Impasse Poetics at the Nordic Oil Coast
Book presentation by Karl Emil Rosenbæk Reetz in discussion with Graeme Macdonald – performance by Tora Balslev.
In the quest for a greener future, the Nordic countries proclaim to be green frontier nations. Yet, Denmark and especially Norway also continue to extract natural gas and oil from the seabed of the North Sea and further North. This has led to a peculiar sense of oil impasse present in contemporary fiction from this region. The Nordic green frontier myth installs, it seems, a sense of despair rather than accomplishment in literature and culture.
Join us when Karl Emil Rosenbæk Reetz presents his new book Impasse Poetics at the Nordic Oil Coast (2026). The book presentation will be followed by a discussion with Professor Graeme Macdonald, moderated by associate professor Tobias Skiveren, and an oily performance by the artist Tora Balslev (Daily Fiction). The performance investigates the traces left by fossil energy across time, connecting an outer landscape with the inner landscapes of our own nervous systems.
The event will be followed by a reception with some light refreshments, where it will be possible to purchase the book.
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Karl Emil Rosenbæk Reetz holds a Carlsberg Internationalisation Postdoc Fellow at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. His primary area of interest concerns modern literary fiction from the Nordic countries and their intermixture with energy, particularly the heavily fossilised North Sea. |
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Graeme Macdonald is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He is a member and contributor of the After Oil Collective and a leader figure within the fields of Energy Humanities, Petroculture Studies and World Literature Studies. |
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Tora Balslev (Daily Fiction) is a dancer and performance artist who employs the body as a primary site for practising strategies of presence. Through movement-based inquiries, she explores the intricate relationships between human and non-human bodies. www.dailyfiction.dk. |