Art festival in Norway embraces the sounds of the Arctic Circle

There may be an countless visible drama to the Norwegian archipelago of Lofoten, which lies simply above the Arctic Circle, with its fjords, jagged mountains (the trolls of native legend) and fishing villages with homes painted brilliant crimson and big outside racks for drying cod. That is to say nothing of the sunshine—the aurora borealis is usually seen on a transparent evening, and throughout the day the continuously altering climate creates sudden rainbows and bursting rays of daylight by darkish, fast-moving clouds.

This hanging panorama performs host to the longest-running modern artwork biennial in Scandinavia, Lofoten Worldwide Artwork Pageant (Liaf), which marks its 18th version this yr (till 20 October) below the curatorial route of Kjersti Solbakken, who was born in close by Valnesfjord and is the brand new director of Bergen Kunsthall as of 1 October. Liaf 2024 finds its centre within the area’s administrative capital of Svolvær (inhabitants 4,700), with satellite tv for pc initiatives throughout Norway and as far-off as New York Metropolis. As a migratory biennial, every version of Liaf makes use of various obtainable buildings and outside areas throughout Lofoten. “Identical to codfish, it travels between the previous fishing villages,” Solbakken writes in her introductory textual content to the biennial’s guidebook.

Cod (recognized domestically as skrei) is a gigantic a part of Lofoten’s id; it even seems on Svolvær’s coat of arms. For greater than 1,000 years, locals—and, later, complete fleets of more and more massive fishing boats from throughout Norway—have been catching the fish as they migrate from the Barents Sea across the Scandinavian Peninsula to spawn within the winter months. The cod are dried on massive racks to create stockfish, which has been a significant export since no less than the Center Ages, when it was marketed to Catholic international locations throughout Lent. (Portugal’s nationwide dish, Bacalhau, is usually made with stockfish from Norway.)

The nationwide financial significance of cod-fishing—Lofoten locals wish to say that the town of Bergen was constructed with cod cash—mixed with the unpredictable climate of the area to create an pressing want for higher communication throughout the islands. Because of this, 170km of undersea cables and landlines have been laid alongside what grew to become referred to as the Lofoten line (Lofotlinjen), funded by the state and accomplished in 1861. In 1903, Lofoten grew to become the second place on this planet (after Italy) to ship and obtain a wi-fi telegraph message. Three years later, the Sørvågen Coastal Radio Station started operations within the southernmost a part of the archipelago. (The primary radio station in Oslo was not created till the Nineteen Twenties.) In 1914, a telegraph constructing was accomplished there, designed by Georgine (Lilla) Hansen (1872-1962), the primary feminine architect in Norway to ascertain her personal apply. The Sørvågen radio constructing now homes the Museum Nord, one of many satellite tv for pc venues of Liaf this yr.

“Liaf 2024 has not tried to create a theme-based exhibition, however has chosen as a substitute to make use of Lofoten’s historical past of telegraphy as a device to learn how it could be attainable to create a world exhibition within the far-flung area of Lofoten’s archipelago,” Solbakken writes. “In the event you lookup on the sky, chances are you’ll be fortunate and see the northern lights—nature’s personal radio that additionally makes a sound. Underneath the floor of the water, the fish have been speaking with their very own Morse-like language by drumming and sonar lengthy earlier than we people have been in a position to patent teletechnological variants of those strategies.”

Given each Lofoten’s lengthy historical past of communications and its breathtaking panorama’s monopoly on the visible realm, it ought to come as no shock that essentially the most memorable initiatives at Liaf 2024 contain sound.

A world neighborhood of dozens of artists gathered for the pageant’s opening weekend (20-22 September), which kicked off with a parade by the streets of Svolvær, a marching band made up of native youngsters main the way in which. Two New York artists introduced the artwork of phrases with them—Cuthwulf Eileen Myles wrote and browse poetry impressed by their expertise on the archipelago, whereas Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s site-specific work in Kraftholmen (a former fishing-industry mechanical workshop) interrogates written language and the elusive want for full comprehension.

Within the area adjoining to Rasheed’s work, a bunch of artists from Zambia calling themselves the Livingstone Workplace for Up to date Artwork discover the “sonic corridors” between Lofoten and the previous capital of Northern Rhodesia. Liaf additionally contains the works of quite a few Sámi artists—the Indigenous peoples of the area—considered one of whom, Elle-Hánsa/Keviselie/Hans Ragnar Mathisen, is displaying a wide selection of woodcuts contained in the North Norwegian Artwork Centre and enthusiastically serenaded a big group of gathered artists, pageant organisers, journalists and visitors with conventional Sámi music and track at a neighborhood dinner on 22 September.

