Preserving Pyramiden

with Filip Milovanovic

The impulse to preserve has always been driven by our sincere affection for memory. As such, we find ourselves challenged by the more continuous reality and thus, paradox of the present moment. Indeed, what is it that we are trying to preserve? An object? An idea? As was pointed out by Victor Hugo, the preservation of an idea is far more achievable than the preservation of “the Edifice”. But who’s idea? As stories are passed on from generation to generation, there is a richness to be seized in the multiplicity, and incongruent nature of history. No tale can be expressed in a single elevation. Cutting a path from the mountain, through Pyramiden and into the sea, we propose an excavation of the town’s collective memory, and a meditation on time itself.

 

Starting from the foot of the mountain, the visitor is invited to walk the meandering trench. A walk that offers perspectives both above and below grade, creating moments to reminisce upon how things were, or how things might have been. As the trench winds through the town, the rising and falling coal-coloured path spills out of the mountain and into the sea. The visitor is brought face to face with the universal relationship between economy and the environment, a reality that both was, and is. The visitor, now standing at the water’s edge is invited to gaze out upon the sublime, and reflect on moments past before returning to the once-abandoned town of Pyramiden.