Barents Triennale

PAN-BARENTZ
Barents Art Triennale 2008—2010
For more information visit www.panbarentz.com.

The project Pan-Barentz is aimed at exploring the concept of Barents Identity.
What is Barents regional identity? Are national identities still very strong within the Barents Region? As identities are practiced in public spaces, we focus on urban space, city-planning and development trends for Barents cities in the future.
In 1993 a new Barents Region was constructed. 16 years after we invited artists, architects and researchers to interpret the process of construction of the new type(s) of identity.
All the activities take place in 12 cities in the Barents Region and beyond:

Barents Urban Survey is conducted by an international team of researchers and urban designers, focusing on selected key cities and urban phenomane in the Barents Region.Cities under investigation are Kirkenes, Hammerfest, Tromsø, Alta, Narvik, Vardø, Nikel, Murmansk, Apatity, Kirovsk, Monchegorsk, Arkhangelsk, Kiruna, Luleå, HaparandaTornio, Rovaniemi, etc. The project is directed by 0047 in cooperation with Pikene på Broen. The research resulted in a publication Northern Experiments – The Barents Urban Survey 2009, which includs projects by Buromoscow, NORD, Testbedstudio, Department of Urban Design and Planning, NTNU and 0047. Texts by Alexander Sverdlov, Morten Strøksnes, Aileen Espíritu, Joar Nango, Magnus Jørgensen, Gert Gundersen, Dennis Zalamans and Gisle Løkken.

Exhibition Pan-Barentz: 16 years after the Barents Region was launched as a new spatial entity in the High North, the exhibition PAN-BARENTZ invites you to explore the Barents identity at the crossroads of art, architecture, urbanism and politics. PAN-BARENTZ presents a series of statements, investigations, readings and interpretations made by artists and architects on and of identity in the Barents region.

Pan-Barentz in Situ – a series of site-specific artworks and projects, re-interpreting current urban landscapes and communicating new identities of the towns: Arctic Subcircle production in Kars, Turkey – a musical border-crossing exercise, bringing together Barents, Caucasus and Africa; an installation by a Norwegian artist Lars Ramberg in Murmansk, Russia, that will capture new realities and hopes of Murmansk; No Man’s Island by a Finnish architect Sami Rintala in the harbour of Kirkenes, Norway, that will become a meeting place for various cultures in the Barents Region out in the sea.

Barents Ideal Cities – educational artist-led workshops for the local youth in Tromsø, Murmansk and Rovaniemi, in parallel with the exhibition Pan-Barentz, aimed at promoting the engagement og local communities in participatory urban design. Directed by the University of Lapland.

Visionary Arctic – an interdisciplinary seminar giving futuristic views of the roles of the Arctic: a bank of resources or zone of innovation? The seminar especially focused on settlement patterns in the High North as a result of centralisation, recent changes in the border relations and management of resources. Contributions from researchers, city-planners, architects and artists.

The project PAN-BARENTZ is produced by Pikene på Broen (Kirkenes) in cooperation with 0047 (Oslo), the University of Lapland (Rovaniemi) and Anadolu Kultur (Istanbul).

The project is supported by EU Culture program 2007-2013, Norwegian Ministry of Culture, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norwegian Arts Council, KORO, Kulturkontakt Nord, Barents Secretariat, BarentsKult, Fritt Ord, Husbanken.