tirsdag den 16. oktober 2007

Refshaleøen


Together with the Basic Studies Department of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts we set out to explore Refshaleøen. However, we strayed from our route before we got that far – into an area that can scarcely have a name.

Before that we passed this converse maelstrom: a hole under the water from which water pours out with great force.

This tree is just on the verge of being a public tree, but in general the area is one of the places where one finds most wild apple trees and many different kinds. These were however not terribly good eating apples – yet. Pia did a little further research on apples and polluted sites. Besides the fact that it is important to wash the apples, one should also remember that even if it is not large quantities of poisonous substances that can accumulate in apples, it is also a factor how many one eats.

Sometimes it can be difficult to decide whether one is inside or outside a fence. This is particularly the case in this locality because the transitions from public to private areas are so fluid.

We were kindly invited in to see a demonstration of an art project to recreate a full size Twin Towers in smoke. A gigantic rectangular steel frame mounted with a number of smoke canons is dropped from a height of about 400 meters. The contours of the building will be outlined for a time by the smoke trails.

One’s associations flow freely and sometimes materialise in the best fashion: Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne wrote about maelstroms and mythologised freely on the basis of a real whirlpool off the Lofoten Islands in Norway. Peter Madsen’s self-built submarine makes one think of a realisation of Jules Verne’s twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

We guess that the willow mound at the boundary of the wastewater treatment plant Lynetten has something to do with phytoremediation – a technique that makes use of the ability of plants to remove heavy metals from the soil.

søndag den 9. september 2007

Grøndalskvarteret and further

An investigation of Grøndalskvarteret and parts of Vanløsekvarteret. My idea is that we should begin by walking around on the big site at Grøndalsvænget Allé 13 by Fuglebakken and continue along the railway area past Skolehavene, Flintholm Station and then see where we end. In the spirit of autumn we shall pick berries and fruit that we find on our way. I attach a link to Ungdomshuset’s [The Youth House] website, in which they describe the action that they plan for occupying the house at Grøndalsvænget Allé 13 in October http://www.aktiong13.dk .

The walk is planned by Annette Sletnes

Meeting-point: Fuglebakken Station (by Borups Allé).
Date and time: Sunday, 9 September 2007, 11 am.

We started at Fuglebakke Station, a quite funky piece of DSB architecture and continued along the tracks down to Flintholm Station, which is also quite OK. Between the two stations one can disappear into a green universe.

We thought we had found a cycle trailer in a bush, but it turned out to contain a mobile home complete with a roll mattress and an umbrella, so we put it back and went on our way. A homeless person probably camps here.

Through holes in the fence there is access to G13, which seems formerly to have belonged to Kobenhavns Energi and was a waterworks and a storage site. The place has not long been empty and the buildings are in good condition.

From the top of a building that could easily become a concert hall there is a fine view over the district.

This is a fertile area – a fig tree was growing in the yard. We wondered whether one could build a greenhouse around it so the figs could have time to ripen. Just behind there are the school gardens, and behind the high fences one could glimpse heavily laden apple trees.

Further along the track we found a quite special and well concealed section of allotment gardens.

We were invited in; the tree was full of juicy plums, and we were allowed to pick and eat as many as we wished, but one could hardly see that we had been there when we had finished.

søndag den 5. august 2007

Tømmergraven, Skibbroen, Sydhavn

The next walk will be in a corner of Sydhavn that contains small pockets in which time has stood still with old industrial enterprises in the midst of what is at present one of the city’s most active building areas.

Meeting-point: The roundabout at the end of Fisketorvet.

Date and time: Sunday, 5 August, 3 pm.



The first thing we saw after we went round the corner from the shopping centre was a trailer park of motorhomes. A nice detail was the way in which the concrete pigs had been domesticated by impregnated wooden fences.


We met Hartmut, who has a houseboat moored there, and heard from one of the other residents how land prices had shot up, about how the Port of Copenhagen has sold most of the waterside sites and is doing very little to ensure that there will be a lively harbour environment, and about how ownership rights to the waterside properties are rather complicated.




A little further out we saw this well trimmed lawn with a tower of refuse in the background from Uniscrap..


And a slightly more authentic trailer park atmosphere...



The view says something about the fact that this is where it’s at if one enjoys looking at cranes.



Even before we reached the graffiti wall, we could smell the spray paint – there was a lot of activity.



The soil is polluted everywhere out here, but it must be one of the most beautiful flowering meadows in the middle of Copenhagen.

søndag den 13. maj 2007

Nordhavn

Space is fundamental in any form of communal life. Space is fundamental in any excercise of power. Michael Foucault

Rumours are buzzing about holes in the fence cut by anglers, camping, self-built sheds, architecture like in the picture above and big investment plans.The area by Århusgade comes from landfills around 1900 and has functioned as a combined port and industrial area – for instance the harbour has housed Nordisk Film and the arms factory Dansk Industri Syndikat (The Rifle Syndicate), which was sabotaged during the Occupation.The large landfilled area north of the Free Port of Copenhagen was created with the reception of excavation fill over the last 30-40 years. Here we can still see the great hall that was used for casting the tunnel elements for the Øresund link.

Meeting-point: Nordhavn Station.
Date and time: Sunday, 13 May 2007, 12 pm.

It is perhaps appropriate to start with a strategy that doesn’t work; become part of the surroundings and sit quite still. The consequences of neoliberal urban development are becoming increasingly more obvious: standardisation and social imbalance. The most striking havens face the threat of being cleared by force, but just as many places are being subjected to an ongoing transformation into boring and lifeless suburban extensions.

Now and then the city offers a direct picture or caricature of contemporary developments: at the entry to Nordhavn we find a number of large pension companies, and those who are probably not insured on the other side of the tracks.

There are, however, still many places in Copenhagen that are different and special and have resisted the property market and normalisation. Nordhavn is one of them.

A good example of the unsentimental use of cheap materials. We thought that if it wasn’t eternit, it might well be asbestos sheets left over from a renovation.

Apple trees along the waterside

There were 10-12 of us on the walk – here leaving Kattegatvej. A large part of Nordhavn is industry and fencing. After 9/11 legislation in Denmark was also tightened to the benefit of the police and the detriment of civil rights. One of the measures was the increased screening off of ports and harbours. In certain places one can be charged under the anti-terror laws for climbing over a fence to find a good sport for fishing.

We met a resident of the area who was kind enough to let us in through a fenced-in area after having told us a little about Nordhavn. It is at present owned by the Port of Copenhagen and there is a local plan that stipulates that Nordhavn should be used for harbour-related activities. Some firms are here, however, even though they only import something or other that has nothing to do with the harbour. But if the municipality takes over, and the local plan is changed, anything could happen.

Between roughly 10 am and midday one can buy freshly caught fish – cod and plaice that are still wriggling. Go to the outer pier – it’s worth the walk.