• Also view:
• Talking North - II
• Sami me — Sami you
• Talking North
• Talking Barents
• Barents Travel Diaries, Murmansk
• Sami-Salami
• Borders - Control or Rock-n-Roll?
• Border-Crossing Exercises
• Barents 2058 - Scenarios for the Pomor Zone
• New East-West Security: Northern Perspectives
• Barents Travel Diaries
• Border-Crossing Art and Life
• Transborder Concert
• Russia 2008 - Between Elections: Duma elections in December and Presidential elections in March
• Kirkenes and Nikel – Art and Ore
• Kirkenes – a Town in Oslo
• Cultural engagement - contact or contract?
• What's Happening in Northern Norway?
• Det bor flere folk i Barents
• Art and Politics Across Borders
• Artistic borderology

• « Transborder Café

Borders - Control or Rock-n-Roll?

“Borders – Control or Rock-n-Roll?” was the slogan of the annual winter festival Barents Spektakel that is held in Kirkenes in Week 5 every year, with a festival satellite in Russia. By this slogan we manifest that rock-n-roll (read: arts and culture) is a folk alternative to border control!

We start with a speech by Rune Rafaelsen, the leader of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in Kirkenes, who will place us geographically and geopolitically into the essence of Barents Cooperation as a new security model based on regional political cooperation and cross-border human contacts.

This Barents bureaucrat and a real Barents enthusiast is followed by the artist/musician Amund Sjølie Sveen with performance ”The United States of Barents”. Amund speaks to us back from 2036 and tries to analyze the changes that have lead to establishment of the USB and proves that the opening of the new IKEA-store in HaparandaTornio (a border-town at the Swedish-Finnish border) is a major event in the history of the Barents Region. Welcome to the brave new world of the United States of Barents!

We zoom into the heart of the Barents Region – the twin-cities Kirkenes (on the Norwegian side) and Nikel (on the Russian side). What happens when the region experiences a potential change from periphery to center? We present these towns as they were experienced by the artists Olga and Alexander Florensky from St Petersburg. In their project «Advertisements for eternal values» they advertise those symbolic brands and values of Kirkenes and Nikel in a simple «black-and-white ads» manner, with charming irony and humour. The artists´ group Blue Noses from Moscow voices stereotypes of “the Russian town” Kirkenes and captures possibilities of border-crossing labour marked in the video film “Kirkenes & Nikel: Dedicated to Voiceless Immigrant Workers”: Kirkenes facing the re-opening of the mines and Nikel expecting its Nikel Plant to close down.

We present a re-make of the site-specific outdoors performance “Control or Rock-n-Roll?”, a soundscape based on the recognized rock-n-roll samples from Barents Spektakel 2009, and conclude the Transborder Café with a gig by the leading rock-band Tequilajazzz from St Petersburg.

Food: Russian soup borsch is served.