War in the North, a presentation based on written materials and pictures by local historian Rune Rautio.

Rautio focuses on Northern Finland, incl. the Petsamo corridor, the Arctic frontline, Murmansk and Finnmark. What happened and why? He shows us pictures illustrating daily life along the Finnish Arctic road, Finnish soldiers, Finnish civilians in Kolosjoki/Sodankylä /Ivalo/Rovaniemi, war events by the Salla/Kandalaksha line.

Basen is open. Meeting point for youths.

Torch procession: From Sjømannsklubben, along AMFI, up Dr. Wesselsgt through the pedestrian street, along Sentrum Kafe, through the town square, up Parkveien to the stadium. Speech by the Mayor.

12:00 - 16:00: Badminton in Fjellhallen

12:00 - 16:00: Wrestling in Fjellhallen

12:00 - 14:00: Youth football in Barentshallen

14:00 - 16:00: Football Oldboys in Barentshallen

12:00 - 13:00: Figure skating at Lillebanen

13:00 - 16:00: Icehockey at Lillebanen

12:00 - 16:00: Skiing at Skilekanlegget

12:00 - 16:00: Boxing in Fjellhallen 

21:00: Closing award ceremony. Disco: free entrance

Opening ceremony at the new Saami section during daytime.

Fairytales reading for children, daytime and afternoon.

Exhibition.

A performance from St.Petersburg for school children (6-12 years).

The main character of the play is a spoiled and naughty girl. She is stuck in the virtual world and is unable to play or interact with her peers without a game console in her hands. Being punished for his behavior she gets into a mysterious world of silence where no one can hear her moaning and shouting. Meeting with unusual yet kind inhabitants of this world, experiencing fun adventures, the girl learns to be more responsive to others. Realizing that life is much brighter and more interesting than the world of virtual games, she returns home. The story is told through music, movement and dolls with practically no text.

Duration: appr. 50 minutes.

The play runs twice. First at 10:00. Then at 12:00.

The Kirkenes Conference is arranged for the eight time and are proud to announce that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende, will give the opening speech. The conference has become an important venue in the region for business and decision-makers at all levels, local to national. 

More info and full program: Kirkenes Conference.

Kirkenes airport, Høybuktmoen, becomes a site-specific stage when the Swiss performance group Da Motus! explores the heart of the Barents region. Simultaneous movements and gestures despite big distance between the performers question the fact why human beings surround themselves with alienated buildings.

The vivacious plasticity of plant life, the vibrant and breathing quality of animals’ movement and the subtle and sensitive exchange of human relations inspire and stimulate the body language of Da Motus! Their perfomances are eclectic and attest a lively creativity, enriched by a subtle ability to play with the circumstances, on stage as well as out-door in specific sites.

Da Motus! (da!=give, offer! / motus=movement) was founded in 1987 and has performed in more than 200 cities of 43 countries. In 2014, the company receives the Cultural Prize of the Council of Fribourg, in Switzerland.

Rejuvenate at the daily church concert.

Concert with Henning Holm (organ).

Beau Geste (FR)

Brigitte Heuser (NZ)

Fadi Gaziri (RU)

Superlys (NO)

The dancer’s body moves through the cold night. His arms waving, grabbing, pushing - cutting through the air like a knife. He kneels in front of the digger. His head facing the ground. Is he surrendering, or is he asking for a dance?

Despite its gigantic size a machine is somehow connected with the human body. Is Transports Exceptionnels a child`s dream, an adult`s illusion or just fantasy inspired by an industrial surrounding?   

In times when companies in the High North suffer from the results of high politics and low iron price, Barents Spektakel reflects on the vulnerable relation between man and machine with an intense and poetic opening show of dirt and dance.

Barents Spektakel presents a spectacular and site-specific adapted performance by the French artist group Beau Geste, a non-verbal dialog between a digger and a dancer, accompanied by newly arranged music, placed under the ever noisy, always steamy separation plant of Kirkenes.

The mezzo-soprano, Brigitte Heuser, appears as a soloist during the Opening Show. Heuser is a versatile singer, classically trained in opera. She was born in New Zealand and began her classical vocal training there and has since performed in Germany, Norway, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, England and Wales. Heuser is currently based between Norway, Kirkenes to be specific, and Germany. 

Fadi Gaziri has composed and arranged works for the Opening Show. He appears live on piano, electronics and violin performing with Brigitte Heuser during the show. Gaziri is born in Moscow and lives and works as a piano entertainer, cabarettist, and composer in Hamburg. He has performed around the world, and has written music for TV adverts, short films, image films, online games, etc. 

Photo: Lisa Drewes

Artistic supervision: Anders Eriksson, Mansard Management.

Sound: Lydteamet.

Technical production: Pikene på Broen and Lydteamet.

Øystein Blix (NO)

Aleksander Gureev (RU)

Nadezhda Moskaleva (RU)

Aleksander Kostopoulos (NO)

Alexander Aarøen Pedersen (NO)

Asketics (RU)

Musicians from Scene Finnmark (NO)

Two professional jazz composers from the Barents region, Øystein Blix and Aleksander Gureev, are on the search for a contemporary acoustic expression of a common cultural heritage. Blix and Gureev include sounds of the region and folk music instruments aiming to find a common musical language based on jazz and improvisation.

A Barents Rhapsody is a sound map of a common ground, and becomes much more than just music or a new contribution to the world of contemporary jazz. Music has no borders and speaks in a language that is both longing for traditional background and at the same time opening the view into a future of understanding and collaboration.

Øystein Blix is a jazz musician and sound designer, central to the Tromsø jazz scene and Head of Tromsø Jazzklubb from 2001. Blix works as lecturer at the University of Tromsø, Department of Music, Dance and Drama, where he lectures in acoustics.

Aleksander Gureev is a saxophone player and composer, with roots in Arkhangelsk. Gureev is currently sax chair at the Moscow Arts and Culture University's Jazz department, has toured all over Europe and is presented on a huge number of recordings for radio, TV and CD.

The folk singer, Nadezhda Moskaleva, the percussionist, Aleksander Kostopoulos, and the keyboard player, Alexander Aarøen Pedersen, are all musicians from the Barents region and handpicked for this production.

The Asketics are a Karelian trio with a varied mucial expression; from atmospheric ambient and cool jazz to dynamic drum'n'bass and hard core.

