In Special Circumstances (part one)

Text: Anna Johansson, curator |  Translation: Isabell Dahlberg

Ravlunda and Revingehed in the south of Sweden. Two areas with peculiar flora and fauna, where rare organisms, batrachians, butterflies, wild bees and other red listed insects thrive in the sand fields, the beech woods, and the marshes, together with breeding birds and those staying over winter. On the vast meadows cows and sheep are grazing. Both areas are included in Natura 2000, an EU wide network of nature protection areas with the aim to assure the long-term survival of Europe’s most valuable and threatened species and habitats. The areas are characterized by continuous activities. But not just in the interplay between plants and animals. Both areas are popular hiking areas, easy to access. Ravlunda and Revingehed are also military practice grounds, training men and women to become soldiers, ready for battle: Ravlunda is a shooting range where the soldiers use sharp ammunition, and Revingehed is the largest armour training ground in Sweden. The exhibition In Special Circumstances (part one) takes its point of departure in these two locations, looking closer at, as the title suggests, the specific circumstances prevailing here.

The military presence is literally marking the landscape. The installation In Special Circumstances consists of four burned pine trees, bearing witness of the gunfights that have taken place at the Ravlunda field. What is left from ammunition and holes from shells and shootings have left irreversible traces on the logs. The installation also includes an inventory of the objects – used material – and insects that were found in the immediate surroundings of the trees. On the one hand they are accounts of the brutality of the military activities, on the other hand those actions seem to make up some of the prerequisites for the flourishing life and nature in and around the trees. During fires nutrients in the soil are being released, attracting insects and birds, and making new plants grow. Destructive forces generating possibilities for new life. This is also expressed in the maintenance plan for the area, in saying that the constant disruption of the soil by the tanks benefits the rare organisms and insect fauna.

In the preparations for The Beauty of the Landscape, the residents of Ravlunda and Revingehed were asked to fill in an enquiry regarding their relationship to the areas. Using a postcard format, photographs of various locations are presented together with excerpts from the answers, as ”greetings from the field”. In sharp contrast to the title and its connotations, the photographs in the series display overgrown trenches, bunkers and other remains in the surroundings. They could have been taken from any armed conflict or war location. The residents also disagree about the military presence. Some are convinced that that the land otherwise would have been exploited long ago; while others voice their sorrow for all that have been lost. The artist, however, is not seeking to position her for or against either side, but wants to highlight the landscape as a cultural product, demonstrating the here and now.

Caroline Mårtensson’s art destabilizes our vision: moving between the known and the unknown, not letting us be sure whether what we are witnessing is something positive or negative. The photographs in The Beauty of the Landscape show evident marks of human activity, but they are not always what they seem to be: what could have been a peephole for snipers, is actually used as a look-outplace by bird-watchers at Krankesjön, one of the foremost bird lakes in Sweden. From an amateur’s point of view the sand covered cross in the middle of the green might be a heliport or perhaps a parade ground for military vehicles, but it is actually an excavation for providing a fertile micro climate for the Aculeata family of ants and bees and so forth. A world apart from the military activities.

In the second gallery room the work In the Time of the Lilacs is being shown. It consists of three models that could be seen as a memorial over the houses that were sold, the villages that were torn down and the people that had to give in to the land appropriations that the Swedish National Defence made to adjust their training to new techniques and strategies. The Swedish National Defence has owned Revingehed since 1823, and the land included has increased from 107 ha to 4500 ha. There are still some houses left, mostly along the roads and in the form of minor villages in the fringes of the field. To facilitate exercises with several battalions most of the houses have been torn down, since they were scattered over the land. At the Ravlunda field, acquired in 1943, there are no constructions left at all. The property has increased from approximately 750 ha to today’s’ 1600 ha. Not much indicates human settlements or peoples’ everyday lives; a few gate poles, an underground storehouse, and the lilac bowers, when they bloom in the spring.

In her exhibition In Special Circumstances (part one) Caroline Mårtensson continues her investigation of our relationship to nature. While previously having focused on industrial nature, produced to satisfy our consumption needs, this time she turns our attention to Ravlunda and Revingehed: two areas that both embodies and abolishes the emblematic Swedish landscape as it has been historicised and what is seen as the good, healthy nature in our collective consciousness. Here, the nature and wildlife and the military presence are, in theory and practice, at the same time each other’s prerequisites and opposites.