Hyvlatånnå Church [The Flesh of the Mountain]

Concept for a temporary church in Preikestolen, Forsand, Norway

“Here on this high plateau | time is divided into seconds, minutes, hours, years,
And centuries.
Suspended | in absolutely transparent air and water and time,
I take on a kind of crystalline being.
In this translucent | immense here and now, if ever,
The form of the person should be visible, its geometry, its crystallography, and
Its astronomy.
The good and the evil of my history | go by.
I can see them and weigh them.
They go first, with all | the other personal facts, and sensations, and desires.
At last there is nothing left | but knowledge, itself a vast crystal
Encompassing | the limitless crystal of air and rock and water.
And the two crystals are perfectly
Silent.
There is nothing to say about them. Nothing at all.
The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.”
Kennet Rexroth, Time Is The Mercy Of Eternity

Enrico Chinellato

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Looking for the limit. Seeking an intimate, if not sacred, relationship with nature and earth. Pushing more and more toward the sky. Confirming your human precariousness. Losing yourself in a view.
These and others are the reasons that push thousands of people towards Hyvlatånnå - “the carpenter-plane’s tooth” - according to the ancient dialectical name given to what was once a lighthouse and a reference point for the sailors of the Lysefjord. A goal, a destination so desired and craved, after a long climbing path that is easily attributable to a true pilgrimage.
Yet how often, once you get there, does the mind lie on the surrounding environment, rather than on the actual so-sought-after place?
How much attention is given to what this place really is, and not just how it looks?
How much is actually ignored of this place, day by day, just because you can not see it, perceive it, touch it, feel it?
The true force of this place, the “pulpit rock”, suspended halfway between sky, air and water, resides in its time and history. Not so much in the man-made folklore one, but rather in the history told by its “corporeality”: by its precariuos being, by its form, by its scars and by its wrinkles; all from the constant encounter and confrontation with Nature dominated by Time, which will lead -one day- to a new and inevitable transformation of the body of the cliff: its disappearence.

Enrico Chinellato

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Why then limit an already extremely sacred and spiritual experience, that goes beyond any possible religious belief, to the actual “face” of the cliff -the great plateau- when each side of it has an almost infinite communicative power?
The conceptual project here proposed seeks to translate all of these considerations into a real experience, rather than into an actual building.
Knowing that, once shortened the distance between the human temporality and the geological one, thanks to a seeked and renewed contact both physical and intimate-spiritual with each other, the whole body of the cliff may be itself a “temporary” place of worship -or a church, a synagogue, a mosque or a temple, if so desired- regardless of any possible religious beliefs.
A place to re-engage the consciousness of what you are, what you have been and what you will become. A place where you can rediscover yourself and accept the richness and uniqueness immanent in all our traits.