Raeda Saadeh is arriving the 21st. of April. She is from the State of Palestine and we are very happy to have her with us for this fourth edition of Arctic Action. She will do work in Longyearbyen and in the wilderness. She will also host an art talk at Galleri Svalbard.
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is to create a sustainable and innovative event entitled Arctic Action(AA), showcasing major international artists representing different tendencies in performance art.
For the last two years we have produced this event as a nine days festival where all artists collectively were invited for a short period of time. We will do that again in September, but for most of the other months of the year the fourth edition of AA will again be focusing at one artist at the time. We understood that this given focus on one artist at a time was the best way of realizing a quality-focused event of live art in Svalbard. To give time to the artist to be impregnated by the environment, to fully understand it, feel it and work in it. This tailor-made event design for Arctic Action further corresponded to the stated objective to produce a professional high definition digital remediation of the work in video as well as in photography for a continued redistribution on the Internet.
AA will give the invited artist the time and possibility to work more profoundly, as to be able to integrate Svalbard's natural landscape and its impressive qualities and singular expressions. In other words to give the artist time to create an artwork of quality on the same unique level as the environment.
The natural environment of Svalbard is one that breaths respect of nature, of man and of animal life. Its stillness and silence, its majesty and endless dimensions give the impression that it was here that the earth originated. It generates an almost spiritual and religious quality, which in the context of AA, is a natural surrounding which best could be described as tailor-made for live art. It is a context, which through its unique qualities will appeal to the most important artists in the field, and stimulate their creativity.
This unique landscape will not only give a background or a backdrop to the live works produced, but a space of natural stillness and silence which will make the human actions in the live performances more poignant and striking. What will be presented is a human action of movement or non-movement in a landscape that through its seemingly endless dimensions will give the performed human action a visual perspective beyond imagination. The environments multifaceted dimensions will clearly impregnate each artistic production, and give the digital images of its remediation a visuallity that can only be impressive. The natural space of Svalbard will trigger the artist's creation of images that will go beyond imagination.
Sometimes an image can speak more than a thousand words, and we believe that the images created at Arctic Action will do that. Integrating the human action and its surrounding environment. Although the awareness of the global issues for a sustainable future are rising around the world, we believe that AA through its production of convincing artist images will be able to strengthen and support this development.
We do believe however that besides the local population, the core audience of AA, will be the followers of the remediation of the event on the Internet. This target group constitutes an unlimited number of people, which is why a media strategy focusing on the social media is of vital importance, promoting the event on the world art stage.
We need to make the remediation of the live performance attractive and explore different, yet unknown formal ways in close collaboration with the artist to achieve a new work, a new result from the starting point of the realized work. The live performance work produced by the artist will not be a performance for video or for photo, but these two media will be integrated through the artists' own professional visions as to create a new end result, an art work by itself.
The project does also necessarily have to initiate a discussion on the possible collaboration between environmental research and contemporary art. We started this work last year and will continue to develop these possibilities in 2018.
From 26st of February to the 11th of March
Born 1986, Perth, Western Australia. Lives and works Perth.
Jacobus Capone’s practice incorporates performance, photography, video installation, painting and site-specific work. Characteristically evocative and poetic, his work frequently combines physically demanding durational performances with majestic, sublime landscapes. In 2007, he traversed Australia by foot, in order to pour water from the Indian Ocean into the Pacific.
The artist recently presented Forgiving Night for Day at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of the 2017 Perth International Arts Festival, and was included in Primavera 2017 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia as well as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s NEW16 exhibition. He has participated in numerous international festivals, fellowships, and residencies. The artist is the recipient of the 2016 John Stringer Prize and a finalist in the 2017 Ramsey Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Capone received a Bachelor of Fine Art from Edith Cowan University in 2007.