Scene Finnmark is a unit under Finnmark County Municipality and consists of professional regional musicians trained within different instruments and genres.

For a taste of the Asketics, here's their video Atlantis from 2014.

The festival exhibition, Arctic Take Away, reflects upon different ways of viewing the Arctic.

The Arctic as a takeout counter where you order whatever your heart, or stomach, desires. Mining industry, oil and gas, food export, drilling, digging and rock blasting – it’s become a part of our history. Is the Arctic a perpetual source for outsiders to dig in? For how long?

On the other hand, the Arctic has traditions for transporting, taking out and bringing back, moving, travelling - borderlessness. Until the early 1800s this area was a borderless zone. The people living here moved freely, bringing their culture and traditions with them, taking out what was needed, giving back whatever they had.

The festival exhibition addresses these topics in a nomadic way, complimenting the slogan, raising questions and inviting people to the dialogue.

Frantisek Zvardon (FR)

Rune Johansen (NO)

Dmitry Novitsky & Glafira Severianova (RU)

Igor Bryakilev (RU)

Hege Annestad Nilsen (NO)

Eva Bakkeslett (NO)

Li Xiaofei (CN)   

Stefano Cagol (IT)      

Ørjan Amundsen (NO)

Olga Jitlina (RU)

Marja Helander (FI)

Natalia Egorova (RU)

The festival exhibition will be located in different places around the city center.

The Kirkenes conference has become an important venue in the region for business and decision-makers at all levels, local to national. The conference is arranged for the eight time.

More info and full program: Kirkenes Conference.

The festival exhibition, Arctic Take Away, reflects upon different ways of viewing the Arctic.

The Arctic as a takeout counter where you order whatever your heart, or stomach, desires. Mining industry, oil and gas, food export, drilling, digging and rock blasting – it’s become a part of our history. Is the Arctic a perpetual source for outsiders to dig in? For how long?

On the other hand, the Arctic has traditions for transporting, taking out and bringing back, moving, travelling - borderlessness. Until the early 1800s this area was a borderless zone. The people living here moved freely, bringing their culture and traditions with them, taking out what was needed, giving back whatever they had.

The festival exhibition addresses these topics in a nomadic way, complimenting the slogan, raising questions and inviting people to the dialogue.

Frantisek Zvardon (FR)

Rune Johansen (NO)

Dmitry Novitsky & Glafira Severianova (RU)

Igor Bryakilev (RU)

Hege Annestad Nilsen (NO)

Eva Bakkeslett (NO)

Li Xiaofei (CN)   

Stefano Cagol (IT)      

Ørjan Amundsen (NO)

Olga Jitlina (RU)

Marja Helander (FI)

Natalia Egorova (RU)

Guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian around the festival exhibition.

Thursday 5th and Friday 6th: 16.30. Meeting point: Town square.

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th: 13.00. Meeting point: Town square.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

The festival exhibition will be located in different places around the city center.

The exhibition is open to the public 4-15th of Feb. Hege Annestad Nilsen's exhibition, In Savio's footprints, is open until the end of February.

New market tents with patterns designed by fourteen artists/groups commissioned by Mobile Kultur Byrå.

This performance is for Kirkenes school only.

Executed stories tells the life story of a group of people that was either executed or became executioners. The viewing angle is constantly shifting between the different aspects of the execution; the person to be executed or the one performing the execution. For the former, it is an irrevocable punishment, the latter perhaps a well done service.

Executed stories consists of words, simple actions, songs, a tapestry, a drawing, a photo, and the Last Supper. The tone is neutral and objective, but not without humour. The audience will be playing hangman and setting up top-ten lists of various execution methods. The highlight is a prize draw where the winner gets served what she or he would have asked for his last meal.

Juha Valkeapää is a vocal and performance artist, using his voice as his main tool. Since 1993, he has made seven hundred performances of one hundred and forty different works in twenty-seven countries, solos and various group works, vocal & sound & performance art, theatre, music, dance, plus sound installations, soundscapes and compositions for exhibitions, radio, theatre and dance performances. He is based in Helsinki, Finland.

Dancers:

Liv Hanne Haugen (NO)

Flavia Devonas (NO)

Pollina Artmeva (RU)

Viacheslav Burtcev (RU)

Who decides if the air is clean - or clean enough? Do we have sufficient cross border agreements when dealing with environmental issues and airspace, or is air simply uncontrollable?

Shrink is a performance by the Tromsø based artist Lawrence Malstaf. The performance includes two Russian and two Norwegian dancers, a large metal scaffold and loads of plastic. The dancers couple up, one Russian and one Norwegian, and vacuum-seal each other; their bodies moving slowly, pausing, changing their pose until they are completely wrapped in plastic and not able to move anymore. Being vacuum-sealed in plastic, one needs to trust the ones on the outside, the ones controlling your air channel, your only way of breathing. However, being shrink-wrapped in plastic, what to we look like? Man as meat. Something one might by in a supermarket, something to take away?

The work of Lawrence Malstaf is situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. He develops installation and performance art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos, and immersive sensorial rooms for individual visitors. He also creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation, often using the visitor as a co-actor. His projects involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration and as a means for activating installations.

Join the celebration of the arrival of 14 market tents with individual patterns on the back of them – exclusively designed by artists commissioned by Mobile Kultur Byrå for the Russian Market in Kirkenes!

The Market traders travel from Murmansk once a month to hold the market at Kirkenes Square. If and when the market takes place is dependent on the border regulations and the weather: When the traders are present, if the wind allows, the art will be unpacked and displayed in the heart of town. When they leave, the art will be repacked and once again out of sight.

Contributing artists: Finn Thybo Andersen & Kirsten Dufour, Siri Austeen, Yvette Brackman, Solveig Dufour & Peter Stoffel, Espen Sommer Eide & Kristin Taarnesvik, Geir Tore Holm & Søssa Jørgensen, Ane E Johansen, Joar Nango & Martijn In’t Veld, Annelie Nilsson, Pavel Pepperstein, Glafira Severianova, Ulrike Solbrig, Silje Figenschou Thoresen, and Morten Torgersrud.

Inaugural speech: Mayor Cecilie Hansen.

