2 channel video installation, 15:30 min, 4-K, 2026. 1 channel version in production.
Undergrunnsbevegelser (Underground Movements) explores the mapping and archiving of the Earth’s interior, and our relationship to the ground we stand on, through drill core samples. A core sample is a cylindrical sample drilled out of the ground, a vertical cross-section of the Earth’s interior, from a few to several thousand meters deep. The purpose of extracting drill cores is to discover natural resources such as minerals, to map the ground in connection with road and tunnel construction projects and to study geological and climate changes over billions of years.
The landscape around us is perforated. Boreholes left from sampling are everywhere.
When the mining industry started to extract core samples in the late 1800s, they were rarely considered things of value worth preserving beyond their direct, practical use. In the 1990s, Norway’s Geological Survey decided to establish Løkken Drill Core Archive in Trøndelag, realizing the value these core samples represented. Established in a former mining area, the archive constitutes a publicly available national archive of Norway’s geological heritage. Everyone, both in industry and in academia, can contact the archive to have a specific piece of ground surveyed. Today, almost 800,000 metres of core samples from across Norway are stored here.
Paradoxically, given their almost utopic, fantastical role as keepers of history and sources of information, the extraction and systematization of these cores also represent the problematic aspects of our relationship with natural resources.
In the video, core samples are viewed in the context of science, language, science fiction, religion and mythology. Recordings were made in locations including Løkken Drill Core Archive in Trøndelag, the core sample depository of Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (a coal mining company), Svalbard museum, the Geological Museum in Oslo and the University of Oslo.
Video still