From the 20th to the 30th of March
Born in 1966, Yann Marussich, a unique character of the contemporary dance, delivers performances which have a true impact on the audience: « scraped, disturbing, provocative, authentic ». Since 1989, he signed a score of performances and choreographies diffused all over Europe and the world. From 1993 to 2000 he evolved in the field of artistic programation as director of the « Théâtre de l’Usine » (Geneva) where he programmed almost exclusively contemporary dance and more specifically new forms of expression. He is the founder of the ADC Studio (Geneva) created in 1993.
In 2001, Yann Marussich choreographs Bleu Provisoire, his first totally motionless piece. Since then, he is sinking into introspection and the control of stillness meanwhile confronting his body to diverse solicitations, or even agressions. That is where the poetic space of the performer is located, in an often violent contrast between what his body is undergoing and an absolute impassivity.
Today, he is moving towards solo performance and Body-art in its poetic aspect. His last performances which he considers as a fullfledged style have been presented in many festivals in Switzerland and abroad. Autoportrait dans une fourmilière [2003], Morsure [2004], Traversée [2004], Blessure [2005] and Soif [2006], Bleu Remix, Nuit de Verre [2007], Brisures, Ex-Pression [2009] and Bain Brisé [2010]. L’Arbre aux Clous, L’Oeuf du serpent and Glassed [2011] a collaboration with Carter Tutti, one of the pioneer of industrial music. Crash! and Hyphos with students of the Geneva University of Art and Design [2012], Rideau! [2014] and La Chaise with Filipe Espindola and Sara panamby [2015].
In December 2015 - January 2016, a performative exhibition of the works of Yann Marussich was programmed at BAC - Le Commun, called Experience of Immobility - 20 years of performance Acts in Geneva with the support of FMAC, Loterie Romande, the city of Geneva and Ernst Göhner Foundation.
In 2008, he won the Ars Electronica price in the category Hybrid Art with the performance Bleu Remix. He was an associate artist at the Grütli Theater for the 2010-2011 season. Since 2011, Yann Marussich is supported by the Department of Culture and the Municipal Fund for Contemporary Art (FMAC) of the City of Geneva.
From the 21st to the 29th of April
The woman as an occurring subject in my installations or performance work is represented as living in a state of occupation. This occupation or ‘occupying’ force is issued through political conditions within her environment and this results in influencing the otherwise peaceful quality of her world. There are both private and public elements that manipulate this world.
The occupying force has many facets: it can take the shape of physical tangible realities of the everyday, such as in a wall of concrete, a fence, a checkpoint, a curfew, a barrier of stone – or it can reassign it’s force unto a face of a child, a home, a language, and cultural, traditional expectations. There are limitations on her personal freedom as well: the woman, the mother, the lover, the guide, the protector. She seeks justice and longs for change. She is not blind to the opponents around her and pushes forward with enduring strength – and at times, she feels that it is almost as if she has to assume a sort of madness in her behavior so that she can live unharmed by oppression, in an attempt to always protect those she loves from negative forces of fear.
In my art works, the woman I represent lives in a world that attacks her values, her love, her spirit on a daily basis, and for this reason, she is in a state of occupation – and her world could be here in Palestine or elsewhere; and despite all, she looks towards her future with a smile.
The subject/woman I represent in the majority of my work is weighed down with oppression but is filled with ambition; she is saner than she should be and yet she is also a little mad. She is both fragile and strong, she is fully aware and responsive, and she is constantly on the move. And every move she makes, every act, is an act that exhibits awareness towards her surrounding environment, while simultaneously being an act of revolt towards social orders/conditions.
