This is a project about Blok P in Nuuk, Greenland. Made in collaboration with Sarah Bodil Hansen. We have lived in Blok P for one month during the work with our final thesis and we have ended up with an installation based on audio portraits of four former inhabitants of the apartment block, four books relating to the audio with our own anecdotes about living there and careful photographic registration of both Blok P and of the surrounding area. We have been focusing stories within the home and everyday life, rather than merely viewing Blok P from a social realistic perspective, like so many others before us.
Blok P is the largest residential block in the whole of Greenland, with 185 apartments it can contain around 500 people and it is said that around 1 % of the population of Greenland has lived there at some point of their life. In the spring of 2012 it will be torn down with a lifetime of memories. In this project we have tried to document and participate in some of the everyday life stories, before they vanish along with the grey concrete. Blok P was built in 1966 by the Danish government, as a mining village from the North was shut down and its inhabitants were forcefully relocated to Nuuk. Blok P became a vertical village (bygd) housing fishermen, mining workers and their families.
Emilie, moving into blok P from imagined space on Vimeo.
Ove, to move from Blok P from imagined space on Vimeo.