The artist-collective Mobile Kultur Byrå (Kirsten Dufour, Hilde Methi and Ulrike Solbrig) makes work in response to the Russian Market in Kirkenes.

Improvement of Market Facilities is made possible thanks to support from Barentskult and Public Art Norway (KORO/URO).

The fashion show is followed by two DIY workshops, Redesign Café, for youth and adults at Fretex led by Charlotte Nilsen.

Get inspired by the fashion show and join in! Signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Take a break from the busy festival program and rejuvenate at the daily church concert.

Concert with Alla Sukhomlina (organ).

During Barents Spektakel 2015, the designer Charlotte Nilsen is running her concept Redesign Café at Fretex, Kirkenes. With a playful approach to design, Nilsen invites you to DIY, do it yourself , and renew your old clothing wardrobe without buying anything new. A part of the agenda is not only to be creative and playful with your old clothes, but also strengthen the awareness of one`s consumer role and how to reuse instead of buying new.

Open workshop for youth and adults, 14-17.00, at Fretex. Maximum 5 participants. Free of charge. Course 1: Redesign your old t-shirts into a top, skirt or dress. Bring 3-5 t-shirts, (or buy them at Fretex) we cut and sew and make them new! Signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Open workshop for youth and adults, 14-17.00, at Fretex. Maximum 5 participants. Free of charge. Course 2: Redesign your own Poncho. Bring your old jacket, sweater or shirt. We cut it to desired length and add some yarn threads. 1,2,3, your very own home made poncho! Signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Charlotte Nilsen has a MA in textiles from The Art Academy in Oslo and a certificate of completed apprenticeship in textiles. Nilsen runs the company Feil Farge that arranges courses in redesign and runs the Redesign Café, a blog and a mobile installation. Nilsen has travelled all over Norway with her Redesign Café and her redesign has been exhibited at both Tromsø Kunstforening and Arts & Crafts in Berlin.

Kirkenes becomes a site-specific stage when the Swiss performance group Da Motus! explores the heart of the Barents region. Simultaneous movements and gestures despite big distance between the performers question the fact why human beings surround themselves with alienated buildings.

The vivacious plasticity of plant life, the vibrant and breathing quality of animals’ movement and the subtle and sensitive exchange of human relations inspire and stimulate the body language of Da Motus! Their perfomances are eclectic and attest a lively creativity, enriched by a subtle ability to play with the circumstances, on stage as well as out-door in specific sites.

Da Motus! (da!=give, offer! / motus=movement) was founded in 1987 and has performed in more than 200 cities of 43 countries. In 2014, the company receives the Cultural Prize of the Council of Fribourg, in Switzerland.

The seminar on the Russian-Norwegian borderland is placed in a context of current geopolitical tensions in Eastern and Central Europe, in times when several countries are exhibiting slow growth and even recession. However, most signs up north are still positive.

During the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Kirkenes and the Finnmark region, Kirkenes was visited not only by the Norwegian King and Prime Minster, but also by the foreign ministers of Russia and Norway, Mr. Sergey Lavrov and Mr. Børge Brende. Everyone is interested in keeping Northern Europe as a good example for the future, with its longstanding partnership between Scandinavia and Russia and consensus on important environmental, economical and cultural matters. This seminar will address recent trends in bilateral relations in the Russian-Norwegian borderland when the political affairs in Central Europe and internationally between East and West is more tensed. 

Opening speech by the Mayor.

Time schedule:

Ordstyrer Svein Helge Orheim UiT-Norges Arktiske Universitet, Barentsinstituttet

16:00 Velkommen til grenseseminar 2015. Ordfører Cecilie Hansen, Sør-Varanger kommune

16:05 Kirkenes: Frontlinje eller Basecamp Barents?

Universitetslektor Peter Haugseth, UiT-Norges Arktiske Universitet, Campus Kirkenes.

16:10 Geo-økonomi i Nord: Noen perspektiver

Førsteamanuensis Urban Wråkberg, UiT-Norges Arktiske Universitet, Campus Kirkenes

16:25 Politisk kommunikasjon og media i det russiske grenselandet

Professor Olga Ivanishcheva, Det statlige humanistiske universitet i Murmansk (MSHU)

16:40 Lokal – regional politikk i norsk-russisk barents

Førsteamanuensis Kjell Hines, UiT-Norges Arktiske Universitet, Campus Alta

17:55 Ethnographies of Northern Landscapes

Phd.student Morgan Ip, AHO Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo & UiT- Norges Arktiske Universitet, Barentsinstituttet

17:10 The Urbanization in the Arctic: Socio-Economic Transitions and sustainability of Urban Systems

Phd.student Karolina Banul, UiT- Norges Arktiske Universitet, Barents Instituttet

17:25 Det russiske markedet i Kirkenes - kunstneriske intervensjoner

Hilde Methi, Mobile Kulturbyrå

17:40 Oppsummering. Marianne Soleim Neerland, Instituttleder Barentsinstituttet

17:45 «Allsang ved grensen» med Gruppa Krovy (NO)

Seminarinnleggene blir tolket.

The festival exhibition includes 13 different artists from Norway, France, Russia, China, Italy and Finland. Curious about the artist’s background and their works exhibited during Barents Spektakel 2015? Join our guided tours! Pikene på Broen has handpicked highly qualified guides and arranges guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian. Free of charge.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

Dancers:

Liv Hanne Haugen (NO)

Flavia Devonas (NO)

Pollina Artmeva (RU)

Viacheslav Burtcev (RU)

Who decides if the air is clean - or clean enough? Do we have sufficient cross border agreements when dealing with environmental issues and airspace, or is air simply uncontrollable?

Shrink is a performance by the Tromsø based artist Lawrence Malstaf. The performance includes two Russian and two Norwegian dancers, a large metal scaffold and loads of plastic. The dancers couple up, one Russian and one Norwegian, and vacuum-seal each other; their bodies moving slowly, pausing, changing their pose until they are completely wrapped in plastic and not able to move anymore. Being vacuum-sealed in plastic, one needs to trust the ones on the outside, the ones controlling your air channel, your only way of breathing. However, being shrink-wrapped in plastic, what to we look like? Man as meat. Something one might by in a supermarket, something to take away?

The work of Lawrence Malstaf is situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. He develops installation and performance art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos, and immersive sensorial rooms for individual visitors. He also creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation, often using the visitor as a co-actor. His projects involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration and as a means for activating installations.

