The City of N

OLGA & ALEXANDER FLORENSKY
St Petersburg
Installation made out of found objects, 2009

The City of N invites to a discussion on urbanism in the Barents Region. The definitions of what a city is vary widely within the four nations. How will you compare a town in Northern Norway with some thousands of inhabitants and a Russian town with population of some hundred thousands? The installation is an inventory of town elements. It consists of objects representing various public buildings that one finds in a typical town: Town hall, Railway station, Church, Bell tower, Theatre, Fountain, Palace, Monument, Obelisk, Fire station, Post office, TV tower, Water tank, Factory, Lighthouse, Observatory, and Prison.

The City of N is part of a big project entitled ‘UNIVERSAL MUSEUM OF WILHELM WINTER’. This multi-part, long-playing project – a series of exhibitions dealing with various fields of art, science, and technology – is a free reconstruction of the kind of publicly accessible cabinet of curiosities that existed in St Petersburg at the end of the 19th century. During 2005-2008 the following sections of the ‘Universal Museum of Wilhelm Winter’ have been created: Geographical Maps, Religious Buildings, and Various Skeletons.

Post

Prison

Railway station

Theatre

Townhall

TV Tower

Water tank

Belltower

Church

Fire station

Fountan

Lighthouse

Monument

Obelisk

Palace

Planetarium

Plant

Oslo

Tromsø

Murmansk

Rovaniemi

Moscow