Courses of Action

Island Eye Island Ear 1974. Work installation on Knavelskär with Tudor and Billy, and Martin Sörling, 1974 Photographer unknown. Courtesy Klüver/Martin Archive, Experiments in Art and Technology.

COURSES OF ACTION

Artists:
Michael Tsegaye
Flis Holland
Sissel Solbjørg Bjugn
Island Eye Island Ear

24 August–20 October 2024

The exhibition Handlingsforløp (Courses of Action) consists of photos, video works and texts by the artists Michael Tsegaye and Flis Holland and the author Sissel Solbjørg Bjugn, plus archive material from Island Eye Island Ear – a collective art project with a history dating back more than 50 years. The participants are from different countries, generations and disciplinary backgrounds.

Produced in collaboration between Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) and the artist-run institution NŌUA, the exhibition stands as a satellite to the exhibition that opens on 20 September in Svolvær.

This year's edition of Lofoten International Art Festival, LIAF, has as its starting point Lofoten's unique and relatively unknown history of telegraphy – to be precise, the establishment of Lofotlinjen (the Lofoten line) and the innovative technological experiments that led to a race to establish the world's first wireless spark-gap telegraph connection. The story is that one man rowed all the way from Røst to Sørvågen, a stretch of 60 kilometres across extremely dangerous ocean, to bring the news that the signal from Sørvågen had passed over the Lofoten mountains, crossed the swirling maelstrom and been picked up in Røst by the over 50-metre-tall wooden mast that had been erected at the outer-most tip of the island. Although Lofoten was defeated by the Italians and had to content itself with second place, the experiment led to Sørvågen Radio being, for a time, a communication hub that would increase the levels of safety and efficiency in Lofoten's fishing industry. At the same time, it proved to put the weather-bitten fishing villages in contact with a much larger world extending beyond the archipelago.

The exhibition title, translated as Courses of Action, refers to the fact that the works, which consist of previously unpublished manuscripts and unrealised projects, incorporate in different ways ideas that relate to courses of action, projections, visions and processes that stretch over longer periods of time.

Lofoten International Art Festival, LIAF, is the longest-running art biennial in Scandinavia. It presents works by local and international artists in a site-aware context. This year's festival, the 18th edition, is curated by Kjersti Solbakken. North Norwegian Art Centre has organised the festival since 2009. LIAF has its own artistic advisory board.

Much thanks to Tor Eystein Øveraas for his generous loan of works and archival material.

The exhibition has received support from Nordic Culture Point, the Norwegian-Finnish Cultural Foundation and Bodø 2024 European Capital of Culture.

LIAF and North Norwegian Art Centre are funded by Art and Culture Norway, the municipality of Vågen and the counties of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark.