#1 complexity | Samping

Key word: Home


Let's start with a simple question: Can you tell when is this pictured?

You might believe me if I say it is from the 70's. In fact this is a picture I took few days ago, and simply edited it on computer - What I am trying to bring out is, my impression of the city of Bergen, or in fact, Norway itself, it is an alive historical book. It has been living in the same way as it was built on day one, and will stands in the same way forever. Its stories can actually be told by its current urban tissue, landscape, economical and cultural activities. As Messy written on "For Space", 'the "presentness" of the horizontality of space is a product of a multitude of histories whose resonances are still there, if we would but see them, and which sometimes catch us with full force unawares.'

This is somehow lacking in my hometown, Hong Kong. After decades of high-speed development, the city is now a total concrete jungle, with still increasing huge amount of population and lack of living space and public space, turning into one of the most unlivable city. All historical and valuable memories were buried down, so as our place attachment to our living place - how can we consider a place as our home when we face only concrete and high-rise buildings everyday, breathe no fresh air and not seeing the sky, and all the memories of the city were wiped out?

So when I start looking at Lofoten, it is actually cordial: Lofoten and Hong Kong shared some much in common. However as mentioned earlier, the space was changed, mainly by the choice of the people living there, Lofoten was the one to be able to last. I keep wondering if my birthplace could have been last like Lofoten, to be close to natural, to be live in a place with all the connection with history and present and future... I wonder if I were born as a fisherman in Lofoten. I wonder if Lofoten is actually my true home.

Heading to Lofoten is like homecoming.