Executed stories tells the life story of a group of people that was either executed or became executioners. The viewing angle is constantly shifting between the different aspects of the execution; the person to be executed or the one performing the execution. For the former, it is an irrevocable punishment, the latter perhaps a well done service.

Executed stories consists of words, simple actions, songs, a tapestry, a drawing, a photo, and the Last Supper. The tone is neutral and objective, but not without humour. The audience will be playing hangman and setting up top-ten lists of various execution methods. The highlight is a prize draw where the winner gets served what she or he would have asked for his last meal.

Juha Valkeapää is a vocal and performance artist, using his voice as his main tool. Since 1993, he has made seven hundred performances of one hundred and forty different works in twenty-seven countries, solos and various group works, vocal & sound & performance art, theatre, music, dance, plus sound installations, soundscapes and compositions for exhibitions, radio, theatre and dance performances. He is based in Helsinki, Finland.

The EU sanctions – consequences for the border area between Norway and Russia and the Barents Cooperation. How can it be that trade and business are blooming between EU Poland and Kaliningrad Russia? Representatives from Kaliningrad and Poland working with cross-border cooperation will be present at Talking Barents Transborder Café.

This Transborder Café is made in cooperation with the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.

Moderator:

Trude Pettersen and Atle Staalesen (BarentsObserver)

Panel: 

Cecilie Hansen/Tove Alstadsæther (Mayor/deputy of Sør-Varanger Municpality)

Pia Svensgaard (Secretary General at the Norwegian Barents Secretariat)

Geir Thorbjørnsen (Barel AS)

Mikahail Noskov (Russian General Consul Kirkenes)

Aleksei Ignatev (Program and Development Director Kaliningrad Regional Economic Development Agency)

Music:

The Asketics

The Asketics are a Karelian trio with a varied mucial expression; from atmospheric ambient and cool jazz to dynamic drum'n'bass and hard core.

Transborder Café (TC) is an informal concept, a theme based think tank which brings together experts by involving the audience in an open discussion related to current political and cultural issues enriched with contributions by artists, politicians and researchers.

Mikhail Rodionov/The Retuses

Photo: Andrey Shurpenkov 

We are not for the vast majority, but for those who listen attentively, Mikhail Rodionov from the popular Russian band, The Retuses, says. The musician is 23 years old, and plays a romantic and poetic indie folk inspired by Neutral Milk Hotel, Beirut or early Aquarium. The Retuses perform melancholic and expressive texts in English and Russian, such as poetry of Sergey Esenin, one of the most popular Russian poets in the 20th century.

The Retuses had been one of the most visible projects at the Russian folk scene until September 2014, when in the middle of the booking process for Barents Spektakel, the band stopped existing. Mikhail Rodionov, the frontman, announced that he continues solo keeping the underground vibe and the experimental attitude.

Here's, Шаганэ, by The Retuses! 

Comet Kid

Photo: Øyvind Lunde

Comet Kid is an Oslo based band started in 2013. In short time Comet Kid has manifested themselves as a solid live band, performed in Crown Prince Haakon of Norway’s 40^th birthday party and at the Scandinavian music convention by:Larm 2014 in Oslo. The special Comet Kid sound is described as a mix of roots, pop, folk and rock; performed with passion and true-to-life feelings.

Comet Kid released their first album, Roots, which received excellent reviews, in 2014. The band members are: Alexander Hoddevik (guitar), Andreas Kjøll (vocal), Svein Inge Bjørkedal (drums), Hogne Aasjord (keyboard) and Theodor Peterson (bass). Their new album Forces of Nature is released the 16th of February, whichs makes 2015 another busy Comet Kid year filled with releases and touring.

Enjoy Diamonds from Comet Kid's first album, Roots.

The St Petersburg based DJ Boogie Fek finalizes the night! DJ Boogie Fek plays a mix of hip-hop, funk, disco funk, freestyle electro, Miami bass, breakbeat and soul, and is one of founder and resident of the first underground night club Lets meet in the Place, Murmansk.

Mikkel Gaup takes children on a journey into an exciting Sami fairytale where they accompany the sweethearts Risten and Ante on a walk through winter and summer pastures, learn about reindeer fleeing from wolves, learn about the yoik and how it can be used in real life. Mikkel Gaup uses a lot og facial expressions and gestures to catch the children's interest; Impressions with the big wolf draw the children's attention.

The performance runs four times. First at 09:00. Then at 10:30, 12:00 and 13:30.

New market tents with patterns designed by fourteen artists/groups commissioned by Mobile Kultur Byrå.

Dancers:

Liv Hanne Haugen (NO)

Flavia Devonas (NO)

Pollina Artmeva (RU)

Viacheslav Burtcev (RU)

Who decides if the air is clean - or clean enough? Do we have sufficient cross border agreements when dealing with environmental issues and airspace, or is air simply uncontrollable?

Shrink is a performance by the Tromsø based artist Lawrence Malstaf. The performance includes two Russian and two Norwegian dancers, a large metal scaffold and loads of plastic. The dancers couple up, one Russian and one Norwegian, and vacuum-seal each other; their bodies moving slowly, pausing, changing their pose until they are completely wrapped in plastic and not able to move anymore. Being vacuum-sealed in plastic, one needs to trust the ones on the outside, the ones controlling your air channel, your only way of breathing. However, being shrink-wrapped in plastic, what to we look like? Man as meat. Something one might by in a supermarket, something to take away?

The work of Lawrence Malstaf is situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. He develops installation and performance art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos, and immersive sensorial rooms for individual visitors. He also creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation, often using the visitor as a co-actor. His projects involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration and as a means for activating installations.

Take a break from the busy festival program and rejuvenate at the daily church concert.

Concert with Henning Holm (organ).

When a cultures dies the know-how and experience of generations dies with it. So does the bond created by continual sharing of the culture. With bacterial cultures their unique and specific relationship to place and the connection between humans and their local microbes also disappears.

Fortunately, bacterial cultures are incredibly resilient and can survive for thousands of years. They can be revitalised by being given the right conditions to thrive. As a cultural activist you will have the privilege of reclaiming, nurturing, cultivating, digesting and sharing these microbial wonders to gently activate yourself and your local environment.

