The building

What is actually here, and what you can make with it. A power plant from 1951, 12 km west of Oppdal, at the end of a narrow gravel road above the river Driva.

Space to work

The machine hall is the main workspace: nine metres high, concrete, tall windows, the bolt-marks where the turbines stood, and a movable crane nobody took away.

Above it are smaller rooms that can be worked in, a kitchen, and a common room. Outside there is the fire pit, the forest, the river, and the rest of the site.

There is no white cube and no technical crew. The space is raw and it is yours to use for the month.

An artist on a raised scissor lift, working on an enormous charcoal drawing of an animal that covers the whole wall behind them.

Wood workshop

There is a fully functioning wood workshop close to the site, shared by residents with some woodworking experience during the residency.

It is a working workshop, not a demonstration one. Things get built here.

The wood workshop: curved laminated plywood forms and a slotted disc laid out on the sawdust-covered floor, with a workbench, a bandsaw and a green industrial planer behind them.

Sleeping

Everyone gets their own room. Small, but yours, with the shared spaces just outside the door.

Housing is free for the whole month.

Showers and toilets are shared, there are two showers and four toilets

A dim corridor lined with wooden bedroom doors, someone standing silhouetted against the bright doorway at the far end.

Kitchen

A shared kitchen, big enough to cook for the whole group. Food is free, and we eat together most days.

The machine hall or the outside area, both next to it is where most of the evenings end up.

Someone cooking in the kitchen at a plywood counter with a large red pot in front of them, concrete walls and a steel fridge behind.

Outside

The site does not stop at the walls. There is a fire pit by the river, forest on every side, and tracks going up behind the building.

In June and July it never properly gets dark, which changes how long a working day turns out to be.

Someone scattering herbs over a huge pan of potatoes cooking over a flame outdoors, with the fire pit, stacked firewood, birch trees and the river behind them.

People standing and sitting with drinks on the wooden steps of an outbuilding under a stretched fabric canopy, the rock face rising behind it.