Raeda Sa’adeh (Palestine) was born in Um El Fahem in 1977, and received her BFA and MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She was the winner of the first Young Artist of the Year Award organised by the A.M.Qattan Foundation in 2000. Her work in photography, performance and video has been exhibited widely internationally in Europe and the US. Recent exhibitions include ‘Re-Orientations’ at the European Parliament, Brussels; ‘No Man’s Land’, at the GEMAK Museum, The Hague, Holland; ‘In Transit’, House of World Culture, Berlin; ‘Biennal Cuvee’, OK Centre, Lens, Austria (all 2008); Infr’action Festival International d’Art Performance, Se’te, France; and ‘About Time 2’, Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2007). Her work was included in the Sydney Biennial of 2006 and the Sharjah Biennial 8, 2007. She lives and works in Jerusalem. In 2015, Al-Monitor considered her among 50 people shaping the culture of the Middle East.
http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/people/saadeh-raeda
From the 21st to the 30th of July
Boris Nieslony was born 1945 in Germany, lives in Cologne. He has worked intensively as a performance artist, curator, archivist and independent scholar, staging various installations, interventions and artist projects since the 1970s. He is the founder of Black Market International, a performance group that meets regularly in various configurations to realise group performance projects. And also the instigator of the ASA foundation, a platform for a self-organizing rhizomatic network of performance artists and theorists.
Nieslony is recognizes as one of the most prolific and significant contributors to performance art. Nieslony creates unpredictable and unrepeatable improvisational performance works that manifest “an encounter and its effects”. Responding to local circumstances, Nieslony develops images attuned to the moment, rigourously searching for the truth of self-recognition at the intersection of history and live presence. His impressive performance style stems from the motto “life is art enough”.
Will take part of Arctic Action from 10th to 20th of August
Saskia Edens was born in Geneva where she is graduated in 2002 from the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-arts and the Ecole des Arts décoratifs. From 1999 to 2000 she studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. Today she lives and works in Basel, Switzerland.
Saskia Edens works with molten metal, video, photography, drawing, painting as well as with moulding techniques, performance and the elements. What is the common base to all these medium is the energy and the gesture that allows transformations process of matter and being. She performs the painting, draws with fire, or makes experiences under earth. After this encounter with the elements, she lets the entropy doing the rest.
Since 2007 she has been working profoundly on live performances, participating in international festivals of performances in Asia (2007 KEAF; South Korea; 2013 Guangzhou Live 4; Macau), in Europe: Nordic countries Diverse Universe Tour 2013, and Estonia, Latvia, Germany, UK, France (Infr'action, Le Printemps de Septembre), Serbia, Poland, Switzerland (Bone Festival, Art of Encountering, etc) Sweden, Spain and America (New York, Desert of Nevada).
In her performance art, she has collaborated with other artists like Non Grata group (Estonia) and sound artists like Daniel Buess, Mathieu Sylvestre and with the artist Jérôme Karsenti.
Her artworks (installations, videos) were shown in Switzerland and abroad -including in the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Darkside II), the Kunstmuseum Chur, in Kunstmuseum Thun, Kunsthaus Baselland, in the Wyspa Progress Institute in Gdansk, in the gallery Kritiku in Prague, in Kunstverein Freiburg and in the gallery Nicola von Senger Zürich.
Besides ephemerals actions, her Art-in-architecture project 'Magma' was realized in 2013 as a permanent installation for the School building of Brunnmattschulhaus in Basel.
www.saskiaedens.com
From the 10th to the 17th of September
Arctic Action is preparing to host 7 artists from Finland, Åland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, The Faroe Islands and Svalbard.
This project is a collaboration that will create a Nordic network between different island communities in the Nordic region and Gothenburg. We want it to happen through focusing on nature, food and performance art. The project is initiated by ComLab, Gothenburg. Partners in the project are: Performance Kitchen (Copenhagen / Faroe Islands), Åland Action Art (Åland) and Arctic Action (Svalbard). The selected islands taking part in the project are: The Faroe Islands, Åland and Svalbard with Gothenburg as the city partner. These islands are all remote with wild and impressive scenery. The communities on these islands are relatively small and the people are dependent on and influenced by the nature. Our goal is to arrange creative meetings between artists, visitors and locals, where we build our activities and art works around the existing sustainable society. We wish to do this through formal and informal gatherings, performances, workshops, discussions, artist talks and good local meals where we can learn more about each other in a relaxed atmosphere. We hope for interesting dialogues and close relations to create strong ties between the artists, but primarily between the artists and the society they meet for further cooperation and sustainable development in the spirit of art and culture.
