Lofoten International Art Festival LIAF 2022

About

We create the Lofoten International Art Festival, a biennale for contemporary art with a history spanning over 30 years. LIAF is a biennale for Northern Norway, an important event in the Norwegian art scene and an international meeting place.

Lofoten International Art Festival – LIAF is a biennial festival for contemporary art with a history going back to 1991.

It takes place in Lofoten, an archipelago located on the northern coast of Norway, just above the Arctic Circle. LIAF presents works by international artists in a local and site-specific context, acknowledges the complexity of place and seeks to be an open, experimental and including meeting place for artists, audience and locals. Since 2009, the festival has been organised and administered by the North Norwegian Art Center (NNKS) and LIAF’s Artistic Advisory Board.

The festival has no set venue but is recreated every time by exploring and integrating with its surroundings in Lofoten. Exhibitions and art works have been displayed in places such as a mountain top, a park, a garage, a library, a fish rack and a private home. force. The festival’s aims are to expand, explore and gain new insight through art.

Each festival is shaped by curators with different backgrounds, ideas and practices and who in different ways bring the known and the unknown together. By insisting on an open and experimental approach, LIAF can, on many levels, be a place of exchange and engagement, revealing new things about our world and ourselves again and again.

LIAF 2022 – FANTASMAGORIANA
September 3 til October 2, 2022

Curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.

Participating artists: Nora Al-Badri, Bassam Al-Sabah, Marianne Berenhaut, Alessandra Cianchetta, Kirstine Colban Aas, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Tomaso De Luca, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Cheryl Donegan, Kaare Espolin Johnson, Gaia Fugazza, Aage Gaup, Kenneth Goldsmith, Shadi Habib Allah, Auriea Harvey, Susan Te Kahurangi King, TomĂĄĆĄ KajĂĄnek, Lars Laumann, Sonia Leimer, Olof Marsja, Mary Haugen, Jonas Mekas, Haroon Mirza, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Eivind H. Natvig, New Mineral Collective, Thebe Phetogo, Christine Rebet, Sille Storihle, Tine Surel Lange, Emma Talbot, Tsai Ming-liang, Stan VanDerBeek, Rimaldas VikĆĄraitis, Elina Waage Mikalsen, Jennifer West, plus artworks, objects, documents and curiosities from different collections in Lofoten.

Venues and Opening Hours
Where: KabelvĂ„g: courtroom in the old prison; Nordland Art and Film School; two buildings of the former elementary school; Galleri Espolin – Museum Nord. SvolvĂŠr: North Norwegian Art Centre.
All venues in KabelvĂ„g: Tues–Sun, from 12 to 7 pm.
NNKS in Svolvér: Tues–Sun, from 10 am to 4 pm.

PROGRAM FOR THE OPENING WEEKEND

Friday September 2nd
From 7 pm to 2:30 am DJ sets organised by Kabelvouge – en klubb for alle at Arbeidern (workers’ club) in KabelvĂ„g.

Saturday September 3rd
Press preview: From 11 am to 1 pm.
Opening reception: At 2 pm at the former KabelvÄg elementary school,Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 KabelvÄg.
Opening Party: From 7 pm to 2:30 am at Arbeidern (workers’ club) in KabelvĂ„g with DJ sets organised by Kabelvogue – en klubb for alle.

Sunday September 4th
Public program: Tacit Knowledge, a seminar produced by the Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation and organised in collaboration with the Lofoten International Art Festival.
When: From 10 am to 4 pm at Arbeidern (workers’ club) in KabelvĂ„g. During Sunday all exhibition spaces will be open between 10 am and 7 pm.

LIAF 2022 – FANTASMAGORIANA

The North Norwegian Art Centre is happy to announce the opening weekend of LIAF – Lofoten International Art Festival. LIAF 2022 is curated by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and is entitled Fantasmagoriana.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, LIAF is the longest-running contemporary art biennial in Scandinavia. The 2022 edition of the nomadic festival will take place at the North Norwegian Art Centre in SvolvÊr, which has produced the festival since 2009, and at five different sites around the town of KabelvÄg. KabelvÄg is located between SvolvÊr and HenningsvÊr in the wondrous Lofoten islands. The curators selected it as a host for the biennial because it is the home of the Nordland Art and Film School, which offers excellence in moving image education, and also because it was the place where Dada artist Kurt Schwitters was confined during the Nazi occupation of Norway.

