EXHIBITIONS

Borderlands - Arctic virtual exhibition

2015 - 2016

The Arctic is the home of about 4 million permanent residents. Global warming increases the interest in utilizing the Arctic´s natural resources on a large, industrial scale on one hand and nature protection based on self-sustaining, small-scale utilization on the other. Is Dubaiaque a future name of a town in Greenland? Is the icecap likely to become black with oil in the near future?

Art and handicraft shed light on the lifestyle and ideology of the people that have through the millennia learnt to live in the Arctic environment in Greenland, Scandinavia as well as in Iceland and the Faroe Isles.

In view of the fact that global warming is affecting nations all around the globe, people should look towards the Arctic for knowledge, inspiration and resilience ideas.

The aim of the project is to give the public and especially children and teenagers an idea of how the aboriginal inhabitants of the Arctic live, how they use their skills to adjust to the cold and barren North. Furthermore we will look in to what the future might hold for the region and its inhabitants. And how this future can learn from their past.

To show how modern Arctic art and handicraft is based on their heritage and is strongly influenced by social bonds, ethnic traditions and an environment that changes faster than anticipated, as the societies head for crossroads.

This will be done by the use of interactive, interactive experiences showing their way of life and explaining their solutions to problems they faced in the past and the technology by which they survived and still use. The technology used will be boxes with transparent touch screens in which we will place artefacts of the peoples of the North. In this way we can use both the real and the digital.

The project is to create an exhibition of life in the Arctic as well as art, handicraft and cultural heritage of the region. To be based on digital interactive HD film material and photography plus works of art and/or contemporary artwork. The exhibition will be very easily moved to be sent to a number of countries in and outside the Arctic. and could as such start as a travelling exhibition.

This exhibit focuses on stories of the north, however to tell those stories we incorporate artefacts. object of aboriginal technology and art. Through these object the history of the arctic will be told. Shown on screens on top of the objects themselves.
Special objects of art as well as handicraft to be exhibited in connection with the national costumes of the natives such as a dog sledge, a kayak, harpoons and other things connected with hunting and fishing, igloos, knives and fishhooks and also women´s artwork in making clothes, decorating skins and making objects for ornamentation.

Texts would be short and to the point covering the facts of the struggle for existence and also the folk tales of each area that best describe the natural threats of the North. The text will mostly told by storytellers within the digital experience so as to minimise the amount of reading. Also videos and imagery will tell the stories .

Photos on the walls would mainly come from RAX but also from the people in the Arctic.

The nations represented:
In this first example we choose to look at Greenland. In the further development more topics and peoples will be covered.

In Iceland – Life and handicraft in the Town of Isafjord and the City of Akureyri
In Greenland – Inuits in Northern Greenland, Inuits on the Eastern coast, Inuits in Western and Southern Greenland
In Northern Norway, Northern Sweden and Northern Finland - Samis<br>
In part to we will take NW Russia, Siberia , Alaska and Canada

Close cooperation will be sought with local people, institutions and/or museums/art centers in each country.

This project can become an opportunity for Iceland / Greenland to take its place within the Arctic group of nations and then, especially, as a reliable member of the Arctic population in promoting knowledge of culture, heritage and way of life of the Arctic nations/ethnic groups.

Borderlands - Concept document