The World's Northernmost Chinatown
For the 2019 Barents Spektakel, as a projection of a possible future reality, Kirkenes (a border town in North Norway) transformed into The World’s Northernmost Chinatown. Production: Pikene på Broen

Artists, experts and the community are invited to contribute to this possible future north — creating projects that play on suspicions or dispel myths, that welcome with open arms or tread carefully into the future.

Artist list: Alessandro Rolandi (Beijing), Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (Oslo), Máret Ánne Sara (Kautokeino) in collaboration with Elin Már Øyen Vister (Røst), Florian Schneider (Trondheim), Hasan Daraghmeh (Palestine / Trondheim), The Stich Project with Hilde Hauan Johnsen (Bergen), Kiyoshi Yamamoto (Bergen), Marie Skeie (Oslo)
Kinakål.no with Håkon Lindbäck & Chen Qian (Oslo/Changsha), Iliya Baidak (Murmansk), Ilya Dolgov (St. Petersburg), Irene Rasmussen (Tromsø), Gluklya (St Petersburg/Amterdam), TANG with Kåre Grundvåg (Tromsø), Trond Ansten (Tromsø), Tatiana Ludanik (Moscow), Matti Aikio (Tromsø), Lijie Wang (Beijing), Lin Wang (Bergen/Jingdezhen), Marita Isobel Solberg (Tromsø), Olga Jitlina (St. Petersburg), Song Yi (Beijing), Susanne M. Winterling (Tronheim), Xia Jia (Xi’an)

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Barents Spektakel has set its sights higher than most and created space for a discussion that no one else has systematized in quite the same way. That discussion is about China.

“Russia,” everyone says—we’ve been talking about Russia in Northern Norway for years. “China,” says Barents Spektakel, and suddenly we all realize how little we know, how little we’ve discussed what China’s involvement in the North really means. But now the conversation has begun, and Pikene på Broen, the organizers of this annual arts festival in Kirkenes, have achieved something that art hasn’t managed to do in quite some time: they are ahead of the curve. Curator Helle Siljeholm is setting the agenda for a broad, nuanced, and demanding discussion, where art guides us through different perspectives, potential dangers, and possible opportunities. I’m impressed.

Anki Gerhardsen. SeKunstMagasin nr 01 2019