News

Here, we publish articles about the Centre and its activities, and interviews with our scholars about their time at CAS and the progress and results of their research.

Charred Memories: Ephemeral survivors in my uncle’s burnt-out home

According to Hein Bjerck, cognitive memories of things in a home cannot be inherited, because they do not reside in the things themselves, but in the relations among things and personal mindscapes.

12 January 2017

Defining Things

How do you define an object if not by its composition or usage? Contemporary philosopher Graham Harman presented his Philosophy of Things in an open lecture at Litteraturhuset in Oslo.

05 January 2017

Life among Soviet ruins: – the past is still present

Most people in Northwestern Russia and on the Kola Peninsula live in apartment blocks constructed during the time of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev; many of these apartments are in a serious state of decay.

05 December 2016

Ballast: Loads with history

Ballast, the material used to stabilize ships, is the object of study for archaeologist and CAS fellow Professor Mats Burström. He describes ballast in terms of being a ‘gigantic relocation of material’.

28 November 2016

Object Study: Blok P

Blok P in Nuuk was built by the Danes in an effort to urbanise Greenland in the 1960s: one per cent of Greenland’s population have since called Blok P their home. It was demolished in 2012.

07 November 2016

We are not in control of the afterlife of things

The plastic bag, which we estimate can last for up to five hundred years, shows that we are not in control of the afterlife of things, states CAS participant and postdoctoral fellow, Dr Þóra Pétursdóttir.