Cultivating cross-cultural diversity is rewarding. It gives you a Robin Hood-like feeling of stealing back what has been lost in a world where the often invisible transformation processes of microbes have been belittled, overlooked, neglected, combated, tamed or homogenised in physical as well as metaphorical ways. It is both tasty and rewarding to nurture and share these unique cultures.

Additional activities:

Intercultural button-making: reclaim your culture, befriend your microbes and share it with the world in your very own home made button.

Rømmekolle Radio: a unique blend of rømmekolle voices and tantalising noises. A gory story of germs, cows, caring and sharing across borders and species.

The Rømmekolle Radio program will be available to listen to at the Rømmekolle Revival Café during the festival and as a podcast that can be downloaded from this link.

More info abut Eva Bakkeslett and her project Rømmekolle Revival here.

The festival exhibition includes 13 different artists from Norway, France, Russia, China, Italy and Finland. Curious about the artist’s background and their works exhibited during Barents Spektakel 2015? Join our guided tours! Pikene på Broen has handpicked highly qualified guides and arranges guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian. Free of charge.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

During Barents Spektakel 2015, the designer Charlotte Nilsen is running her concept Redesign Café at Fretex, Kirkenes. With a playful approach to design, Nilsen invites you to DIY, do it yourself , and renew your old clothing wardrobe without buying anything new. A part of the agenda is not only to be creative and playful with your old clothes, but also strengthen the awareness of one`s consumer role and how to reuse instead of buying new.

6-7th of Feb: Open workshop for adults, part 1: 6th of Feb 16.30-20.30, part 2: 7th of 12-16.00, at Fretex. Maximum 8 participants. Course 3: Redesign with different clothes. Two-day course. Bring a bunch of your old clothes that need a make over, (or again, buy it at Fretex). Throughout this two-day course we make two items each, a dress, a pair of pants, a jacket or perhaps a new blouse? The course starts with an introduction about redesigning by Charlotte Nilsen. The group goes through the material they have brought to work with and together we have a little brainstorming on what and how to remake and redesign. Each participant gets individual following up throughout the course, both on the creative and technical part. If you want to bring your own sewing machine, you are very welcome to do so! Signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Charlotte Nilsen has a MA in textiles from The Art Academy in Oslo and a certificate of completed apprenticeship in textiles. Nilsen runs the company Feil Farge that arranges courses in redesign and runs the Redesign Café, a blog and a mobile installation. Nilsen has travelled all over Norway with her Redesign Café and her redesign has been exhibited at both Tromsø Kunstforening and Arts & Crafts in Berlin.

Dancers:

Liv Hanne Haugen (NO)

Flavia Devonas (NO)

Pollina Artmeva (RU)

Viacheslav Burtcev (RU)

Who decides if the air is clean - or clean enough? Do we have sufficient cross border agreements when dealing with environmental issues and airspace, or is air simply uncontrollable?

Shrink is a performance by the Tromsø based artist Lawrence Malstaf. The performance includes two Russian and two Norwegian dancers, a large metal scaffold and loads of plastic. The dancers couple up, one Russian and one Norwegian, and vacuum-seal each other; their bodies moving slowly, pausing, changing their pose until they are completely wrapped in plastic and not able to move anymore. Being vacuum-sealed in plastic, one needs to trust the ones on the outside, the ones controlling your air channel, your only way of breathing. However, being shrink-wrapped in plastic, what to we look like? Man as meat. Something one might by in a supermarket, something to take away?

The work of Lawrence Malstaf is situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. He develops installation and performance art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos, and immersive sensorial rooms for individual visitors. He also creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation, often using the visitor as a co-actor. His projects involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration and as a means for activating installations.

Martial arts, rice, totalitarianism, one-child-families? Something more? China's art market has become one of the world's most important in the past decade and shows how business accompanies cultural development. The future of the North-West passage with vessels, but also cruise liners going from China to Europe might also offer new possibilities for tourism and investments in Kirkenes, combined with environmental challenges.

What challenges does China bring for our border area? Does Russia, as China`s neighbouring country, have more in common with China than Norway, and can we learn from this? Can the local tourism industry on both sides of the border profit?

Many of the well-known exhibition spaces around the world are presenting Chinese contemporary art. Chinese art could be a tool to develop our knowledge and understanding of the new neighbor since the expression tools of Chinese art are deeply grounded in the tradition and develop this approach in a very distinct way.

Moderator:

Trine Hamran (journalist and documentarist)

Panel:

Lise Yuen (artist)

Arild Vollan (specialist on Chinese-Russian relations)

Kåre Tannvik (Kirkenes snowhotel)

Li Xiaofei (artist)

Sergey Balmasov (Head of the Centre for High North Logistics)

Rune Rafaelsen (Senior advisor at the Norwegian Barents Secretariat)

Music:

Sturle Dagsland

The musical input of the Transborder Café is a performance by Sturle Dagsland, an experimental musician who presents an innovative musical approach. Qurious about Sturle Dagsland? Here's a taste of his live performance in Stavanger Concert Hall.

Transborder Café (TC) is an informal concept, a theme based think tank which brings together experts by involving the audience in an open discussion related to current political and cultural issues enriched with contributions by artists, politicians and researchers.

Niegu muoras gahččet lasttat/Leaves fall from the Tree of my Dream is a gesamtkunstwerk where poetry, music and visual elements are joint together. The performance is build around Synnøve Persen´s poetry, which - strongly rooted in Sámi traditions - takes us on a journey through an Artic landscape, filled with inner life and hidden dramas. Roger Ludvigsen’s music interacts with the words of Persen and a visual background made of Jenny-Marie Johnsen´s Eclipse-series of moving shapes and colours.

As a contrast to the light and airy colours of Johnsen`s Eclipse-series, the designer Anne Berit Anti has created a costume for Persen, that emphasize the darkness and drama that builds up through out the performance.

During Barents Spektakel 2015 the world premier of Leaves fall from the Tree of my Dream will be held on Samefolkets Dag, The Sámi People’s Day, to mark and celebrate the occasion.

Synnøve Persen is a Norwegian Sámi artist and poet. She has published several collections of poetry and has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize twice. As an artist, Persen is known for being part of the establishing of the Sámi progressive and politically radical artist collective Mázejoavku (Masi group), and her work is shown in both group and solo exhibitions in Norway.

Roger Ludvigsen is a guitarist, percussionist and composer. During the 1970`s, Ludvigsen was part of Ivnniguin, Norway’s first Sámi rock band. He has played and collaborated with many famous artists, including Mari Boine, Steinar Albrigtsen and Nils Petter Molvær.

Jenny-Marie Johnsen is an artist working with nature and the area between painting and photography.  Her photos are processed digitally, often with an accompanying video.  Based in Tromsø, her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, among others at Gallery Artifact, New York, Albertslund Rådhus, Copenhagen and Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvær.

Anne Berit Anti is educated as a designer from the Art Academy in Oslo and today she runs her own clothes design company, Abanti Design. Considered an innovative and exciting designer, the inspiration from the Sámi culture has been with her all the way, making jackets inspired by a Sámi coffee pouch in leather or trousers with patterns from the traditional Sámi broche.

 Lars Vaular

Photo: Erik Five

Since his solo debut in 2007, Lars Vaular has established himself as one of the most popular rappers in Norway. Vaular was repeatedly nominated to the Norwegian music award, Spellemannprisen, and won the hip hop category, third time in a row, with the album, Du betyr meg, in 2011. The same year he also won the Copywriter of the year award. His textual universe contains politics, sex, and existential questions. Vaular often addresses young people’s failing search for identity. His lyrics are characterized as rap and poetry intertwined. In 2013 he released 1001 hjem, which received great reviews.

Check out Vaular's improvised video, Blås, shot under the midnight sun in Skippagurra!

Noize MC

Photo: Noize MC

The rapper, Noize MC, started his career as a noisy performer at school discos in his hometown. Schooled in classical guitar, he gathered his first band, inspired by Nirvana and Prodigy, when he was thirteen. In 2007 he got signed by the multinational music corporation, Universal Music Group, and left a year later stating that no great artist could collaborate with major labels. His debut album was titled The Greatest Hits Vol.1, nothing less, and in September 2014 MTV Russia included Noize MC into their list over the five best musicians in the country. Noize MC’s in your face lyrics reflect Russian youths hopes and dreams, disappointments and confusions. When in Russia, chances are you could pop into Noize MC performing either at Arbat pedestrian street in Moscow, or at the largest stadiums.

Enjoy Noize MC's, Из окна, where he raps about bad TV channels..and how he eventually throws the TV out of the window.

The St Petersburg based DJ Boogie Fek finalizes the night! DJ Boogie Fek plays a mix of hip-hop, funk, disco funk, freestyle electro, Miami bass, breakbeat and soul, and is one of founder and resident of the first underground night club Lets meet in the Place, Murmansk.

Ulla Pirttijärvi-Länsman is a leading Sámi artist, known for her distinctive voice and for her breath-taking music, based on the Sámi vocal tradition of yoik. She returns to Kirkenes to celebrate the Sámi National Day (February 6th 2015). The audience has never forgotten her previous concerts in this city, and together with her band, Ulda, she will make sure to refresh memories, and create new ones, with accoustic instruments surrounding her rich sound palette.

Bring everyone you know!

Ulla Pirttijärvi-Länsman: vocals, percussion.
Marko Jouste: string-instruments, vocals, percussion.
Mikko Vanhasalo: wind-instruments, vocals, percussion

The festival exhibition, Arctic Take Away, reflects upon different ways of viewing the Arctic.

The Arctic as a takeout counter where you order whatever your heart, or stomach, desires. Mining industry, oil and gas, food export, drilling, digging and rock blasting – it’s become a part of our history. Is the Arctic a perpetual source for outsiders to dig in? For how long?

On the other hand, the Arctic has traditions for transporting, taking out and bringing back, moving, travelling - borderlessness. Until the early 1800s this area was a borderless zone. The people living here moved freely, bringing their culture and traditions with them, taking out what was needed, giving back whatever they had.

The festival exhibition addresses these topics in a nomadic way, complimenting the slogan, raising questions and inviting people to the dialogue.

Frantisek Zvardon (FR)

Rune Johansen (NO)

Dmitry Novitsky & Glafira Severianova (RU)

Igor Bryakilev (RU)

Hege Annestad Nilsen (NO)

Eva Bakkeslett (NO)

Li Xiaofei (CN)   

Stefano Cagol (IT)      

Ørjan Amundsen (NO)

Olga Jitlina (RU)

Marja Helander (FI)

Natalia Egorova (RU)

Guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian around the festival exhibition.

Thursday 5th and Friday 6th: 16.30. Meeting point: Town square.

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th: 13.00. Meeting point: Town square.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

The festival exhibition will be located in different places around the city center.

The exhibition is open to the public 4-15th of Feb. Hege Annestad Nilsen's exhibition, In Savio's footprints, is open until the end of February.

New market tents with patterns designed by fourteen artists/groups commissioned by Mobile Kultur Byrå.

Artists are often seen as the embodiment of freedom, since they seem to be resistant against restrictions. Though the world of artistic expression is more and more regulated by regional, national and international funding structures. Due to this, creativity has gains new value; being used to find the right formulation when a project idea has to be adapted to match the funding criteria. Do sponsors expect a more grateful than critical attitude from the artists they support?

This and the following questions might be subjects of the Visual Art Seminar’s discussion:

Is a project description a tool for helping artists sticking to the original plan? Must artistic freedom then step back?

Who defines the topics and how do they affect the planning of art institutions?

Do artists have the possibility to fail or to rethink a primary plan?

Is an artist just a decoration for a sponsor?

Is artistic freedom in danger and do institutions lose their authenticity while following business-orientated plans?

How can art academies prepare their students for a tough marked, or isn`t that a part of the educational system?

Time schedule:

10:00-11:00  Welcome and 6 short presentations

11:00-11:30  Radio Barents: Radio performance with Maia Urstad and min. 20 participants

11:30-12:00  Discussion with Maia Urstad

12:00-12:20  Performance

12:30-13:30  Break with refreshments

13:30-14.00  3 short presentations


14:00-14:50  Book presentation Artic Challenge - Site Specific

15:00-16:45 Discussion

Visual Art Seminar signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The participants of the Visual Art Seminar will get the chance to participate in Radio Barents - a radio performance by the artist Maia Urstad. Urstad works at the intersection of audio and visual art and travels all over the world to catch the sound of radios, transmitters, radio amateurs and operators. In combination with a special technique and 20 performers she presents a site-specific performance for the Norwegian-Russian borderland during Barents Spektakel 2015. Bring your own kitchen radio and tune in!

