Measuring a Nation

Measuring a Nation explores Alpine borders as they are redrawn by climate change and the water crisis that may follow. Over 70% of Europe's borders are less than 100 years old, yet in the Alps the natural border — ridges, glaciers, watersheds — is also the political one, marked by over 8,000 boundary stones. As glaciers melt, permafrost thaws, and landslides increase, that line physically shifts and mountains and buildings crack, igniting ownership disputes and the need to reconstruct — most vividly around two exemplary mountain lodges, the Rifugio Guide del Cervino and the Landshuter Europahütte, divided between nations. Since watersheds define these

borders, their shift in favour of one nation over another threatens future water reserves, risking a "water rush" as scarcity sets in. The project unfolds across three interlinked formats: a character-driven 40-minute documentary following lodge managers, glaciologists, and border communities; an immersive, fulldome-adaptable VR experience letting audiences embody meltwater, an animal, a migrant, and Ötzi, the iceman claimed by two nations; and a 24/7 web livestream from the two symbolic border sites. Combining documentary and creative cartography, the project asks who is entitled to own, cross, and identify with land as nature redraws the map — juxtaposing geological and glaciological timespans against geopolitical and human ones, with the cinematic device tagging along. 

Measuring a Nation investigates how climate-driven transformations of Alpine landscapes — melting glaciers, shifting watersheds, retreating ridges — destabilise the political, ecological and cultural systems built around them: national borders, land ownership, migration routes and wildlife corridors. As these natural formations move, the legal lines materially anchored to them become unstable, raising urgent questions about belonging, governance and resource rights. The project's guiding question is: Where does a country begin, and where does it end? This unfolds into more operative research questions: – How are borders negotiated, measured and experienced when the landscape itself is in flux? – How can documentary and immersive media function as active research instruments — rather than neutral recorders — for sensing border instability across geological, historical and lived timescales? – How do natural processes intersect with legal frameworks, cartographic practice and political decision-making around contested territory? – What forms of audiovisual and spatial knowledge can make perceptible the tension between environmental change and geopolitical order — knowledge that scientific or textual research alone cannot produce? Ultimately, the project asks how art itself can become a method of measurement: not of territory or geometry, but of the shifting relationship between nature, knowledge and power

The project unfolds over three years. Year 1 establishes the research framework through fieldwork at key Alpine sites, documentary observation, and interdisciplinary workshops, beginning a collaboratively written Eco-Centric Device Manifesto. Year 2 deepens production alongside cartography and data-visualisation experiments, testing immersive media as research environments, with a WIP presented in spatial form. Year 3 synthesises findings into three interlinked outputs — documentary, immersive VR/fulldome experience, and live-streaming platform — disseminated via the Research Catalogue, a symposium, and festival release. Co-creation with border communities is central throughout, not an add-on: shepherds, lodge managers, guides and residents shape the work as participants, not subjects. Place-makers and process facilitators — such as Melanie Plangger's cross-border cooperation work — anchor the project locally and help translate findings into forms communities can use and recognise themselves in. Dissemination extends beyond festivals and academia through movement organizers and facilitators who can carry findings to stakeholders and policymakers, aiming concretely at legislative influence: informing how transboundary governance, land-rights and resource frameworks adapt to landscapes in flux. Long-term impact lies in a transferable framework applicable wherever environmental change destabilises political order.

Melanie Plangger — independent process consultant, regional development & cross-border cooperation, Alpine Region (Austria) Alexandra Arènes — cartographer, architect & designer, SOC / shaā atelier; author of Terra Forma (France) Klaus Dodds — Dean, Faculty of Science and Technology, Middlesex University Lander van Tricht — glaciologist, ETH Zurich Giovanni Baccolo — glaciologist, Associate Professor, University Roma Tre (Italy) Björn Thuresson — manager, Visualisation Studio VIC, KTH (Sweden) Erik Isberg — Postdoctoral Researcher, History of Science, Technology & Environment, KTH & Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen (Sweden) Stefano Morosini — International research officer, humanities & juridical studies, University of Bergamo (Italy) Roberto Bresin — director, NAVET (Sweden) Dane Christensen — director of photography & head of postproduction (SE) Lia Mazzari — researcher & sound artist, Dept of Geography, Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities (IT) Valentin Nash (Konstfack) — XR & immersive media artist (SE) Lars G Lindström — producer, Fellonica Film AB (SE) Annalisa Izzo — Director, Fondazione Margherita (CH) Laetitia Bochud — Virtual Switzerland (CH) Michela Pini — producer, Cinedokke (CH) Simon Guy Fässler — co-director (CH) Alexandra Arènes — animation & mapping (FR) Melanie Plangger — place-maker (Austria) DoP from Italy TBD (Alex D’Emilia or Harald Herschbaumer); Co-Producer from Austria/Italy/France TBD; Austrian co-director TBD

The Swedish Arts Grants Committee travel grant SKH travel grant KTH NAVET thematic working group grant SKH research funds tbc Small Visionary Project Grant tbc SFI new formats fund tbc VR Swedish Research Council grant tbc Presentation of the WIP, selected after peer review: • Parse 6th Biennal Some Like it Hot Conference at Valand, Gothenburg November 2025 • NAVET research week as receiver of the thematic working group support December 2026 • SKH research week January 2026 • Konstfack research week February 2026 • SAR Galway international forum of artistic research June 2026 • Drawing from Territory Research and practices in art, science and technology International Conference Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal November 2026 held within the framework of the XXIV International Biennial of Art of Cerveira, with the support of research centres from the University of Porto: the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS), the Centre of Studies in Geography and Spatial Planning (CEGOT), and the Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA). Publications: • Proceedings of Drawing from Territory conference with the title: Unstable Grounds / Drawing as Instrument on Mountain Terrain Instability • Glacial Time After Memory: Environmental Archives and the Moving Borders of the Digital Condition in After Memory in the journal Memory, Mind and Media, an agenda-setting interdisciplinary Gold Open Access journal that explores the impact of media and technology on human, social and cultural remembering and forgetting (Cambridge University Press). Selected Markets the project has been invited to: Innsbruck Nature Film Festival Industry Days (Austria) International Film Festival Geneva Co-Production market GIFF PRO XR COPRODUCTION SESSIONS (Switzerland)

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2023-2029

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