Paparazzi Ethnography

Above, in the photograph, seated on the left, is Jonathan Stern, with one arm crossed and fingers touching his lips –contemplating the expert commentary of the man holding the microphone — Arild Moe.

Both men are gurus of Russian natural gas development. They are analysts who have known each other — been working with each other — forever. Jonathan, about whom I write in a separate blog, see below, is Director of the Oxford Energy Institute, London. Arild is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, and some say — soon to be Director — at the Norwegian think tank, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, located just outside Oslo, in Lysaker.

I had the opportunity of visiting with Arild at his digs on the outskirts of Oslo, and I am going to write about our meeting now. In fact, on the heels of that discussion, a few weeks later, while in Houston, attending a dinner at the home of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Jostein Mykletun, Ph.D., — his gracious wife Sonia Mykletun (pronounced: moo-kle-TOON), who has been running the Fulbright Scholarship in Norway for some years now, invited me then and there to apply for the Arctic Chair.

The Marvelous Sonia Mykletun, creator of the Norwegian Fulbright Arctic Chair (notice in this image, the size of artwork in the background — forms of distinction making up the time and space experience of diplomatic life — a time-piece Sonia wears, increasingly rare — and seating arrangements, in pairs, facing each other, intensifying face-to-face contact).


In support of the Fulbright application, and as I said, falling on the heels of Arild’s and my unique discussion in Lysaker, Dr. Arild Moe was kind enough to provide me with a support letter for my research in hopes of nailing down the Fulbright award. Of course, at StudioPolar we love to capture the imponderabilia — the little details of events among “high rollers” — as a Calgarian friend likes to refer to such folks, and so I post the letter here as an artifact of Guru Power, pure and simple.

No. 1 — On to Lysaker

Okay, where were we? Oh, right. Visiting the Chalet in Lysaker… Yes. As I was mentioning, I was in Oslo, holed up inside a Hotel near the main square, Rica G 20. There’s an aura about the place…




G 20
















For some hours, perhaps days, I lay on my back, with hands crossed over my chest, in the pine-wood coffin position. An idea came to me quite suddenly, without advanced warning, to get up and telephone Arild off-the-cuff — to inquire whether we might meet. In truth, we had not spoken before, though, I did send him a detailed email to which he did not respond. Also, I did see him from a distance… the previous summer at the Petrosam workshop in Oslo, organized by Econ Pöyry, the “Nordic branch” of the global consulting company Pöyry Plc. The photos above, of Arild and Jonathan Stern, talking about changes to the European gas industry, were taken at Petrosam.


Luckily, Arild invited me for lunch at the institute the very next day, about 30 minutes from downtown Oslo by public transportation.


I hung up the phone receiver and after a few moments, returned to my reclining position. There, I went over the exchange on the telephone. My name, academic affiliation and statements of having received US Science Foundation support to study intermediaries (consultants) involved in natural gas development in the Norwegian-Russian Arctic.

The information caught the attention of my listener. I finished the introduction and waited, silently, perhaps several seconds, and then, began again, this time, haltingly, with gaps and pauses:


“I study intermediary actors…they… They’re successful — in mobilizing expectations among the energy industry’s upstream and downstream communities…. [pause] … And. The complexity and erratic business of gas development in the Arctic… It’s created an economic niche for intermediaries who educate leaders about these spaces of uncertainty.”

And then with increasing rapidity: “And despite the growing importance of intermediaries not much is known about this form of expertise as it relates to Norwegian-Russian Arctic gas development, the precise characteristics of knowledge produced, the kind of influence they exert, or their role in influencing the European gas industry.”


There was a great deal of silence after I spoke, as if Arild was going over the sentences in his mind, rolling them and wondering what’s next, not knowing what my specific request would be. It’s a meeting. To Meet. An invitation To Discuss an Idea.

Arild is calm and quiet spoken. There was not much response really. We exchanged emails so that he could send me specific instructions — which train to take, the need to transfer to a bus, and to walk 10 minutes — in order to arrive at the institute. He ended the conversation abruptly but quietly with the words, “look forward to seeing you tomorrow”.







The soul of a train station: The platform. The feel of time clicking with an almost atomic-clock precision. Every second of delay in arrival and departure schedules reverberates of total banality. And still, a heightened sense of expectation remains over a threshold of departure.

The clock on the platform warning of my late arrival.




Late March and still snow on the outskirts of Oslo.

The institute is located away from a main thoroughfare, in the woods. Walking up toward the driveway, I pass palatial homes, courtyards, fences with electronic security, distance between residences are wide. The neighborhood reminds me of where ambassadors live, or where embassies are located.

I walked along the road continuing past the homes for 10 minutes, just like Arild mentions over the telephone, and conscious now, that I am no longer in a city — where city sounds are now replaced by my breathing and tromping over snow and gravel. There, sooner than I expect, but certainly time enough, the institute takes form, and finally the entrance.

resepsjon





The door opens and I am shown into the reception room. I did not inquire into the history of the building, where the institute carries out its operations.










I was announced — and invited to explore the interior while waiting for Arild….

No. 2 — Interiors

The work of hands.


Imagine entering into a room, and noticing suddenly — without picturing even the outline of a face, the presence of a person — through the image of a type of work they accomplish. In this case, someone earns a living by laying out in an orderly fashion, a stack of newspapers, as one of their daily tasks.



