An Island, Translated: A Geology of Provenances

Abstract: "An Island, Translated" examines the geological, industrial, and ecological transitions of Langøya, an island in the Oslofjord, as a paradigm of material provenance in the Anthropocene. Once a site of scientific inquiry and limestone extraction, the island provisioned the expansion of Oslo through cement production until it was decommissioned and became a landfill for toxic waste. Tracing its layered history, this article explores how shifting regimes of ownership, value, and use reframed the island from natural resource to industrial asset, dumping ground, and real estate. Through commodification, material process, and geological time, the island constitutes the collapse of distinction between natural and human histories. Langøya's strata documents its deep time and modern exploitation to reveal a regionalist Anthropocene marker: a monumental plaster cast formed from industrial waste. Provenance is reconceptualized as a dynamic interplay between matter, meaning, and environmental transformation—extending from buildings to landscapes. Here, Langøya is understood as a reciprocal landscape that records the invisible costs of urban development and the uneasy intermingling of ecological restoration with speculative capitalism, revealing the evolving cultural and geological meanings of extraction.