Adrian Bugge, Y. Bygget som forsvant / The building that disappeared, Uten Tittel (2021)

BOOK | The Y-block, the late modernist government building designed by architect Erling Viksjø with integrated art by Carl Nesjar and Pablo Picasso, has been a central part of Oslo since 1970. But within a year, everything had disappeared. Adrian Bugge's photographs document how the unique building in natural concrete was demolished bit by bit. The book begins as Statsbygg were setting up the permanent site fencing (book cover) and follows the process chronologically until the building vanished. The power of demolition and the transformation from culture to individual components both fascinates and frightens me. The people in the pictures are construction workers, protesters, and passers-by. By letting everyone be seen from a distance, they are equated, and you get a feeling of the little man in the encounter with power/bureaucracy/state... in fact, this applies to both demonstrators, construction workers, and the general public. The images are also a contemporary document - a witness to this grim corona pandemic - present in the images through time markers such as face masks and small, scattered crowds. With closed cultural institutions, social restrictions, and media in pandemic mode, the demolition did not receive as much attention as it would in normal times. 

www.yblokkfoto.no | Supported by NoFoFo, Kulturrådet and Fritt Ord. Design Aslak Gurholt Rønsen (Yokoland). Uten Tittel Forlag

BIO | Adrian Bugge, 1981 Oslo. Work with photographic investigations of nature, architecture and transformations of the surroundings over time. Member of the Norwegian art organizations FFF, NBK and BOA and board member of Stiftelsen Bjørka (an artist-run production site for photography). www.adrianbugge.no