Áhkánjárstábba – RE-visiting

LATERNA// Inger-Reidun Olsen & Marianne Skjeldal
Guest: Karstein Solli & Elisabeth Kjeldahl Nilsson

During DanseFestival Barents, LATERNA re-visits Áhkánjárstábba, the renown stone, known as the Stallo in Kvalsund, this time inviting to the gallery at the Arctic Cultural Centre/Arktisk Kultursenter. This is one event in a series of performative events in the project CoSA- Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

In June 2017 LATERNA created a performance in collaboration with LOCUS, Robert Steijn and Kvalsund Kommune/Stallodagene. For days we sat five artists together with Áhkánjárstábba, we talked and sang for it, had meditative conversations, we moved objects and ourselves around the stone. We slept, dreamt and conversed beside it. On the day of summer solstice we celebrated the stone together with people from the local community and also some visitors from afar.

Re-visiting Áhkánjárstábba, we are searching for ways to involve the audience where they may experience the stone, landscapes, stories and traces that the stone left in us. During the hour of twilight, we invite the audience to witness our meeting with the stone - inside the gallery space.

What may an ancient stone tell us in our time?

Are we able to embody the stone´s body by looking back into roots of folklore, back to a time when we still knew how to live our lives in coherence with nature?
Is it possible to find a mysterious relationship with a landscape that does not remain a personal experience, but a collective experience, shared in a community?
May interpretations of landscapes make the local universal?
Perhaps we sometimes need to pass magic road signs like Áhkánjárstábba to be able to move on in life with greater ease?
What happens when we invite to a gathering "around the stone" inside the gallery space?

If even stones can fly - can we?

Background CoSA-Concerning the Spiritual in Art

CoSA take shape as site specific performances, drawing, photography and artist-books.
By traveling to sites with spiritual reference or history, our aim is to channel and interpret the spirit of a place (Genius Loci) into our art.

LATERNA and LOCUS are collaborating in exploring the spiritual in contemporary art as well as researching the spiritual in art that unfolded 100 years ago in Europe. In the early 1900s Wassily Kandinskys’ publication “Concerning the spiritual in art” (1911) was published and many other artists such as Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz, was influenced by spiritism, séances and alternative lifestyles, among others vegetarianism.

In the last years we have seen a return of the spiritual expressed in contemporary art, especially in connection to ecological and environmental thinking, renewed focus on indigenous knowledge and our relationship to nature.The project was initiated in Athens during Documenta 14 opening week in collaboration with The Norwegian Institute at Athens with performance and book launch. The next event was at Áhkánjárstábba / Stalloen, in Kvalsund, Hammerfest, at summer solstice June 21st this year – this performance we will show aprosessd version of in the Gallery at Arktisk Kultursenter during Dansefestival Barents in Hammerfest 2017.

In October LATERNA created and shared the performance “To the root – As if we where speaking the language of nature” at the Museum of the St. Petersburg Avant-Garde in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2019 we will create an extensive research publication with texts by theorists, art scholars and artists that will be published at Monte Verità Museum and Culture Center in Ascona, Switzerland. www.laternalaterna.org