Sofia Sjodin

THE INSTITUTE OF THE ANEXACT

The project addresses ‘the essentially but not accidentally inexact’ that describes a world in flux, where the shifting relationships between humanity and nature defines the contingent conditions of the Anthropocene - a new epoch recognising mankind’s impact on geological processes.

Ten years ago the ground above the world’s largest underground iron ore mine in far north Sweden began to tremble. A landscape formed in the Pre-Cambrian Era, a territory inhabited for 6,000 years and a city founded a century ago are now at threat from the expanding deformation lines. This year marks the initiation of moving the city and a new masterplan sees 18,000 people, buildings and infrastructure moving four kilometres east, leaving behind a landscape of scarred geology, disturbed ecologies and collective memories.

The Institute proposes instead an alternative narrative at the intersection of the geological, ecological, geographical and the human, where people and things co-exist, questioning the very nature of being in the world. A network of stations are constructed at key sites in the landscape, each taking on a specific programme while remaining linked through energy flows and data exchange.

The dispersed architecture of the Institute suggests an unfolding of the boundaries between human and non-human, material and immaterial. In the Anthropocene, where nature is neither an obstacle nor a harmonious other, the Institute sets out to construct an infrastructural architecture that stages an ontological performance between the actors and networks in a re-territorialised landscape.