For the fifth edition of Arctic Action we are changing the form again. This year we offer the participating artists a short residency sailing along the costs of Svalbard working in the wilderness. They will do the residency onboard RV Polarfront and have a guide/assistent/polarbear guard taking care of them at every landing so they can concentrate on their work.
This summer we are inviting Peppe Rosvik to come and continue his project started this winter. He will be with us from 7th of August to the 22nd of August. Ursula Sepponen will join us from August 22nd until September 7th. Both artists will be doing a residency onboard RV Polarfront and create new and interesting work. Both artists will after the residency present live performances in Longyearbyen. Their work made onboard Polarfront will be showed in Longyearbyen during the dark season.
Arctic Action are really happy to be able to work with Latitude Blanche who so generously offered to work with us on this residency and are willing to host two artists onboard RV Polarfront for ten days. Hopefully this trial will end as a tradition...
From the 14th to the 24th of October we will host an artist from Northern Ireland, Siobhan Mullen Wolfe. She will be doing several performances in Longyearbyen and its sourrondings.
The video below presents some moments from Arctic Action 2018
This year we offer the participating artists a short residency sailing along the costs of Svalbard working in the wilderness. They will do the residency onboard RV Polarfront and have a guide/assistent/polarbear guard taking care of them at every landing so they can concentrate on their work.
The artists will after the residency present live performances and art talks in Longyearbyen. They will also do projects with the local school. Their work made onboard Polarfront will be showed in Longyearbyen during the dark season.
Arctic Action are really happy to be able to work with Latitude Blanche who so generously offered to work with us on this residency and are willing to host two artists onboard RV Polarfront for ten days. Hopefully this trial will end as a tradition...
15th of April and Peter Rosvik was back in Svalbard to continue his works from September 2018. The works were performance art pieces and a live sound performance.
Rosvik works with identity from a personal framework. Rosvik’s performance work reflects on the alienation of an individual when they cannot perform within the narrow parameters given. When only way of existing is through self-mutilation and abuse. Rosvik also explores the paradox that through certain types of self-abuse you can be accepted, fit in the canon of maleness. Eventually, the price of fitting in is psychological and social disintegration.
Rosvik’s work is seldom easy for the viewer. It exposes the emotional scales of frustration and anger, which also is true for his harsh noise projects. Harsh noise is a sub-genre of noise culture that reacts to an unresolvable world. It aims to express and explore unrepairable chasm but not to settle them. It is like radical listening. It witnesses what is there, instead of trying to give out a statement.
This summer we are inviting Peppe Rosvik to come and finish his project started this winter. He will be with us from 7th of August to the 22nd of August. The first five days leading up to the residency onboard RV Polarfront Peter will do performances in the surroundings of Longyearbyen. The work will be announced on the digital platforms of Longyearbyen and have free admission.
All photos of Ursula by Peppe Rosvik
Ursula will be our second artist this year and she will be staying with us from 21st of August until 7th of September.
Ursula Sepponen is a Finnish artist based in Åland. She works primarily with performance, film and video art but also with painting. She often works in site specific ways, using elements and materials found in her surroundings, therefore her performance works can seldom be fully planned beforehand or repeated in other spaces. The foundation of her work is often related to existential questions about death, guilt, individual suffering and questions of social disadvantages. In her latest works, memory and the body's connection to memory has played an important part.
Ursula was born in Helsinki in 1978, but lived her first childhood years in Kökar, an island municipality in the south-east of the Åland archipelago, known for its ruins of a Franciscan monastery from the 15th century. In her artistic practice, a sensitivity and responsiveness to nature and familiarity with the language of religious symbolism can be sensed. Ursula has a background in the fashion industry but became tired of the consumerism she was part of and moved back to Åland to come closer to the nature.
Since 2012, Ursula has participated in and organized multiple performance art events in Finland and other Nordic countries and she is the founder of the artist-run organization Åland Action Art. Ursula has shown her work in the Nordic countries, Estonia, Germany and Japan. She has studied art in Finland, Denmark and Romania, and has a BA in Fine Arts from Novia University, 2014, and a BA in Crafts and Art from 2004.
http://www.ursula-sepponen.com
Siobhan Mullen Wolfe will be our last artist in 2019 staying with us from 14th of October until 23rd of October.
Siobhán Mullen Wolfe is a visual artist, born in Belfast, N. Ireland, 1972. Her interdisciplinary practice spans performance, experimental video/sound work and sculpture. Active since the mid 90’s, she has shown her work at International festivals throughout the UK, Europe, North/South America and New Zealand.
In her live performative work she uses conscious and unconscious actions through her body/practice to consider the authenticity and instability of given moments in live time using the body as a constructed, fluid site of dwelling, risk and vulnerability to potentially open spaces of poetic resistance; currently reflecting on the junctures of motherhood, feminism and disability.
Early performance works in the 90’s often inhabited private spaces for durational 24hr periods, undocumented and to no physical audience, often working with only the raw materials of changing light conditions, breath and air. In the last year she has extended her practice to energy sources, working with the magnetic field.
She has worked as a part-time film studies lecturer at Queens University, Belfast and her experimental video work has been shown in collaboration with leading musicians in the field of new and contemporary music.
Actively involved with Bbeyond, since it’s early projects she has also Chaired and Co-Chaired the organisation in recent years.
“It’s in our everyday gestures that we direct attention to the question of, how do we breathe freely? Possibly this can be our most political act.”
She lives and works in Belfast, N. Ireland.
She will take part of Arctic Action 2019 from October 14th to 24th.
Photos: Artur Tajber, Joakim Stampe, Rainer Pagel
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 wanted to produce a 7-10 days festival where all artists collectively were invited for a certain period of time. Maybe they as a group working together better will 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 the seventh edition of Arctic Action we want to invite eight artists from the North and elsewhere to tell their stories.
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, Northern Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, 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
+47 99582558