Instead of starting with a concept, LIAF 2022 – Fantasmagoriana originated with the sharing of an oral tale, which put forward an archaeology of the Arctic region as a landscape for ‘Gothic’ literature. Through its sharing, this narrative became a tactic for transmitting tacit knowledge, where information about natural, fictional, and political events could weave freely into new maps, which in turn evolved and adapted within the contexts in which the invited artists operate.

The exhibited works establish a direct dialogue with the architecture that houses them. Francesco Urbano Ragazzi made it a rule not to produce any temporary structures and to use the technical equipment that was already on site. This format thus responds, in a concrete manner, to the urgent need to rethink the way major contemporary art events are produced in terms of their environmental impact. The same principle has guided the organisation of travel and transport as well as the selection of works, many of which reach monumental dimensions despite being composed of extremely light materials.

The six venues hosting the exhibition have or have had a function for the local community in recent times. Already belonging to the collective memory, their names have been changed in order to signal how they have become stages on a path that pushes towards new narrations and mappings:

1. The Data Centre | North Norwegian Art Centre, Torget 20, 8300 SvolvĂŠr
2. The Adjourned Courtroom | Tore Hjorts gate 24, 8310 KabelvÄg
3. The Blue Black Box | Tore Hjorts gate 22, 8310 KabelvÄg
4. The Haunted School | Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 KabelvÄg
5. Museum Under Destruction | Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 KabelvÄg
6. Museum of the Sun | Galleri Espolin, StorvÄganveien, 8310 KabelvÄg

ABOUT THE SEMINAR TACIT KNOWLEDGE

When: Sunday September 4th from 10 am to 3:30 pm at Arbeidern (workers’ club) in KabelvĂ„g. All exhibition spaces will be open between 10 am and 7 pm.

Tacit Knowledge is a seminar produced by the Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation and organised in collaboration with the Lofoten International Art Festival. Its title comes from a term coined by the British-Hungarian scientist, and later philosopher, Michael Polanyi. It is a notion employed to define traditions, inherited practices, implied values, skills, prejudgements, and experiences which cannot be expressed in words. Tacit knowledge is intuitive and unarticulated knowledge that cannot be communicated, understood or used without a ‘knowing subject’.

Invited to discuss the role and understanding of tacit knowledge in their own work are: Alexander Eriksson Furunes, architect and researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Finnish artists ​​Pia Lindman and Markus KĂ„hre; SĂĄmi artist and architect Joar Nango; and Laura Johanne Olsen, program manager for the green shift of Lofoten. The seminar will also host a panel debate with curators of past, present and future LIAFs including Matt Packer (LIAF 2015), Kjersti Solbakken (LIAF 2024) and Francesco Urbano Ragazzi (LIAF 2022).

ABOUT THE DJ CONCEPT KABELVOGUE

When: Friday and Saturday, September 2nd – 3rd from 7 pm to 2:30 am at Arbeidern (workers’ club) in KabelvĂ„g.

LIAF 2022 – Fantasmagoriana extends into the night in the form of two very inclusive dance parties. The DJ sets are organised by Kabelvogue – en klubb for alle, a DIY club concept run by Magnus Holmen, Sanjey Sureshkumar and Karolin Tampere, whose slogan is ‘good times, tunes and tenderness’. Kabelvogue is a staple in Lofoten nights and once again occupies Arbeidern, the city’s workers’ club. Igniting the dancefloor will be Carl Luis DJ Duties, Muggen, VĂ„gale Waage, and Vera Dvale, moving freely between field recording, dub, dance and indigenous music.
***
LIAF2022 is supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), a program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Nordland kunst- og filmhĂžgskole (UiT), Museum Nord, Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation, Artscape Nordland, Lofoten War Memorial Museum, research vessel Helmer Hanssen, Skandulv (Scandinavian Wolf Research Project), UniversitĂ  Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, Cooperativa sociale Rio TerĂ  dei Pensieri (Venezia), Casablanca Studio, dROME.

Read more

1. The Data Centre | North Norwegian Art Centre, Torget 20, 8300 SvolvĂŠr
2. The Adjourned Courtroom | Tore Hjorts gate 24, 8310 KabelvÄg
3. The Blue Black Box | Tore Hjorts gate 22, 8310 KabelvÄg
4. The Haunted School | Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 KabelvÄg
5. Museum Under Destruction | Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 KabelvÄg
6. Museum of the Sun | Galleri Espolin, StorvÄganveien, 8310 KabelvÄg

Facilities

Age limit
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