Imagine again selecting one journal, to read. Or flipping through another, and still yet another. Nevertheless, within some shortened period of time, perhaps over the next half-an-hour, each paper that is disrupted, is returned to the table, placed back into an orderly fashion.

Here, as with several offices I visited in Oslo, I became aware that this particular task, of ordering the newspapers daily (hourly), is a vanishing movement, soon to enter into the dustbin of discarded historical practice, forgotten, perhaps without nostalgia. It is a reminder of what remains of an earlier time but that still takes place somewhere as part of someone’s present.


There, the newspapers lay, simply and elegantly.


By its appearances, the building of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute looked to have been built at the turn of the 20th century. The ground floor, at the entrance, there is a spacious hall, a living room with a fireplace, and natural light streaming through long vertical windows. The rooms are laden with dark wooden trim, wooden floors, and banisters.



My first thought from glancing at these rooms was of a nightclub in San Francisco, the Red Devil Lounge.




But also of a dwelling for rock bands of the 1960s, in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the residences of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin– with plaster mold busts of famous heads staring out from the corners of the room and occupants slipping on pogo boots, moving their lips in repetition of the lyrics of songs. Who uses a fireplace to keep warm these days?




It was a space of science, belonging perhaps to a former century.

What a contrast to the spaces of Norwegian think tanks located in downtown Oslo, housed in ultra, ultra modern settings.

Lunchtime takes place at the same hour every day, and staff move tables into position in the main room, where everyone sits together. One staffer provides fresh cut fruit. I noticed all of this, but did not participate, as Arild invited me into the smoking room, for a tete-a-tete so to speak.

No. 3 — tête-à-tête …

Now seated facing each other, with the door to the main room closed, I produced from a worn manila folder, a small, shiny 8″ x 11″ hand out, which I placed on the table and slid to Arild. He looked over the hand out, and I stated in rapid low tones all the necessary details of my research. My fanaticism for the idea. Dispassionate ambivalence combined together with a low intensity of speech, as if delivering an incantation.

Arild held the sheet of paper presenting such details as they pertain to the North American Arctic, and began, in a deliberate manner, to compare themes he recognized between gas development in the Shtokman case, of the Russian Barents Sea area, and the Alaska gas play, on the North Slope.

Oil paintings and wall murals figure prominently at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. Each room has a theme. In the dining area, a long table suitable for serving over 20 persons is flanked by painted walls on three sides, depicting medieval Scandinavian themes — lords in gallant dress mounted upon horses, children with mothers holding hands, on-lookers, young adults, and elderly masters.

In the main drawing room, the image of communitas associated with the dining area– consistent with the carnivalesque period of the medieval era — is thoroughly left behind and instead, replaced by a period of the early modern. Here, the baroque is at work, with its stern Christian ethic and separation of the classes.

I want to compare these wall images now, for a moment —


I want to compare these Work Place Images saturated as they are, with an intensity of cultural form and temporal depth – to compare them with the image that hangs beside the Night Porter at Rica G20. At my hotel, downtown, away from the detached and cloistered natural environment of Lysaker (a workspace of the leisure class), the porter has his very own wall image, an object of representation for him of his surroundings. This image is saturated also with temporal significance, that of urban time – of train schedules, delays, departures, the platform, labor shifts, and of course, money (i.e., quantifiable qualities as expressions of value) — all consolidated in the image of the Wall Clock. Here, mimicry of gesture and formalism are absent — there is no image of gallantry or thrift through which one can identify and model behavior — as is associated at Fridtjof Nansen Institute. The Wall Clock, offers a form of mimicry according to which only time-space discipline is the theme.



















Presidential Timber.

In the room where Arild and I met, I sat directly in front of an image of a man, who stood directly as an image of a tree. Staring at me from Arild’s vantage point, was an image of an early 20th century Scandinavian modern gracing my presence, in imitation of a fir tree.

Arild presented a list of ideas:

• In Russia, power is still centralized where decisions are negotiated in secret (versus in D.C. where decisions are dependent up on three forms – judicial, legislative, executive). From this perspective, the questions that arise surrounding Shtokman do not concern how decisions are made, but when decisions are made.

•  The logic of Shtokman is less concrete than the case for the pipeline in Alaska. Issues concerning arctic offshore in Russia are broader and much more vague. In Alaska, the controversies and issues are fairly concrete. There is a lot of data surrounding pipes, numbers, completion dates, volumes, etc.

• For these reasons above, there is much more uncertainty on Shtokman, and that this uncertainty exists in an earlier state than the Alaska case. Essentially, the Alaska case represents a project located at an entirely different stage of temporality than the Shtokman project.

• In this sense, expertise, an issue that my research is about, expertise in Russia, is primarily concerned with the technical and geological. The Russian research institutes are focused with a clear sense of purpose on this point.

Now, here, is where I had to interject and ask about this last point. If it is true that issues are technical, then what do we make of all the talk by people like Jonathan Stern and Arild himself, on these projects, the sense of expectation etc.?

• We diverted the question to discuss Global Russians, which I had discovered the previous summer from the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, wherein Russians with education from abroad had returned to Moscow and are now working with western financial firms, and providing assessments of the Shtokman project. According to Arild, they have few links and knowledge about the past. That is to say, the overarching decisions are still made by members of the older nomenklatura, all the strategic decisions are their decisions.