Fantasmagoriana
September 3–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, Tomáš Kajánek, 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 Vikšraitis, Elina Waage Mikalsen, Jennifer West, plus artworks, objects, documents and curiosities from different collections in Lofoten.
Opening hours and venues
All venues in Kabelvåg: Tuesday–Sunday, 12–7pm.
NNKS in Svolvær: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–4pm.
Where: Kabelvåg: courtroom in the old prison; Nordland Art and Film School; two buildings of the former elementary school; Galleri Espolin—Museum Nord. Svolvær: North Norwegian Art Centre.
Program for the opening weekend
Friday, September 2nd
7pm–2:30am: DJ sets organised by Kabelvouge—en klubb for alle at Arbeidern workers’ club in Kabelvåg.
Saturday, September 3rd
Opening reception: At 2pm at the former Kabelvåg elementary school, Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 Kabelvåg.
Opening party: 7pm–2:30am at Arbeidern workers’ club in Kabelvåg 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: 10am–4pm at Arbeidern workers’ club in Kabelvåg. All exhibition spaces will be open 10am–7pm.
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 Svolvær, which has produced the festival since 2009, and at five different sites around the town of Kabelvåg. Kabelvåg is located between Svolvær and Henningsvær in the wondrous Lofoten islands. The curators selected it as a host for the festival 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:
The Data Centre: North Norwegian Art Centre, Torget 20, 8300 Svolvær
The Adjourned Courtroom: Tore Hjorts gate 24, 8310 Kabelvåg
The Blue Black Box: Tore Hjorts gate 22, 8310 Kabelvåg
The Haunted School: Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 Kabelvåg
Museum Under Destruction: Tore Hjorts gate 10, 8310 Kabelvåg
Museum of the Sun: Galleri Espolin, Storvåganveien, 8310 Kabelvåg
About the seminar Tacit Knowledge
When: Sunday, September 4, 2022, 10am–3:30pm at Arbeidern workers’ club in Kabelvåg. All exhibition spaces will be open 10am–7pm.
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 Kåhre; Sámi 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 2–3, 2022. From 7pm–2:30am at Arbeidern workers’ club in Kabelvåg.
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, Fredrik S, Muggen, Vågale Waage, and Vera Dvale, moving freely between field recording, dub, dance and indigenous music.
The project 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.
