TROLLING WORDS

Abstract

Should CULTURAL HISTORY today include a reflective foundation on IP-addresses and metadata? In the adjoined handout (left), two very different types of archival documents (as of date belonging to a private collection) are discussed as an ensemble. They lend themselves to the discussion of the above question in a contemporary DESIGN in TECHNOLOGICAL & TRANSACTIONAL terms.

The documents are: A) documents from international diplomacy in energy-trade politics selected and collected by the diplomat K [from the early 80s to the late 90s]; B) diaries written by La Kahina who was married to K, and working with him in a husband-and-wife team [71 diaries written over a period of 40 years].

The case focuses on the Troll-agreement (1986), -platform (1995) and field (1996): the public aesthetics of a huge engineering project, and the political aesthetics of the Troll negotiations and projects grown in a diplomatic domestic unit. The handout has a dual purpose: 1) communicating the project at a workshop organised by Critical Petroaesthetics [OSEH]. 2) rounding up learning outcomes from engagements of the National Library of Norway’s §112-series [§112 is the Norwegian Constitution’s environmental paragraph]. The context of this interfacing is the author’s research residency at the National Library of Norway (NLN). It is also pledged to the interfacing of different kinds of archival resources available internally at the library, and other institutions. The argument pursued in the handout is in line with Jaron Lanier’s understanding og hive minds (AI) as ‘metadata without an address’, and the relations of appropriation entailed by this (Stephen Wright).