Hotel Polar Capital gives an account of the festival as well as containing the artistic contributions Cyclone Kingkrab & Piper Sigma by Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot, Circulating Sites by Morten Torgersrud, and Kongens tale/The King’s Speech by Kristin Tårnesvik. It includes a presentation of LUJA by artist Yvette Brackman, an excerpt from the testimony What is the landscape where I come from? by anthropologist Britt Kramvig, and the script from the film The Right to Land and Water by Geir Tore Holm. It presents articles Proximity to the Means of Production by Boel Christensen-Scheel, The Sámi Art Festival as a Temporary Position by Thomas Kintel, and Making It Up: Aesthetic Arrangements in the Barents Region by Andrea Phillips.
Hotel Polar Capital can be downloaded as a pdf. It has 138 pages.

The DVD (63:45 min) documents the exhibition and seminar project The Road To Mental Decolonization curated by Kuratorisk Aktion. The DVD includes presentations by theorist Kobena Mercer, artists Aslaug Juliussen and Iben Mondrup, social anthropologists Britt Kramvig and Aviaja Egede Lynge, artworks by Katarina Pirak Sikku and Pia Arke, and the film Firekeepers introduced by director Rossella Ragazzi, who has also directed this DVD. Distribution: info@kuratorisk-aktion.org and samiskkunst@gmail.com.

In connection with the show Vedbilder (Wood Images) by Geir Tore
Holm at Oslo Museum; Interkulturelt Museum, this seminar focuses on the concepts of ecology understood through landscape and the exploitation of nature. After an introduction by Holm, Kristina Skåden presents her research on the emergence of motoring in Norway, Hilde Methi talks about the Sámi Art Festival and Boel Christensen-Scheel moderates a conversation about art in the context of ecological thinking.
The seminar takes place in Oslo Museum; Interkulturelt Museum,
September 10, 2010, from 10:00 to 14:00. The seminar is organized as part of the MA-program for Visual Arts at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, in collaboration with the Sámi Art Festival.

A pdf that contains images from the art projects of Collective Matters. Texts in Norwegian only.

LUJA is the trademark of products developed in partnership with artisans in Lujavri at Kola Peninsula in Russia. The intension of LUJA is to strategize a just form for production and dissemination of products. LUJA Shop is open at Fjordgata 30, Trondheim. LUJA is a joint project run by Yvette Brackman and Hilde Methi.

The Catalyst by Yvette Brackman is a learning play based on a true story that took place in Lujavri/Lovozero, Russia in 2006, and through various forms of correspondence in 2006-2007. The Catalyst has been performed thirteen times.
First written and performed with six separate roles with actors assigned to each role, this version is numbered allowing participants to play several roles during the course of a performance. This publication is a ‘frozen version’ of the performance that up till now has been edited each time after it has been performed, incorporating comments by audiences on the play.
The publication can be downloaded as a pdf. It is in English, Kildinsami and Russian.

The project takes up a form of a speculative pamphlet containing a script in which two historical events of 1917 linked by their close temporal proximity, the first Sámi Conference held in Trondheim and the February Revolution in Russia are explored by two women protagonists. The ensuing exchange between them is based on the figures of Elsa Laula Renberg, a Sámi writer and Alexandra Kollontai, a Russian activist. As their conversation shifts from questions of education, protest, social awareness and self-organisation, we are exposed through images and footnotes to different time perspectives, historical speculation and fiction. The role of the newspapers and the imminent introduction of radio are being discussed as the conversation itself anticipates broadcasting at a moment when the two events, the Sámi quest for self-determination and the Bolshevik revolution coincide in the same year. Both gather momentum through social descent and both in different degrees affected the political foundations of the world we inhabit now.
Double Act. 1917 investigates the ‘unproductive’ moments of historical narrative searching for their relevance in the current debates around education and language, property rights, resources and a wider representation of people in Sámi communities and elsewhere.
The publication is designed by Stefan Andersson and printed in 500 copies.
More www.marysialewandowska.com
Double Act. 1917 to be downloaded here.

The symposium opens with the exhibition The Last Silent Movie by Susan Hiller. This artwork is ‘opening up’ the archives of dead or endangered languages, creating a strong composition of many voices that are not silent. On Friday the linguist Ole Henrik Magga talks about legislation and emotions in relation to the Sámi language, and Solvej Dufour Andersen is presenting her videowork Mother Tongue by the Arctic Beaches. The art historian Elina Heikka presents the artist group Elonkorjaajat in the context of the 1970’s international conceptual art, and Maja Dunfjeld specifically talks about the interrelation between duodji (Sámi handicraft) and Southsami language in specifically. Kristin Tårnesvik presents her artistic explorations of communication in situations where a common language is missing. The linguist Mikael Vinka lectures about Universal Grammar, Grammatical Variation and Southsami. Artist Geir Tore Holm performs Mellom hjertespråk og gullspråk (‘Between Heart Language and Gold Language’), and we show four videoworks by Katarina Zdjelar that investigates various mechanisms in connection to pronunciation, sound and the learning of languages.
Program summary for Trondheim and Snåsa to be downloded here.

