• Also view:
• Border-Crossing Exercises III – Pikevannet
• Border-Crossing Exercises II – Arctic Subcircle
• Border-Crossing Exercises I

• « Border Crossing Exercises

Border-Crossing Exercises I

Pikene på Broen was an artistic profile of the festival Festspillene i Nord-Norge in 2007. Harstad, June 23–30.

When was the last time you crossed a border? Have you registered in your mind the very moment of crossing the border?

When you cross a national border, you are met by an officer in a uniform politely asking you to show your passport. Isn’t it easy – you switch your mind to accept or maybe reject other traditions and cultures. Another language, other social codes, other traffic rules. And you can buy a guide where you will be explained what you better do here or what you better not. Or you can even attend courses helping you cope with culture shock.

In this case, the borderline is marked – by frontier markers, by a stamp in your pass, by people in different uniforms, custom declarations, etc. Some borders are visible, some borders are not.

• Are you aware while crossing time borders, psychological borders, social borders, sexual borders, geopolitical borders and what not?
• Are you aware whether you cross borders on our own will – or you are forced to do it?
• Do you cross borders – to have a quick look into another world or do you take responsibility for the new reality across the line?
• Is border-crossing a short contact – by chance – or is it long-term – as a result of one’s personal or political decision?
• What are your expectations? Contrasts? Conflict? Confrontation? Or dialogue? Understanding? Respect?
• What degree of responsibility do you take when crossing borders?
• Do you feel fit for border-crossing?

Together with the artists from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, England, USA Pikene på broen invite you to join border-crossing exercises! We start with the Galleri Nord-Norge.

EXERCISE # 1
”How can something as insignificant as a li ne have such a huge impact on people and how they live? How can a small patch of grass figure so importantly in the evereyday life of individuals? How can an apparently ‘empty’ space be so full of meaning?”
BORDERLANDS (Rajamailla) is a three-screen DVD-installation which takes the Finnish-Russian border as its central theme. Using facts, fiction and fantasy, the artists Minna Raino and Mark Roberts (Rovaniemi, Finland) investigate how the presence of the border affects the lives of people living on both sides of the border.
Courtesy the artists.

EXERCISE # 2
Have you ever traveled along the Southern coasts of the Baltic Sea across Copenhagen and Bornholm Island (Denmark), Lubeck and Rugged Island (Germany), Gdansk (Poland), Kaliningrad (Russia), Klaipeda and Siauliai (Lithuania), Karlskruna (Sweden)? Photographers Andrew Moore (USA) and Xenia Nikolskaya (Russia/Sweden) did that and photographed the Baltic harbors last June. Now they are exploring the Northern part of the Baltic. Their project is called the NEW HANSEATIC LEAGUE. Their photo-cameras catch architecture of the Baltic harbors, landmarks, people and life styles. The history of the Baltic civilization has always been based on difficult compromises between war and trade relationships. Territories passed from one hands to others, but the trade harbors were always trading and military naval port were always fighting. But it is obvious that Mercury has finally won over Mars: the forts that used to be very powerful in the past are in ruins today. Wind is blowing in favor of trade sails, rather than military ones.
Courtesy the artists.

EXERCISE # 3
The world’s politics is highly militarized. No less is our everyday life militarized. Is it by chance that khaki color is so fashionable today? Do boys stop playing war in their childhood? Where does the game stop and reality start? Art-objects by Dmitry Tsvetkov (Moscow, Russia) are entitled all together MILITARY HAUTE COUTURE. Weapons, uniforms with medals recognizing civilian and military excellence, a huge hat (ear-flaps) of the Russian Empire and a gigantic bra with the Russian Orthodox ‘cupolas’ – such an arsenal is produced from satin, fur, chintz, embroidered and studded with rhinestones and beads. Isn’t it alluring? ‘Adult/child’, ‘war/peace’ – the borderline between these concepts/realities is as thick as a razor blade.
Courtesy the artist.

