Rovaniemi Urban Project
2/2016 Rovaniemi, FI
The project was conducted during the winter of 2016 in the capital of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, in Northern Finland. Rovaniemi, located on the Arctic Circle, is interesting for a specific administrative oddity. With some 60 thousand inhabitants it is not a big city. But it is a huge one in terms of the area – from an administrative perspective one of the largest urban entities in Europe and the largest in Finland. This legal entity was established in 2006 when the used-to-be town of Rovaniemi merged with its surrounding area, the Rural Municipality of Rovaniemi. I decided to visit the city and articulate this phenomenon through my physical presence at its borders.
Together with my friend and colleague Jolijn de Wolf, we went to the north, south, west, and east borders of the Rovaniemi municipality. The furthermost borders of the town are located on the north, some 90 kilometers from its center. For travel to the north, south, and east we used local buses. It was important to be accurate in planning as the ‘public transport’ goes to and from those ‘suburbs’ only rarely. The edge of Rovaniemi was not distinguishable from its surroundings: forest, snow, sparsely located houses. For the travel to the west, we had to rent a car with a driver as no bus was stopping anywhere nearby.
The main result of the project are photographs captured on the analog camera by Jolijn. The subject of the pictures is me, posing in the respective borderlands, surrounded by heavy snow.
Rovaniemi Urban Project could not be realized without the help of Jolijn de Wolf and Matěj Skalický. Thank you!