The Wandering Darkhouse and A Cartographer’s Breakdown

2008

A portable lighthouse and a map that tries to map the fleeting.

Technical drawing by Marcus Lagerquist

After a major renovation, an old lighthouse was re-installed on one of Gothenburg outer islands. Before being installed at its former location, it made a small tour around the west coast. To me, this was a wonderful paradox; a lighthouse traveling the archipelago of Gothenburg. What happens when a lighthouse becomes mobile and the guiding light, which stands for safety, is no longer in a fixed position from which one can navigate? In this work, I have tried to recreate this contradiction of a transitory pointer.

The portable lighthouse have it self traveled; been shipped, dragged and carried, making both the maker/guard of the lighthouse and the viewer renegotiate location in a continuous state of flux. A portable lighthouse is, however, still an indicator that says ‘Here I am,’ but even more so a fault point of safety which brings to mind concepts of displacement. Questions being raised through A Wandering Darkhouse are concerning (be)longing and (im)mobility.

Glasgow based writer, Ulrich Hansen, picked up on the idea of the unfixed lighthouse and together we decided to make a publication. He invited fellow writers to contemplate in a restricted format (max 150 words) on the lighthouse as motif. The result is A Cartographers Breakdown; a map that tries to map the ‘unmappable’ or make markers, which create signifiers to hang our memories. With this exhibition in Iceland and Ulrich writing in Scotland, the work creates a triangle of points: Reykjavik, Glasgow and Gothenburg.