Sara Davin Omar/Confront
→ Out of Control When I Turn My Power On
The Conduction of Hydropower in Sweden 1900-2022
Essay series, 2023
Decolonizing Architecture post master course
Royal Institute of Art, SE
An ordinary morning in Södermalm, Stockholm. The scaffold outside the window blocks the daylight which would otherwise stream into the apartment. The building hoist moves vertically up the facade on the other side of my block, a building from 1968. Click. My hand on the switcher and the small apartment is bathed in light. I move slowly towards the coffee machine, connecting the cable to the power. Suddenly the whole apartment turns dark. Did I forget to pay the bill? What is going on?
Starting off by revisiting the first construction of a hydroelectric plant on Sámi territory and concluding from a Million Programme apartment in Stockholm, the project investigates the role of hydropower within the development of the Swedish welfare state. The etymology of the word “conduction” is used as a conceptual framework, disclosing the connections brought about by hydropower as well as the guiding principles, or ideologies, behind its emergence. If Modernist historiography compartmentalized the knowledge of buildings, infrastructure, into rigid categories, “conduction” enables an understanding of these as hybrids interconnected by one site, zigzagging over various territories and temporalities.