Elisabeth Brun, Molly Davies, Anawana Haloba, Simen Engen Larsen, Elise MacMillan, Kameelah Janan Rasheed
Sea Tails: Jackie Matisse, Molly Davies, David Tudor
Guest Appearance: NORDTING/Amund Sjølie Sveen

This year's festival exhibition is based on the history surrounding the Lofoten Line: a large-scale national initiative from 1861 which was supposed to make the Lofoten fishery more efficient. With its 170 km of submarine cables and land lines, the facility constituted the country's first telegraph line outside the main telecommunications network.

During the long cold winter months when the Lofoten fishing took place, a temporary connection was established between 9 fishing telegraph stations. The messages communicated the movements of the skerries, but could also warn of upcoming storms and storms - a connection of spark stations, on land and in water. The world's strongest ocean current prevented the cables from reaching the outermost islands in Lofoten: Værøy and Røst. Perhaps it was precisely the inaccessible aspect that made it particularly interesting - and not least absolutely necessary - to find new ways of communicating? After a series of trials and experiments, wireless messages were sent between Røst and Sørvågen in 1903.

The story goes that a man rowed all the way from Røst to Sørvågen, a stretch of 60 kilometers across the dangerous waters, to bring the news that the signal from Sørvågen had passed over the Lofoten mountains, crossed the maelstrom and was picked up in Røst by the over 50 meter tall wooden masts. Three years later, Northern Europe's first wireless spark transmitter station opened between Sørvågen and Røst, and Norway became number two in the world - only beaten by the Italians, who managed to establish a similar connection the year before. During the festival week, the exhibition space will be activated in various ways. Several of the artists will be present in the exhibition and the curator will give short introductions.

This year's festival exhibition is a collaboration with Nordnorsk kunstnersenter and is a prelude to the Lofoten International Art Festival which is held in September. The exhibition is a collaboration with Festspillene i Nord-Norge on the occasion of the festival's 60th anniversary.

Curator Kjersti Solbakken

Film still from «Big Tech Blues» by Elisabeth Brun