Deterrence and Reassurance
by Ruth Aitken

At some point in the 90’s, the empires of old started to feel like a thing of the past. The Iron Curtain fell, and a new world order was emerging. The end of the Cold War seemingly marked the end of global wars – this last cold one slow and drawn out over multiple decades, not experienced through trenches and face to face combat, but through semiotics, trade and the social imagination. In the High North of Norway, a geopolitical concept more than a geographical territory, this meant a demilitarisation and an opening of the border with Russia – the only border they had with NATO at the time – allowing for trading, movement of people and cross-border conservation efforts.

Deterrence and reassurance were established as a security policy and a communication strategy towards the Soviet Union after World War II. With this policy, Norway sought to demonstrate its ability to defend its own territory, for example as a member of NATO (deterrence), while at the same time showing that Russia’s territory and borders were not threatened (reassurance). This policy of balance continued after the Cold War, with greater emphasis on the reassurance dimension, for example through self-imposed restrictions and cultural cooperation.

In this new world, the military, borders and formal territorial maps could be seen as anachronistic – like tattered remnants of an imperial past we were leaving behind, as we entered into a peaceful new millenium. Of course, those empires still standing or newly expanding – the imperialist USA for instance, and the reconfigured Russia – would swiftly disrupt that peace. Three decades on, with the annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Deterrence and Reassurance as a policy has been reinvigorated, now with less emphasis on reassurance.

This is the third iteration of Toril Johannessen’s exhibition Deterrence and Reassurance – first presented as the Bergen International Festival exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall in 2024, before travelling to Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter in Lofoten. The works presented here in Tromsø focus on the relationship between the military and the long tendrils it has in collective folk memory, the civic space and the environment here in the North.

At the centre of this exhibition is the title work Deterrence and Reassurance, a series of rag rugs handwoven from retired military textiles covering the floor of the main gallery. It recalls (to me at least) the famous piece of micro-fiction by Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science. In one paragraph, he details – as a quote from the 17th century – an empire of old where, so obsessed with the specifics of mapmaking, they created a 1:1 map which covered the empire:

“The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.” (1)

Johannesen’s floor covering becomes reminiscent of this disintegrating imperial map, a life-scaled counter-mapping of the human involvement, bureaucratic policy and environmental waste of this militarisation, textiles put to use but with small traces of insignia and former life visible in the mass. They, in some way, hark to this moment of deep peace in the 90s where she was witness to the quieting of the militarised Arctic and the opening up of the North – when military equipment could in fact be surplus, an excess one can be cavalier with. Now, maybe aptly as we ramp up our militarisation, the textiles were difficult to get a hold of (2). These rag rugs ground the military in the domestic and civilian sphere, instead of conjuring images of distant warfare, choosing to present it as something that we are, in some way, in an uneasy coalition with.

This captures something essential within Johannessen’s broader practice. She uses precision in her collection and processing of information to analyse the phenomena of the world around us. But instead of using the data to establish a worldview through maps, statistics and diagrams, she playfully subverts our expectations and perception of these visual languages by infiltrating them.

Her work Colloquial Place Names Linked to Military Activity, over 5 pieces, maps the folk names given to different sites, areas or landmarks across Norway which reference the army, military activity or wartime history. A reproduction of Colloquial Place Names… is also being launched for this exhibition, sold as posters that visitors can take home with them. As a form of citizen anthropology, one can alter and add new names to the map.

I! & WE! present two maps of the Cap of the North, one mapping the 19 different words for ‘I’ as spoken traditionally, the other maps the different words for ‘we’, reflecting population densities of the areas represented and their various languages and dialects. Through a circumpolar projection, Locating the High North, tries to plot the many different geographical territories that the ‘High North’ has been used to refer to in various written sources.

The military and the nation state are not just ‘over there’, distant blocks of power – they are interwoven into the fabric of our communities, into our lands, into our stories. They speak for us, to us, and inform what we deem to be valuable, to be real, or whether a territory even exists. Johanessen’s exhibition reveals that which we always know but is often hidden in plain sight – that ideas of land, of nationhood, of the military, exist in a complex, if antagonistic, alliance with the people and communities that are the bearers for such ideas. When we talk about defence – defence of who by whom? And in periods of peace and periods of, as now, icy conflict avoidance, what does that mean in the day to day?

Many little references, anecdotes and pieces of history fold together throughout Johanessen’s work in this exhibition. We also find small fragments of Toril’s own life, acting as a foundation for the exhibition and woven through the works – her life growing up in the ‘High North’ in a time of demilitarisation, and of environmental conscientiousness. The maps of the empire, in their grid-like detail, often leave out these knots and complexities in their flattening narrative – maps don’t include the people, the plants, the life.

Deterrence and Reassurance presents a different cartography, of the civilians and community life that is punctuated by the remilitarization of Norway, and Europe more broadly.

(1) ‘On Exactitude in Science’, Jorge Luis Borges and Hurley, A. (1999). Collected fictions. New York: Penguin Books.
(2) The textiles used in the rag rugs are bought from second-hand dealers and individuals, and are mainly from The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Norwegian Armed Forces don’t sell their surplus textiles to the second-hand market any more, due to stricter policies on how much of their surplus gear enters the civilian market. In recent years, they have been criticised for creating a lot of textile waste, as they discard (mainly by burning) tons of textiles every year. Numbers from 2020 indicate 350 tons yearly.