ABSTRACT
In 2012, filmmaker Andreas Koefoed and the members of the Danish band Efterklang – Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg – travelled to Piramida, an abandoned mining town located in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard that had been part of the former Soviet Union. As a result of that journey, they created two interlinked objects: a documentary, The Ghost of Piramida, and a musical album, Piramida. This chapter considers three readings of Piramida: first, it explores the origins and context of the town; second, it examines how Koefoed's film delves into the themes of representation, memory and nostalgia; and finally, it considers the ways in which Efterklang engaged with Piramida by participating in Koefoed's film and by creating an album rooted in the sounds and silences of these modern ruins. Piramida was highly symbolic for Communist Russia since the USSR used it to offer an image of the Soviet dream to the West.
