NORDTING/Amund Sjølie Sveen

One of many ways of reading the project NORDTING (The Northern Assembly) is as a study of communication. From road signs to neon advertising, from slogans to T-shirts emblazoned with pithy phrases, NORDTING engages with the public sphere through forms of communication borrowed from politics, government and commerce. Here we find political slogans and battle songs, neon advertising clothed in commercial aesthetics and road signs that appear as (and maybe are) public information.

For the 2024 Festspillene i Nord- Norge in Harstad, NORDTING carried out a series of ‘pinprick operations in guerrilla format’ to mark NORDTING’s 10-year anniversary. As part of the collaboration between LIAF 2024 and Festspillenei Nord-Norge, with the director Ragnheiður Skúladóttir, NORDTING also presented a series of works at the festival exhibition Gnistsambandet – Opptakt (SPARKS – Prelude). With thetitle Nu får det for satan i hællvette være nok, stæle for milliarda og tilbyr oss dritt tilbake! Kjøssmæmedt i ræva! Vi skal ha fesken våres tilbake, arme hæstkuka! (interpretation: ‘You cock-sucking ball-licking bastards, enough is enough, stealing all resources and leaving us with nothing! kiss my dirty asshole! Give back all our fish, you poor fucking donkey dicks!’), NORDTING presented slogans, T-shirts and songs based on a quote from the fisherman Vegard Bangsund from Vardø, who used the local newspaper Østhavet to comment on the government’s fishery policy.

One of many pinprick operations carried out by NORDTING in connection with Festspillenei Nord-Norge is just outside the Lofoten Cathedral in Kabelvåg: in connection with the national day of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), the plinth of the statue of Hans Egede was furnished with a new inscription. The heroic story of the priest Egede is nuanced with information about missionary work and colonization. It remains to be seen how long the plaque will remain.

NORDTING is a nomadic people’s parliament of the North, a party for the periphery, a separatist movement for the Arctic colony. Since 2014, NORDTING has traveled throughout the circumpolar North with assembly meetings; a combination of gala performance, powerpoint lecture and political rally. NORDTING has visited Alaska, Yukon and NWT in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, The Faroe Islands, Northern Sweden, Northern Finland and of course Northern Norway. What happens outside of the assembly hall is at least as important as what happens inside of it. NORDTING organizes May Day parades and broadcasts live from court cases, waves flags and makes public installations, installs street signs and marks memorial days for which no one else takes responsibility.