MAKE THE NORTH GREAT AGAIN!

An advertising sign displaying the words MAKE THE NORTH GREAT AGAIN! will light up Kirkenes throughout the Northern night.

This is an “I love the North” campaign, a “The North must decide its own fate” campaign, a “The North is Great” campaign!

It’s about changing the way we think, and how to shift the perspective inside our heads – both in the North and the South. It is simply a matter of the stories we want to tell and who decides who gets to tell them. – Amund Sjølie Sveen, leader of NORDTING.

We all remember Donald Trump’s failed proposal to buy Greenland in 2019 – a large slice of the arctic region. This time it is not the American Superpower that will be “Great Again”, it will be the North. NORDTING will turn the ex-president’s infamous election slogan on its head in order to challenge these power relations.

The light installation will give associations to the languages of political power, the commercialisation and touristification that the North, to a large degree, relies on, as well as the flawed assumption of the North as a periphery.

The art project NORDTING – “A Parliament for the North” was started in 2014, and is striving to allow issues from the North and about the North to be voiced at full volume. This time NORDTING and Barents Spektakel will raise questions about the Arctic, the balance of power, sovereignty, and the use of natural resources. 

The installation opens on Kirkenes town square at 19:30 on Wednesday, with speeches, music from a Kirkenes horn orchestra, as well as spontaneous cultural songs and other happenings. The Norwegian minister of culture and equality Anette Trettebergstuen will mark the official opening

School visit: On Thursday at 09:00 there will be a NORDTING event for school pupils, in collaboration with Kirkenes videregående skole. Amund Sjølie Sveen will take part in an artist lunch talk at the Samfundshuset on Thursday at 12.00.