Artists participating are: Chuyia Chia (S), Joakim Stampe (S), Peppe Rosvik (F), David S Lopez (D), Sunniva Gudmundsdottir Mortensen (Faroes), Ursula Sepponen, (Åland). Host and local artist is Stein Henningsen (N)
Will take part of Arctic Action from 10th to 20th of October
Anne Rochat was born in 1982 in Vallée de Joux, Switzerland.
She positions the human body at the centre of her artistic work, a body flexible and strong, subtle and athletic, wild and acrobatic. Her postures are incongruous and a little absurd and lead her into offbeat situations, she expresses herself with forbidden gestures we can only dream of engaging in ourselves. The artist takes her position through actions both sensual and powerful, mellow and savage, disturbing, sometimes funny and always informed by rigouruous aesthetic discipline. Spectacular without being a spectacle, the live art performances of Anne Rochat invite us to marvel.
Rochat travelled widely in Asia, prior to her studies at Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne(ECAL). In 2011-2012, she took up an art residence in Varanasi. India, followed by a year long stint at the Swiss Institute of Rome(ISR). She has been awarded many notable prices including Prix Irène Reymond(2013), Prix Kiefer Hablitzel(2012), Bourse culturelle du Canton de Vaud(2011), Bourse culturelle de la Fondation Leenaards(2010), Swiss Awards, Art Basel(2010).
The idea of the project is to create a sustainable and innovative event showcasing major international artists representing different tendencies in performance art. In the first edition of the festival we decided to host one artist at the time for between 7 and 10 days. To give time to the artist to come closer to the environment, to better understand it, feel it and work in it. Then we again thought of producing this event as a 9 days festival where all artists collectively were invited for a certain period of time. Maybe they will as a group working together better understand the landscape and understand their challenges, how to work with the unique nature and animal life, the stillness and silence conveyed, as well as the societal structure of the small settlements. For this fourth edition of 2018 we will do both. We will invite a small group in September, but for most of the other months we will invite only one artist.
Our objective of Arctic Action is to profile it as an innovative and high quality event of live art on the international contemporary art scene and highlight its natural core themes, the relationship between man and nature and environmental protection.
It is our hope that the art works produced in the exceptional natural environment of Svalbard will stimulate a greater awareness on the fragility of our planet.
The curator of Arctic Action is Svalbard native, Stein Henningsen, who has an extensive network on the international scene of live art. Having been active internationally producing work in Italy, France, China, USA, Canada, Czeck Republic, Ukraine, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Finland and of course Norway, Henningsen has an established position on the contemporary live art scene.
Arctic Action is a different international live event focusing on the artists working within an ecological approach. Moreover, discussing issues on the relationship of sustainable development and its relation to art, as well as art’s relation to scientific research on the environment.
Through its specific location, Arctic Action will in a natural way and quite probably through the artists work highlight global environmental issues.
Being a protected ecologic zone Svalbard is a natural example of a sustainable future. Most issues related to our planets survival and sustainability is inter-connected with Svalbard in one way or another, exemplified by the Global Seed Vault. A performance art event in this specific location can be exemplary in highlighting these vital issues.
Sometimes an image can speak more than a 1000 words, and we believe that the images created at Arctic Action will do that. Integrating the human action and its surrounding environment. Although the awareness on these global issues for a sustainable future are rising around the world, we believe that Arctic Action through its production of convincing artist images will be able to strengthen and support this development.
Org. No 914 901 774
Org name:
ARCTIC ACTION ART
Contact address:
c/o Stein Henningsen
P. O. Box 732
9171 LONGYEARBYEN
