→Oslo →Stockholm

April 6, 2012 by Samantha Catalyst

4/12: Just leaving to the airport, for New York to attend the Oil-Talk Workshop. In the lobby of Nobis Hotel, after having spent several days in Stockholm talking with Nadezhda F. We wandered throughout the city, chatting.

I must have mentioned to Nadia of my interest in the aesthetics of sentiment. Those turns of phrases, glances, hand gestures, by which business becomes something more than abstract exchange, or when information becomes more than knowledge, that is, when the mundane rises to the ideal, laboring in such ways that personal quests arise.

Did I say that Nadezda has familiarity with oil and gas development in the Arctic? In particular, the Barents Sea area? A native speaker of Russian, following the news reports appearing in trade journals– we became acquainted while participating at the Arctic Frontiers Conference in Tromsø earlier this January.

Much of our conversation around Stockholm remained on the tourist level, until we stopped by a hostel for coffee, while enroute to the Grand Hotel for dinner.

It was then, taking a break, and this was on the last day of my visit to Stockholm — having met together earlier, the evening before for dinner and drinks, and earlier the evening before that for wine at Nobis Hotel–that we talked a bit about the question of routine and friendship.

I was interested in such things. Moving around, like we both do, one wonders about routine, who one meets on a weekly basis, talks with about professional, eureka moment issues and the personal. Nadezda is completing a Master’s Thesis at Uppsala University, covering Norwegian-Russian border demarcation issues, and in personal touch on the topic with key persons, e.g., Arild M., Deputy Director at Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, and having worked recently as researcher, at SEI (Stockholm Environment Institute).

There is a bridge that separates the hostel, where we stopped for coffee, from the Grand Hotel. We rested and took a few photos. In the first photo, Nadezda peers at a lock that someone unknown to us has placed on the crown base. In the second photo, I have cropped the first image, to show the lock in relief. Actually, just below the crown there are several locks and silly me, I did not get a photograph of those locks.

I first became aware of the lock-on-a-bridge phenomena in Moscow, on a bridge, where there were gobs of locks, apparently, placed there by blue birds who wish to remain together forever. The image captured our attention. As you might imagine, it is unusual to see this practice on a Swedish bridge with a crown.

Photography of Beatles in a Hotel.

AK, DC, parts of Canada.

Visual perception. So how does a blind man lead.

Access and behavior in a certain way.

My role mediated by my discipline.

Environments of legitimation and distance to the object.

Politics of older economy of power which relates to the body. Personal contact of lobbist, you believe you can influence people.

Knowles became the senator through the speech of experts.

–Are these Haikus? No. Just notes that I was taking while talking with Nadia at dinner, stopping every few minutes or so, interrupting the flow of our conversation in order to make a note on my writing pad. I have little idea what these notes mean now. It is all on the account of my manuscript that I am writing. I take notes, and then set them aside for a convenient time to reflect upon their meaning. Like right now!

I became excited talking about my book. I explained to Nadia all the little details that refer to fleeting phenomena. Did I mention that Nadezda and I had a chance to chat during the ARCTOS sponsored PhD seminar in Svolvaer this past January? We talked about our respective projects, which are quite similar actually, both working on the Barents Sea area.

I should mention here, by the way, that I had been traveling for some time before arriving into Stockholm, and Nadezda guessed that I was pretty tuckered, especially by the way I clung to the couches inside Nobis Hotel. I had to laugh over her concern for me while walking around town, but you never know.
Here is an image of Nadia’s hand as she escalates the stairs for a better view of Stockholm. I followed in curiosity to where the steps lead.

This photo below is of the parliament on the left and a view from the king’s house. The view stretches from left to right:

Perhaps I have little to talk about other than work, and for this reason perhaps, it was good to have the ear of a fellow researcher working in a similar area.

One of the things that struck me as we were talking, is that my Barents Sea project, where I examine natural gas development or conversations on development — the study involves various categories of actors, including experts, journalists, consultants who have conversations with each other, on this very same topic. These conversations take place in various cities across Russia, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Murmansk, but also in Western Europe, in places like London, Oslo, Tromsø, Paris, Berlin, and even in the United States, but primarily Houston, and Washington, D.C.

That is to say, the nature and degree of interdependences holding together a wide spectrum of various people and groups — interdependencies that always require the owners, government, pipeline builders, and so forth, is peripatetic, as issues travel across city to city and announcements take place in various places. An entire following journeys about, journalists, consultants, industry experts traveling from Moscow to London and back again. In this way the arteries connecting the social lives of Western expertise, Russian rule making are not constricted. A process of distancing is taking place, but the constant movement of the proposal prevents the distances from becoming petrified creating an awareness of the networks and entanglements in and through which everyone must act and think.

4/9: The second time this year that I have had to leave Oslo before 5 AM in the morning.

Reading the entire evening, drifting off around 3AM and hearing the buzzer go off at 4AM.

4/8: Tour of the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, and met with H. R., MP, to discuss the topic of High North Strategy. We chat briefly on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ resolution on High North Initiatives and project cooperation with Russia.

There is a funding program, for example, through the Norwegian Research Council to develop strategic competence in Norway through building networks with international research communities.

Throughout the dialogue, Russia emerges as important to Norway as neighbour and global actor, requiring study of new knowledges, foreign policy of special relevance to High North/Arctic with interests of China: security, energy, climate research, sea routes in the Arctic.

Key actors and institutions in Russia, et cetera and so on.

Back at the hotel reworking a Norwegian Research Council grant, sending it off to Sidsel S., U Tromsø, Dept. Anthropology for her review. And reworking a book chapter for an edited volume, Cultures of Energy.