Our research examines the intersection of film and architecture through the lens of cinematic cartography — using filmic methods as a tool for spatial analysis and critique. The work is developed through field studies, pedagogical practice, and collaborative publication.
Moving Landscape Kiruna (2021)
Kiruna, a mining town in the Swedish Arctic, is undergoing a complete relocation as the iron ore mine expands beneath it. Our students documented this transformation through film, creating a mosaic of narratives that reveal the town's liminal state between past and future.
Films explore themes of displacement, industrial progress, community memory, and atmospheric change — from the melting permafrost to the haunting quiet of abandoned streets. Liquidus by Sarah Pedersen and Amalie Lang captures the town's condition through meteorological phenomena, a water drop caught between liquid and frozen states — a metaphor for Kiruna's suspended existence.
Moving Landscape Cluj-Napoca (2022)
A post-Soviet city transformed into an emerging tech hub, Cluj-Napoca presents a study in ideological transformation. Students traced this shift through the daily routes of its inhabitants — following Horatio, a former schoolteacher turned autonomous garbage collector, whose routine reveals a dialogue between the city's shifting material conditions and the people who navigate them.
The city's post-communist past and capitalist present coexist in cracked facades, repurposed industrial buildings, and the overflow of discarded things in a city once marked by scarcity.
Post-Colonial Cartographies (2023)
An examination of Denmark's colonial history embedded within the familiar urban fabric of Copenhagen. The city's relationship to its colonial past remains partially visible — in street names, harbor architecture, and institutional buildings. Students asked what narratives remain visible and which are erased, using film to reveal the layers beneath the surface.
Moving Landscape Athens (2024)
A city in economic crisis becoming a global tourist center, Athens represents the complex interplay between cultural heritage and commodification. Students documented the paradox of a city simultaneously struggling through economic downfall while serving as a symbolic nucleus of European identity.
We Came, We Saw, We Conquered uses bedbugs in Airbnb apartments as a darkly comic entry point into questions of tourism, gentrification, and the commodification of heritage. The students turn the camera on themselves, acknowledging their own position as both tourists and researchers.