Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Norwegian Festival Special
Photo: Mikhail Slavin
The festival that is breaking the boundaries This February, in one of the intriguingly coldest and darkest places in Norway, close to the Russian border in a town called Kirkenes, the festival Barents Spektakel will not only challenge our perceptions of our neighbourhood, affiliation and geographical location – it aims to blow it to pieces. By Didrik Ottesen | Photos: Pikene på Broen
Collaborating across borders, the cultural-political festival in Kirkenes aims to explore the core of the nature verses nurture discussion through contemporary art, performance art, literature, theatre, film, seminars and concerts, all blended together with topical societal issues related to Barents.
area in February, the festival brings the place to life.
Located 11 kilometres from the Russian border and 35 kilometres from the Finnish border, the town of Kirkenes is ideally located for cross-border collaboration and cultural exchange in the Arctic. Embracing the cold and darkness ruling the
“The unique thing about this year’s programme is that we are taking the festival to Russia as well as Kirkenes,” Michael Miller, media and public relations manager for the festival, says. “In previous years, Russian artists have performed
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A place with such significant history is yet again finding itself at the centre of cultural and political shifts, and Barents Spektakel’s vision is to explore these boundaries.
in Norway, but this year we will also be crossing the border ourselves.” The festival theme for the 2016 Barents Spektakel is ‘Rethinking Location’ – a theme that forms the basis for the programme of visual art exhibitions, public discussions and the Visual Art Seminar. “The artworks for the 2016 Barents Spektakel reflect and discuss the vulnerability of our sense of place, while simultaneously exploring whether our identity is a result of where we live, or if we instead make choices to migrate to places that suit us,” Miller explains.
Powerful exhibitions Two of the artists displaying their work during the festival are Swedes Michiel Brouwer and Anders Sunna. The duo, who previously made a name for themselves displaying both pho-