UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

Hopemaking

2026-02-04

As many as four of us (Emily Hanscam, Gustav Wollentz, Marcy Rockman and Cornelius Holtorf) participated actively in a stimulating workshop in Höör (Scania, Sweden) on Hopemaking, bringing together artists, an art curator, and scholars at Linnaeus University in English Literature and us in Archaeology with different agendas exploring common ground.

The project explores hopemaking as a way of countering the paralyzing predisposition to imagine future disaster as inevitable and of nurturing alternative cultures of hope and resilience. In the project, we collaborate with three local artists and Kalmar Art Museum in the context of their exhibition entitled “Survival Kit”.


Particularly exciting was to meet the two artists behind Kultivator, Malin and Mathieu. In their experimental work, they combine art with agriculture. For our project, they are keen to contribute to hopemaking by visualizing different futures. We are very excited! 🙂

Nuclear Sanctuary

2021-03-30

Today, members of the Chair met with Sam Collins and Sho Murayama who recently completed their Masters Thesis in the Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability Programme at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architectur in Copenhagen.

Collins and Murayama describe their thesis Nuclear Sanctuary as “a pilgrimage through the complex culture of Nuclear France”:

The project looks to re-articulate the nuclear story through architectural narrative, becoming a cognitive tool to speculate on how nuclear culture will be perceived in the future. Reactivating the decomissioned power plant Chooz A to stand as a monumental marker in time, the Nuclear Sanctuary presents a window into the future through the past, situated in the present.

Maybe French nuclear culture in 50 years from now will be perceived predominantly as the foundation of the environmental movement and a powerful inspiration for the arts. Maybe there will be a movement to keep the energy alive…