Photo: Maja Urstad.

The sun is back and we celebrate its return with the International Sun Festival. This is a family event where you can taste homemade cakes and pies from different corners of the world and enjoy the cultural program of the diverse multicultural community of Sør-Varanger!

A kitchen-radio is the most accessible machine to travel in time and space. “Hello, this is Munich FM 90,3”. Turn the wheel back and we are two hours further in Moscow. Spending time with a radio means to discover languages we`ve never heard, information we`ll never understand, voices we`ll never meet, discussions we’ll never join.

Who listens to FM and who prefers AM? Is a radio a one-sided information tool or is it used for two-way communication?

The audio and visual artist, Maia Urstad, travels all over the world to catch the sound of radios, transmitters, radio amateurs and operators. In combination with a special technique and 20 performers she presents a site-specific performance for the Norwegian-Russian borderland during Barents Spektakel 2015.

Radio Barents – a radio performance will be performed during the Visual Art Seminar. Open to the public.

During Barents Spektakel 2015, the designer Charlotte Nilsen is running her concept Redesign Café at Fretex, Kirkenes. With a playful approach to design, Nilsen invites you to DIY, do it yourself , and renew your old clothing wardrobe without buying anything new. A part of the agenda is not only to be creative and playful with your old clothes, but also strengthen the awareness of one`s consumer role and how to reuse instead of buying new.

6-7th of Feb: Open workshop for adults, part 1: 6th of Feb 16.30-20.30, part 2: 7th of 12-16.00, at Fretex. Maximum 8 participants. Course 3: Redesign with different clothes. Two-day course. Bring a bunch of your old clothes that need a make over, (or again, buy it at Fretex). Throughout this two-day course we make two items each, a dress, a pair of pants, a jacket or perhaps a new blouse? The course starts with an introduction about redesigning by Charlotte Nilsen. The group goes through the material they have brought to work with and together we have a little brainstorming on what and how to remake and redesign. Each participant gets individual following up throughout the course, both on the creative and technical part. If you want to bring your own sewing machine, you are very welcome to do so! Signup: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Charlotte Nilsen has a MA in textiles from The Art Academy in Oslo and a certificate of completed apprenticeship in textiles. Nilsen runs the company Feil Farge that arranges courses in redesign and runs the Redesign Café, a blog and a mobile installation. Nilsen has travelled all over Norway with her Redesign Café and her redesign has been exhibited at both Tromsø Kunstforening and Arts & Crafts in Berlin.

Additional activities:

Intercultural button-making: reclaim your culture, befriend your microbes and share it with the world in your very own home made button.

Rømmekolle Radio: a unique blend of rømmekolle voices and tantalising noises. A gory story of germs, cows, caring and sharing across borders and species.

The Rømmekolle Radio program will be available to listen to at the Rømmekolle Revival Café during the festival and as a podcast that can be downloaded from this link.

More info abut Eva Bakkeslett and her project Rømmekolle Revival here.

Carnival in the walking street of Kirkenes.

Bring your own kicksled, or borrow one from us! All welcome!

The festival exhibition includes 13 different artists from Norway, France, Russia, China, Italy and Finland. Curious about the artist’s background and their works exhibited during Barents Spektakel 2015? Join our guided tours! Pikene på Broen has handpicked highly qualified guides and arranges guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian. Free of charge.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

Dear You,

We have the pleasure of inviting You to our table. You will be served something for the eye, the ear and the palate. Genuine raw materials cleverly mixed together; different artistic expressions and languages at its simmering point for Your amusement.

Simmering point - 70 degrees north 30 east is the result of a workshop focusing on the smaller and bigger questions of our time, served in the style of Samovarteateret: informal, including and with a high level of reflection.

At the simmering point you’ll meet friends you didn’t even know you had.  

Directing: Bente S. Andersen.

With: Juri Konjar, Mariia Iureva, Turid Skoglund, Theresa Haabet Holand, Nikolay Shchetnev, Jan Harald Jensen, Trygve Beddari and Anne Margaret Nilsen.

Limited seating, email Audhild for ticket resevations: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

More info: www.samovarteateret.com.

Cir.Cuz was establised three years ago and their debut single, Radio, peaked to number 2 on the Norwegian Singles Chart. Their hit single, Supernova, was the most played song with Norwegian lyrics on Norwegian radio in 2013. Cir.Cuz is a popular live band and has toured all over Norway the last years.

The duo recently released their new single, Original, already added to NRK mP3!

Chaos Spektakel also offers: Ung Artist from Scene Finnmark, hair and fashion show organized by Kirkenes highschool and a Norwegian-Russian dance project organized by th art school and Flavia Devon Hoffmann.

Activities on the grass mat: Paintball by Kirkenes Paintballklubb, climbing on soda boxes by Kirkenes klatreklubb, table tennis, sumo wrestling, ball games, youth cafe.

Free transport from the districts to Chaos Spektakel.

No age limit!

Dancers:

Liv Hanne Haugen (NO)

Flavia Devonas (NO)

Pollina Artmeva (RU)

Viacheslav Burtcev (RU)

Who decides if the air is clean - or clean enough? Do we have sufficient cross border agreements when dealing with environmental issues and airspace, or is air simply uncontrollable?

Shrink is a performance by the Tromsø based artist Lawrence Malstaf. The performance includes two Russian and two Norwegian dancers, a large metal scaffold and loads of plastic. The dancers couple up, one Russian and one Norwegian, and vacuum-seal each other; their bodies moving slowly, pausing, changing their pose until they are completely wrapped in plastic and not able to move anymore. Being vacuum-sealed in plastic, one needs to trust the ones on the outside, the ones controlling your air channel, your only way of breathing. However, being shrink-wrapped in plastic, what to we look like? Man as meat. Something one might by in a supermarket, something to take away?

The work of Lawrence Malstaf is situated on the borderline between the visual and the theatrical. He develops installation and performance art with a strong focus on movement, coincidence, order and chaos, and immersive sensorial rooms for individual visitors. He also creates larger mobile environments dealing with space and orientation, often using the visitor as a co-actor. His projects involve advanced technology as a point of departure or inspiration and as a means for activating installations.

