(2023-)
Remains of the bunker structures from the second world can be found everywhere along the Norwegian coastline. I have always considered them an accepted part of the coastal landscape. When I was a child, the kids in my street played in the bunkers on the hillside right behind our street, and there are multiple sites of such bunkers close to where I lived then, and, also to where I live now. Furthermore, the bunkers fit perfectly with my interest for artificial landscape structures and how they merge with the ever-existing natural landscape around us. In Norway, the bunkers were often made to be unnoticed in the first place, as they were fitted into the coastal rock landscape. In Denmark, they are the opposite; brutally different from the soft sand on which they stand.
Even if their shapes are often alienating in themselves when studying them too closely, they are still largely accepted as a part of the contemporary landscape. Hence, I wanted to explore and focus on this aspect of the bunkers: How they have become a natural part of the original landscape, or not. Following that thought and seeing how they are sometimes overgrown by nature and, not just accepted, but also used by people to their advantage, my focus also includes the questions of how they are sometimes being reclaimed by nature, or not; and how they are part of contemporary life, or not.
The Atlantic Wall is the name given to the extended system of defensive structures and fortifications along the coast of Norway and most of West Europe at the time they were built. My project focuses on the remains of defensive structures in the southern part of Norway, and on the west coast of Denmark.
© Anette Nordskog