduated the School of Media Arts at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2021). In 2015, she co-founded the collective project The Bridge Radio. Through their artistic work, Ase Brunborg Lie (b. 1983, NO) challenge societal and built structures, point out blind spots in the present and past and investigate how to create in the social, political and ecological present for a possible future. Site specificity, cross-pollination and critical reading of established histories are premised on queer/feminist and post/decolonial thinking, and often include collaboration with researchers, local initiatives, other artists/musicians/architects and others.