Fish farming is controversial. It engages us, because fishing is part of our national heritage. Norway is built along our extensive coastline and our rich sea. Since the late 1970s, aquaculture has grown dramatically, and Norway is currently the world's largest exporter of farmed salmon. Aquaculture creates jobs, especially important for small communities along the coast, and at the same time, fish farming is a primary resource, a natural resource that should be never-ending, as opposed to oil and gas.

Both the government and the fish industry agree that farming should be maintained and further developed as a sustainable industry. Still critics are afraid resources will end and that today we deplete the fish resources. Concerns around the waste from fish farms, sea lice, escaped farmed salmon, the challenges linked to aquaculture are numerous. Meanwhile the health question concerning farmed fish appears more often. Salmon is a strong historical symbol of Norway and symbolizes the free, strong and healthy fish. Is farmed fish as healthy as wild fish? How much do we know? How should you deal with this? What is correct? Is there a solution here? We invite you to the debate!

During the Transborder Café, the artists Bo Wallström, Trine Falch and Mona Solhaug will comment on the discussion with Laksespelet, a visual audio drama of tragic self-examination. When the salmon is not a salmon, what do we become when eating it? Satisfied? Unsatisfied? Inhuman?

Moderator:

Thomas Nilsen (BarentsObserver)

Panel:

Oddbjørn Jerijervi (general manager Finnmarksrøya/Kirkenes Charr)

Morten Strøksnes (journalist and writer)

Mikhail Kuznetsov (Russian Salmon)

TBA

Music: Ailu Valle

The Sami rapper Ailu Valle is the musical input of the Transborder Café. Valle is a poet and musician and reflects on the relationship between modern economy models and the traditional way of life up North, human impact on nature and landscape and offers thereby another and Sami voice for the discussion.

Photo: Saga Skiftesvik

Transborder Café (TC) is an informal concept, a theme based think tank which brings together experts by involving the audience in an open discussion related to current political and cultural issues enriched with contributions by artists, politicians and researchers.

Photo: Obe Dve

Obe Dve plays charismatic indie pop about empathy and the longing for freedom. Obe Dve means the two girls and was started in 2006 by two sisters and their friends from the Ural mountain city, Ekaterinburg. Today the sensual Ekaterina Pavlova is the lead singer. The band has been nominated for the prestigious Steppenwolf Prize, and in 2012 their music was entitled breakthrough of the year by MUZ-TV. During Barents Spektakel 2015 Obe Dve presents brand new material.

Obe DVe's Милый!

Katzenjammer

Photo: Katzenjammer

Katzenjammer performed at Barents Spektakel in 2009, then as an up-and-coming band of vigorous ladies playing all sorts of intriguing instruments, fifteen in total, from harmonica to balalaika!  Their musical style is described as a mixture of pop, cabaret, country and bluegrass. Katzenjammer gained national exposure after performing at the Scandinavian music convention by:Larm in Oslo and was nominated to the Norwegian music award, Spellemannprisen, for their debut album, Le Pop, the same year.

The band has toured widely and reached the European album charts. Their new album, Rockland, is out the 16^th of January, which makes Barents Spektakel one of the first stops for their 2015 tour. Come dance in the Arctic night together with one of Norway’s most energetic bands!

While waing for Katzenjammer's new album, enjoy this classic, Rock, paper, scissors.

The St Petersburg based DJ Boogie Fek finalizes the night! DJ Boogie Fek plays a mix of hip-hop, funk, disco funk, freestyle electro, Miami bass, breakbeat and soul, and is one of founder and resident of the first underground night club Lets meet in the Place, Murmansk.

The festival exhibition, Arctic Take Away, reflects upon different ways of viewing the Arctic.

The Arctic as a takeout counter where you order whatever your heart, or stomach, desires. Mining industry, oil and gas, food export, drilling, digging and rock blasting – it’s become a part of our history. Is the Arctic a perpetual source for outsiders to dig in? For how long?

On the other hand, the Arctic has traditions for transporting, taking out and bringing back, moving, travelling - borderlessness. Until the early 1800s this area was a borderless zone. The people living here moved freely, bringing their culture and traditions with them, taking out what was needed, giving back whatever they had.

The festival exhibition addresses these topics in a nomadic way, complimenting the slogan, raising questions and inviting people to the dialogue.

Frantisek Zvardon (FR)

Rune Johansen (NO)

Dmitry Novitsky & Glafira Severianova (RU)

Igor Bryakilev (RU)

Hege Annestad Nilsen (NO)

Eva Bakkeslett (NO)

Li Xiaofei (CN)   

Stefano Cagol (IT)      

Ørjan Amundsen (NO)

Olga Jitlina (RU)

Marja Helander (FI)

Natalia Egorova (RU)

Guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian around the festival exhibition.

Thursday 5th and Friday 6th: 16.30. Meeting point: Town square.

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th: 13.00. Meeting point: Town square.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

The festival exhibition will be located in different places around the city center.

The exhibition is open to the public 4-15th of Feb. Hege Annestad Nilsen's exhibition, In Savio's footprints, is open until the end of February.

The festival exhibition includes 13 different artists from Norway, France, Russia, China, Italy and Finland. Curious about the artist’s background and their works exhibited during Barents Spektakel 2015? Join our guided tours! Pikene på Broen has handpicked highly qualified guides and arranges guided tours in Norwegian, English and Russian. Free of charge.

Maximum number of participants: 20.

The concerts consists of parts of the oraorio, Messiah, by G.F. Händel.

Performed by Kirkenes church choir, Murmansk Classic Quintet and soprano soloist, Antonina Panchenko.

Violin: Dmitry Gilev                          

Violin: Evgeny Popov

Viola: Marina Pismenskaya

Cello: Ekaterina Okhraminskaya

Piano/organ: Elena Lebedeva 

Buy tickets at the door!

Guests from Russia and Finland.

Finnish, Russian and Norwegian cakes will be served accompanied by entertainment in all three languages.

The event is open for seniors from Sør-Varanger municipality and invited guests from Russia and Finland. There will be varied entertainment like singing, music, dance and maybe speeches. Refreshments.