Highlight Arctic: WAYFARERS Exhibition
Taking its cue from the metaphor of passage, WAYFARERS exhibition responded to the ecological changes affecting the Arctic and our attempts to navigate a newly configured world.
As part of our Highlight Arctic project, we curated a three-week visual/media art exhibition, WAYFARERS, exploring the themes of Arctic ecology and identity. The exhibition featured:
- Inuit artist and poet JESSIE KLEEMANN from Greenland, who performed a new live performance piece.
- Siberian artist Yulia Kovanova‘s THREE TIMES TO THE MOON AND BACK, a series of installations developed upon a project conducted with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). An investigation into the life of the Arctic tern (Sterna paradise), the work probed the environmental factors affecting their lives and interactions between human and non-human animals. Two of the pieces exhibited as part of this installation were produced in collaboration with composer Lars Koens.
- Finnish artist Tomi Knuutila‘s CLIMATABLE, an interactive table with 4 separate hotspots for 4 different data sets collected from various online scientific research databases. The data documented climate change from various points of view – such as CO2 levels in Mauna Loa in 1959-2016, annual global mean land and ocean temperature anomalies between 1850 and 2016 and seasonal sea ice coverage in the Northern hemisphere from 1870 to 2007 – allowing the public multiple ways to access and review the environmental changes taking place around us.
- The Scottish-based poet and writer Jelle Cauwenberghs exhibited a new film poem installation EYJABAKKAR .
- The UK premiere of German auteur Ulrike Ottinger‘s newest film, CHAMISSO’S SHADOW, which had its world premiere at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. Retracing the 1815-1818 journey of botanist Adelbert von Chamisso through Alaska, Chukotka and Kamchatka, this 12-hour film was presented in three parts screened simultaneously, on-loop, for the duration of the Wayfarers exhibition.
- A collection of Nordic video-poetry by video-artist/soundscape-constructor SWOON.
The exhibition was accompanied by artist talks and events: Tomi Knuutila discussed his arduino-based installation, and Yulia Kovanova and Jelle Cauwenberghs performed a night or reading, with newly conceived poetry work.