Kraftholmen supplies one of many largest venues for Liaf 2024, internet hosting artists’ talks and gatherings all through the opening weekend in addition to artmaking workshops for native youngsters all through the pageant. Tucked into the varied corners of the area are a few of Liaf’s greatest video and movie works. Astrid Ardagh’s On Air (2024) is a 20-minute documentary a couple of radio membership throughout Norway’s Arctic islands, with retirees who used to work on the nation’s meteorological stations speaking with each other over ham radio and utilizing Morse code. The group discovers simply how very important this previous technique of communication might be when a Russian cyberattack coinciding with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 results in a two-week web outage.

One other quick movie, Elisabeth Brun’s Huge Tech Blues (2024), centres on the artist’s hometown of Strengelvåg (northeast of Lofoten) and the way residents there reacted to the information that SpaceX had chosen the village’s former faculty as a website for a Starlink floor station. Paradoxically, it’s a story of communication breakdown inside the enterprise of world communications networks. “Central to this exploration is the expertise of sound,” reads the challenge’s description, “the hum of digital know-how, the laughter of kids and the sounds of climate and nature.” As Brun said in her artist discuss, individuals in Strengelvåg have been notably involved that the brand new SpaceX floor station would “make this sound, this fixed sound”. She additionally particularly thanked Alexander Rishaug, who was accountable for the sound and music in her movie.

Musical performances, extra formalised than marching bands and impromptu songs, have been additionally an enormous a part of the opening weekend programme at Liaf. The launch occasion, inside a constructing previously used for boat upkeep, kicked off with an audiovisual efficiency by Viktor Bomstad and Magnus Holmen regarding myths and historic depictions of the Sámi. The next afternoon, the musician Elise Macmillan—who was born in California however moved to Norway in 2015 to play the Hardanger Fiddle—gathered a couple of different performers for a novel manufacturing in Svolvær’s Outdated Methodist Church. Whereas her collaborators performed bowed devices specifically made utilizing the magnetic tape from previous cassette tapes, Macmillan, armed with a quiver filled with selfmade bows of all types, took turns enjoying her personal magnetic-tape instrument and a violin. The 40-minute piece, Shocked Everytime (2024), variously evoked gusts of wind, the beeping of Morse code, radio static and different sounds of the area—even perhaps the aurora borealis? (Each Bomstad and Macmillan will deliver their sound items throughout the Atlantic to The Kitchen in New York for the satellite tv for pc exhibition Strains of Distribution, which opens on 21 November. Rasheed’s work can even be on show, as will a chunk by Wong Equipment Yi.)

Probably the most bold challenge of Liaf 2024 sought to rework considered one of Lofoten’s smaller islands right into a musical instrument. Island Eye Island Ear (IEIE, 1974-2024) is a challenge 50 years within the making, initially devised by the late experimental musician David Tudor (1926-96)—a pianist and organist who was maybe most well-known for premiering John Cage’s 4′33″ (1952), by which the musician takes to and sits on the stage for the allotted time with out making a sound in order that the “music” is created by the ambient noise of the viewers. Tudor conceived of his island challenge in collaboration with the artists Fujiko Nakaya and Jackie Matisse, the dancer and choreographer Margaretha Åsberg and Billy Klüver and Julie Martin of the artwork and science collective Experiments in Artwork and Know-how (EAT)—based with Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman in 1966.

Though IEIE had been “rehearsed” a number of occasions over time, Tudor died earlier than it may very well be introduced in full and to his satisfaction. Liaf 2024 had the excellence of premiering the challenge with assist from a few of its authentic group in addition to youthful artists led by the scholar You Nakai, who wrote a e book about Tudor. IEIE occurred on the island of Svinøya, the place adventurous guests can nonetheless crawl into long-abandoned bunkers from the Second World Struggle. Throughout the opening weekend, IEIE introduced small bits of mirrors positioned throughout to mirror the panorama in novel methods, kites with lengthy tails designed by Matisse flown overhead (“portray” with assist from the wind) and the all-important sound ingredient—subject recordings of the island remodeled the previous yr and performed by audio system, melding the sounds of the entire island’s seasons into one, poetically collapsing each time and area.

As Liaf 2024’s opening weekend got here to an finish and everybody gathered for dinner and a spontaneous efficiency of conventional Sámi tunes, the clouds moved swiftly throughout the sky and thru the enormous troll mountains because the waves splashed gently in opposition to the shore. It was too cloudy to see the northern lights, however they have been up there someplace, emitting their ever-so-subtle rustle over the radio waves.

Lofoten Worldwide Artwork Pageant, Svolvær, Norway, till 20 OctoberLines of Distribution, The Kitchen, New York, 21 November-18 January 2025