Invitation

Invitation to Remember an Artwork - The Border Art Archive - BAA (working title)

We are reaching out to you with an exploratory aim to collect, reconstruct and make visible artworks and projects that were made from around early 1990 and up until recent times, in the Kirkenes area, Eastern Finnmark, the border areas between Norway, Finland, the axis to Murmansk and Kola Peninsula.

The motivation is to research, reflect on and give attention to recent local art histories created in these regions by artists, curators and others form the region and from other places and countries. Some artists contributed an interesting work in one exhibition/event, others on several occasions. The documentation is partial, exists fragmentarily, and overviews are lacking.

We are interested in the less exposed, critical, experimental and investigative works and projects, in the visual and interdisciplinary art fields, in formats grounded in non-institutional initiatives, and work that in general responded to a new open border situation that arose in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and up to the present day.

As a start we address artists, curators & producers who we would like to contribute, whom we have worked with, or who made work within these contexts and areas. The BAA will be published Online, on a Wiki.

We ask you to share (the) work(a) s as requested.

If you are interested in contributing please share information as follows (if relevant):

1) 1-5 images representative of the work

2) Title, year, media

3) Short description of the work & if relevant context for the presentation

4) Sources of texts or quotes relevant for the work

5) Why this work was important to you?

If you have suggestions on other works you think we should consider, please let us know!

Kind regards,

Hilde

with the working group

About the BAA

Hilde Methi, Zhanna Guzenko, Oleg Khadartcev Camilla Fagerli and Dušan Barok are in the process of making a selection of works & projects to be presented Online as the 'border art archive'. In a next phase, the BAA project will also include other public or semi-public activities, as for instance exhibition, event, seminar, workshop, commissioning of texts & new works.

Works considered for presenting in the BAA:

Geographical scope: border regions between Norway, Finland, the axis to Murmansk, Kola Peninsula, and beyond (depending on the nature of works).

Time period: Ca. 1990 and until ca 2020.

Work with movement across borders or responding to cross-border situations/contexts.

Work made in one of these places, presented here, or elsewhere.

Exhibition/event.

Emphasis on non-institutional initiatives.

Emphasis on the visual and interdisciplinary art fields in the Barents region and Sápmi.

Exceptions.

There may be other local interesting/relevant works or initiatives before 1990 and from other branching localities to remember. Our criteria are eclectic and will be elaborated as the work proceeds.