The right to the land and the water.
An embodiment of economic and societal conditions.
The film is based on interviews with people who are affected by and have opinions about the Finnmark Act; managers, lawyers, politicians, historians, activists, artists and users. The different voices are put in one person’s mouth – at work in the forest.
Traditional, local knowledge meets formalized opinions on legislation and public regulations of the use of land and water.

The interviews took place in the counties Finnmark and Troms (Norway) in 2009.
The film is to be shown in the festival exhibition at the Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art, April 14 – May 5, 2010.

...
4.
We want to see some identification!
Мы хотим видеть твои документы!
5.
We explained our proposal to you already. You were here.
Мы уже объяснили вам суть нашего предложения. Вы же там были.
You even came up to me after the introduction and asked questions in a very friendly and enthusiastic manner.
Вы даже подходили ко мне после официального представления и задавали вопросы очень дружелюбно и с большим энтузиазмом.
Now suddenly you turn and address me with anger and suspicion.
А сейчас вы обращаетесь ко мне с раздражением и относитесь с подозрением.
6.
We are here to protect the rights of our people.
Мы здесь, чтобы защищать права наших людей.
These craftspeople are naive.
Эти рабочие наивны.
They can easily be taken advantage of.
Их легко можно использовать в своих интересах.
Chorus (Spoken by Everyone):
Хор (все говорят):
We are craftspeople.
Мы мастеровые.
We work and we innovate.
Мы работаем, мы новаторы.
Our designs are our heritage.
Наш дизайн – наше наследство.
7.
But you know nothing about the working of global capitalism and how it turns the living into the living dead.
Но вы ничего не знаете о мировом капитализме и о том, как он превращает живых в живых мертвецов.
Chorus (spoken by everyone):
Хор (все говорят):
You may think us passive and naive but we know that work and innovation are of utmost importance.
Вы, может, думаете, что мы пассивны и наивны, но мы знаем, что труд и инновации важнее всего.
8.
As a child here in the borderland our native traditions were looked down upon.
Здесь на приграничной территории во времена моего детства, на наши исконные традиции смотрели свысока.
We were shamed by the authorities for practicing our way of life.
Представители власти стыдили нас за наш образ жизни.
9.
You want to know why I want to see your identification? I too, was forbidden to learn our ancestral traditions. My parents were ashamed of our heritage and refused to teach me our language and traditions. Now I have gone to university I have learned about our rights and with this new knowledge want to protect my culture.
Вы хотите знать, почему я хочу видеть ваши документы? Мне тоже запрещали изучать традиции наших предков. Мои родители стыдились нашего наследия и отказывались учить меня нашему языку и передавать традиции. Сейчас я учусь в университете и знаю наши права и с помощью этих новых знаний хочу защитить мою культуру.
Chorus (Spoken by Everyone):
Хор (все говорят):
What do we stand to gain from you coming here?
Какой нам прок от того, что ты здесь?
Do you want to steal our ideas and exploit us?
Ты хочешь украсть наши идеи и эксплуатировать нас?
...

The workshop Art Between Ethnic Politics and Capital Flow was discussing certain political, economic, and cultural contexts that contemporary art needs to negotiate, when working within a northern context. The workshop gathered seven individuals for the three days discussion, and the document below gives a brief account on the progression of these days.

Searching for or creating a continuity of a Sámi architecture, by collecting images of what has been built for or by Sámi people. This compilation of built structures is an ongoing project by architect Joar Nango. He is publishing small fanizines that aim at discussing Sámi arcitecture, and this was also his contribution to the workshop Art Between Ethnic Politics and Capital Flow. Enjoy his presentation!

“An old friend from Qaqortoq told me: “Itseernartunngornikuugavit” which translates to: “You have become someone to whom one should be shy” and my father said: “Now you must be un-schooled”. I was so proud of what I had achieved but I was not to think too much of myself… in addition to that I had to be un-schooled…? I had achieved so much but I had become too European. And what did my father mean? As it turned out he meant mental decolonization.”

Below you can download the testimony “Equality on whose terms?
– A story about coming to realize the misleading notions of colonial history”, by Aviâja Egede Lynge from Greenland. This testimony was one of four presented at the seminar Healing the Postcolonial Trauma of Nordic Indigenous Women. These testimonies will be part of a video-letter/documentation DVD.

The seminar Healing Postcolonial Traumas of Nordic Indigenous Women constitutes the second part of the Road to Mental Decolonialization which was launched with the exhibition The Drive to Remember. This exhibition examines whether art can contribute to remember, articulate, and mourn undigested mental trauma caused by colonial processes and dynamics. In continuation of this thematic, the seminar Healing Postcolonial Traumas of Nordic Indigenous Women sets forth to further investigate what these trauma consist of, how they operate, and in what ways they contribute to blocking both geopolitical and mental processes of decolonization.

Is Sápmi colonized? Are the Greenlanders decolonized? Are the memories of the indigenous peoples part of Nordic history? Do they embrace the accounts of women? What role can art play in elucidating these memories and healing wounds?

Taking its starting point in these questions, the exhibition and seminar project The Road to Mental Decolonization attempts to open up for traumatizing and therefore repressed memories of colonization.

Images from Nenets Autonomus Okrug, Russia.