Inside and Beside the Camp

The books title Inside and Beside the Camp refers to German barracks on the Tulliniemi peninsula in Hanko, Finland. The peninsula was the point of arrival for German troops who began their transit through Finland from 1942 to 1944. The area closed after World War II, but it attracted public attention in 2014 when the City of Hanko opened a nature trail there, and partly forgotten German barracks from the transit camp were discovered next to the trail.

The transit camp is in focus in the Deutsches Lager research project (2015-2018). The research project both resembles archeology and is archeology - it effectively excavates history both physically - objects and texts - and visually - photographs and moving images. The artistic researchers and editors of the anthology Jan Kaila and Japo Knuutila process the visualizations of this project.

The goal when preparing Inside and Beside the Camp was to gather an interesting and perhaps even a seemingly heterogeneous team of writers. The editors sought to cover the themes and the follow-up questions both in depth and contextually. As a result, the book is a kind of kaleidoscope or at least a cubist image.