EXERCISE # 4
Many religious services, worshipping rituals and outfits are fused together in the ABACUS – installation by Sergey Shutov (Moscow, Russia). Whom do you recognize in 15 robotic human figures on their bended knees, dressed in black: rabbis? Sicilian Catholics? Russian nuns? Muslim women in burkas? The swaying figures are facing an empty central point. You are surrounded by the sounds of prayers from different religions in more than 40 different languages, accompanied by the texts of prayers from various confessions in various alphabets on the walls. How much does a particular religious doctrine matter for you?
Courtesy XL Gallery, Moscow / artist.

EXERCISE # 5
Kristin Taarnesvik’s (Bergen, Norway) art is both obvious and ambiguous. Direct and diffuse, playful and serious, honest and provoking, quotations and images from well-known historical events, from pop culture or from daily life are sampled and create new photo-visual meanings. She researches and questions the North and Saamiland from the point of view of ethnic, geographic and national belonging. What are the elements of identity-building? The images present a very intense story about how various structures meet culture and a human being in a landscape.
Courtesy the artist.

EXERCISE # 6
Immerse into the world of LITTLE PEOPLE – video-installation by the Blue Noses group (Moscow-Novosibirsk, Russia). Lilliputians in the cardboard boxes, having freed themselves from ideology in the post-Soviet era, become physiology-ridden instead. They do nothing except eating, fucking, defecating and fooling around. Don’t you recognize yourself in any of the scenes created by the pranksters of the Russian art? They have not invented these stories – this is our life affected by mass media and stereotypes.
Artists Alexandr Shaburov and Viacheslav Mizin together with photographer Yevgeny Ivanov have also done a photo-session in Harstad as part of the exhibition!
Courtesy Guelman Gallery / artists.

EXERCISE # 7
THE MAGIC ISLAND video by Dmitry Bulnygin (Moscow-Novosibirsk, Russia) captures the Solovki Island (the White Sea, North-West Russia) as a conflict place, where rich history is intertwined with contemporary reality. Thousands of tourists and pilgrims «invade» Solovki in the summer time, while the local community of the village is just 800 people living their own everyday life. The site of numerous historical and cultural landmarks which are on the UNESCO list (prehistoric labyrinths, monastery complex dated back to the 15th century, the first GULAG) – and a powerful Orthodox Monastery ruled by Patriarch Alexey II. What strategy will Solovki choose – secular or religious?
Courtesy the artist.

EXERCISE # 8
The window above Gjensidige Bank on the Town Square
Lena Ylipää’s (Kiruna, Sweden) installation is about conversations, about how much we strive to come closer to one another in our everyday communication. People resemble one another, yet are so much different. Where and what is the lowest common denominator that links us to one another, that makes us say WE?
Courtesy the artist.

EXERCISE # 9
Høyskolen i Harstad (foyer)
Let us take you back to a mystical past in southern climes, far far away. Princess Dido comes to Tunisia. She wishes to buy land, which the Berbers say she can buy provided she can cover it with the hide of a bull. She cuts the leather into thin, threadlike strips so that they encompass approximately a 250 square metres. Thus Carthage was founded. In his installation THE EMBRACE, Svein Flygari Johansen (Oslo, Norway) demonstrates how, via a reindeer skin encompassing us, we meet, among other things, the legend of Carthage as well as James Bond in a poetic tribute to the artist’s home, to land and lakes in modern times, in the Arctic north and Saamiland.
Courtesy the artist.

EXERCISE # 10
Norwegian Aid depot, Havnegata across from Høgskolen i Harstad

You find yourself in a dark room between two screens of a video installation TURBULENT by Shirin Neshat (New York, USA). After the man solo is over on one of the screens and applauds have gone away, you hear the extraordinary voice of Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim who delivers a haunting and ancient vocal landscape, combining throat singing, chanting and tonal sonic. She is singing in an empty room reaching the depths of your inner self. Behind an obvious dialogue between the masculine and the feminine within Arabic cultures, there’s more to it – contradictions between verbal and non-verbal, real and surreal, time-bound and timeless…
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York / artist.