Stranger than Paradise is a project about a feeling of estrangement and tension in my perception of the Norwegian landscape. After many years abroad, I find that I see the landscape I grew up in with different eyes. I have often been asked about the reason why I moved back to Norway, and as I find it difficult to give a short and clear answer to this question, I am always tempted to give the same answer, which, I think, contains everything: have you seen Stranger than Paradise by Jim Jarmush? But unfortunately, most people who ask me don't know Stranger than Paradise. And hence, I feel unable to explain it to them. This missing link in the communication is something I also experience in the landscape. It is familiar, in one way, and yet so strange. It seems like I am in a constant dispute with my Norwegian surroundings.
This work is a result of my constant mode of observing and questioning Norway as it appears to me. It questions the impressiveness of the overwhelming landscape and the freedom connected to it, and focuses on personal perceptions of inaccessibility, decay and and threat as well as aspects of identity linked to who we are and how this connects to the landscape we live in. The project is still in progress.
© Anette Nordskog