{"title":"Mining, Materiality and Memory: Lingering Legacies in Longyearbyen","authors":"Dina Brode-Roger","doi":"10.1558/jca.21643","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"When the old power plant at Longyearbyen on Svalbard in the Arctic was decommissioned in 1983, the building was earmarked for demolition. However, the presence of asbestos made the cost of removal too high and the building remained closed for more than 35 years. Now, its fate is once again being examined. Ideas for its potential future include establishment as an industrial memorial, a site for cultural events, a tourist attraction and/or a monument “of fossilised time”. Questions of which past is to be remembered, which uses are acceptable, which materiality is to be kept – and in what condition – all permeate the project, which is called FOSSIL. This paper examines different aspects of the project from both a material perspective (Identity of Place) and a human perspective (place-identity), bringing up questions of politics of memory, museumification, and the desired and undesired facets of heritage that the project engages with as it shapes the power plant’s (re)incarnation.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.21643","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHAEOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
When the old power plant at Longyearbyen on Svalbard in the Arctic was decommissioned in 1983, the building was earmarked for demolition. However, the presence of asbestos made the cost of removal too high and the building remained closed for more than 35 years. Now, its fate is once again being examined. Ideas for its potential future include establishment as an industrial memorial, a site for cultural events, a tourist attraction and/or a monument “of fossilised time”. Questions of which past is to be remembered, which uses are acceptable, which materiality is to be kept – and in what condition – all permeate the project, which is called FOSSIL. This paper examines different aspects of the project from both a material perspective (Identity of Place) and a human perspective (place-identity), bringing up questions of politics of memory, museumification, and the desired and undesired facets of heritage that the project engages with as it shapes the power plant’s (re)incarnation.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to explore archaeology’s specific contribution to understanding the present and recent past. It is concerned both with archaeologies of the contemporary world, defined temporally as belonging to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as with reflections on the socio-political implications of doing archaeology in the contemporary world. In addition to its focus on archaeology, JCA encourages articles from a range of adjacent disciplines which consider recent and contemporary material-cultural entanglements, including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, design studies, heritage studies, history, human geography, media studies, museum studies, psychology, science and technology studies and sociology. Acknowledging the key place which photography and digital media have come to occupy within this emerging subfield, JCA includes a regular photo essay feature and provides space for the publication of interactive, web-only content on its website.