Arkadia 02-22

Arkadia 02-22 is an audiovisual essay based on a series of travels, experiments, collaborations and performances in the Northern regions of Norway, Finland and Russia. Recorded with various equipment over the course of 20 years, the historical video and audio material are then re-composed and re-presented with the assistance of various artificial intelligence models.

The work also weaves in a number of audiovisual performances based on local everyday experiences such as cloudberry picking under the watch towers, mosquito meditations along the Pasvik river, coffee fortune telling, and investigating an old 78rpm vinyl record collection found in the attic.

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the border between Norway and Russia closed and travels and cross-border collaborations seized.  In this new situation, Arkadia 02-22 also become an exploration of how to rekindle the potential of this collaboration based on archival material from 20 years of cross-border activities.

Our consciousness and memory piece together a common life-world. Our actions and movements within it make the rhythms of our imaginary home. Repetitions and rituals make us forget where it all started. But we never forget to bring our berry-picking bucket, just in case.

Watch a short preview of the full 42 minute film:

Arkadia 02-22 was premiered at the Barents Spektakel festival in Kirkenes 22, in the old industrial building “Pumpehuset”.

At BB15, Linz and Festspillene i Nord-Norge the project got an experimental appendix called “sleeping instruments”. This hybrid media-archive/live performance employ artifical intelligence in the form of machine learning technology. In the absence of musicians (following the end of the russian-norwegian cultural cooperation), the machine learning model “dreams” up new sounds based on archives contributed by Russian musicans still living in Russia.

Thank you Rural Reading Room (Kristin Tårnesvik, Hilde M. Methi, Morten Torgersrud), Venke Tørmenen, Honna Havas, Monika Sandnesmo, Neal Cahoon, Ann-Inger Sommer and many more for contributing to the archive material. 

Arkadia 02-22 is one of det gode liv // The Sweetness of Living productions. It was developed in dialogue with Pikene på Broen for Barents Spektakel 2022 with additional support from Bergen Kommune, BEK, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and Kulturrådet.