Photos Bernt Nilsen – Barents Spektakel 2011
Polar night, human warmth. It’s six o’clock in the afternoon, night has already fallen for a few hours, and a crowd is gathering in Kirkenes’ central square to attend the inauguration of the BarentsSpektakel festival. It’s the Titanick street company that opens the ball on this polar night with its Furnace Symphony. Banging against rusty iron tubes, letting out smoke after shooting flames into the black sky, frenetic rhythms and the sound of fire-making machines – all the ingredients are there to create a link between Kirkenes’ industrial past and the city’s prosperous future, which seems to be on the horizon. On the balcony, Queen Sonia of Norway and city officials. Her presence marks the particular importance of the 2011 edition of the festival.
Kirkenes. The town of Kirkenes was the talk of the town last spring. And with good reason… This town of ten thousand inhabitants has a strong chance of becoming the capital of the Arctic. Russia and Norway have finally reached a compromise on their maritime borders, opening the door to the exploitation of the oil (one of the world’s largest reserves) that lies deep in the Barents Sea. With global warming creating new traffic corridors, and Kirkenes the only deep-water port in the region, all the ingredients seem to be in place for this growing little town to become a future crossroads of world trade.
Arctic, the new Eldorado. How can we preserve the Arctic, a territory still untouched by the dangers of over-exploitation for oil and mining? How can we think in terms of sustainable development, when economic and geographical issues are putting increasing pressure on political choices? It’s because some have believed in the power of art, in its ability to mobilize public opinion, it’s because some have defended the idea of creating a cultural asset common to a region made up of parts of Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden that perhaps it won’t be too late to act responsibly.
Les Filles sur le pont. Utopia or not, that’s the goal of Les Filles sur le pont. Named after a famous painting by the Norwegian national painter Edward Munch, in 1996 a cultural enterprise of producers and patrons was set up in Kirkenes, ready to take up the challenge of bringing the world to the Barents and the Barents to the world. Les Filles sur le pont thus launched a series of artistic encounters “crossing borders”, which today, like the BarentsSpektakel festival, are the manifestation of a strong bond uniting border countries, in particular Norway and Russia.
BarentsSpektakel 2011. With the theme Mind the Map, a nod to Mind The Gap, the programming for the 2011 edition is in line with this desire for cross-border cooperation. For example, a show like Artic Score will feature a confrontation between traditional Russian, Finnish and Norwegian sports and their traditional music. The Mind the map exhibition will redraw the map of the Arctic, in particular Olga Kisseleva’s Artic Conquistadors installation, which denounces the conquest of the territory by multinationals.
artic conquistadors 2011 - olga kisseleva
If the risks of destruction of this territory are very real, if climatic anxieties are perceptible, if apprehensions in the face of world changes and economic forces are underlying, the fact remains that during a week in Kirkenes, the Articque is on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s hearts. And we start to hope.
By Odile Woesland, live from Kirkenes.
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