The Right To Be Cold
Residency Relay

The main format of this transdisciplinary cross-border project is a residency chain in the circumpolar north that took place in the year 2021. Overarching theme in all of this is the climate change, which is fundamentally challenging and changing the northern living conditions. In particular, issues of indigenous knowledge, ecology, climate justice and culture were the focus of the projects. Find here information about the residencies, the participants and some reports.

Videos

Despite the difficult circumstances in the pandemic and the related restrictions on travel, most of the planned visits could take place. A number of fantastic works have been created and the exchange with artists in a different environment has mutually enriched their artistic work. In words and images, this series of videos will introduce you to the work of the residents as part of the project.

Residenz in Gáregasnjárga (Finnland)
Marie Andrée Gill

Residenz in Inukjuak (Kanada)
Marije Jenssen

Residenz in Malakta (Finnland)
Niap

Residenz in Yakutsk (Russland)
Svetlana Romanova

Residenz in Yakutsk (Russland)
Tanja Koistinen

Residenz in Malakta (Finnland) und Røst AiR (Norwegen)
Tatiana Fillipova

Contributions

Reflecting on the Residency
Greetings from Gáregasnjárga

Residencies are a significant part of The Right to Be Cold*. Here, Sunna Nousuniemi, who hosted resident Marie-Andrée Gill, explains how this experience brought her even closer to their ancestral land.

The place of the residency in Garegasnjerga, Sapmi.

The Right to Be Slow
Grandmothers, Big Data and Lord of the Rings

There is a solution and it comes from the outside, the winter and the cold: we must slow down. Who is ready to slow down? Who is ready to fight the power of this ubiquitous eye that is constantly watching us? Resident poet Marie-Andrée Gill reflects, together with Sunna Nosouniemi, on her residency on Sámi territory.

Circumpolar perspectives

The climate crisis threatens all societies, particularly those living in the circumpolar north. While indigenous knowledges are increasingly recognized in international discourses, they are especially considered in response to the challenge of climate change. The program acknowledges the connection and interrelation between the urgency of the climate crisis and the relevance of indigenous rights and self-determination. The project is a starting point for knowledge-sharing and connecting discourses in the North with those in the South.

Established and emerging residency programs in Nunavik, Finland, Yakutia, Norway and Sápmi are forming a network to host artists and researchers within the frame of the project.

The residency aims to:

connect and develop an exchange between residency programs in the circumpolar north.
develop a circular exchange practice with the residents, providing the opportunity for them to interact and exchange their knowledges and practices with fellow residents and local communities.

The residents are individuals from diverse disciplines and practices (i.e. artists, researchers, writers, curators, storytellers, artisans, filmmakers, cultural workers, architects, scientists) who are indigenous or have a strong knowledge of and relation to indigenous communities in the circumpolar north. The residents will be invited to do a public presentation of their practice to the local communities.

The following residence programs are part of the network:

Malakta can be seen as an ecosystem built for and with artists in mind. Over the last 13 years, Malakta has built and improved the infrastructure in order to facilitate through different art based events, like residencies, workshop, labs, etc. the cultural exchange between the guest artists and the region. Since geographically Malakta is situated in the minority population area of swedishfinns and in the periphery of ‘the centralised art world’; our focus is on bringing more artists with a particular interest in the nature and the environment. Drawing a parallel with the indigenous communities, a mutual interest can be achieved by sharing, investigating and understanding the human condition through the geopolitical circumstances, history, culture and also to improve our daily life in the symbioses with the environment.

Malakta AiR focus on to bringing artists to Malakta art community which have nature as the inspiration subject in their art practice. Nature as a subject but also nature as a raw material. Nature as, by definition, something opposed to human creations, and Art, as a physical process of human creation. With the results of the residency is experience and rising awareness between natural and prefabricated habitat in which the contemporary society is moving towards.

The aim of the Malakta AiR programme is to create encounters between art and nature, to increase an awareness of nature and art and to enable visiting artists to develop, create and share their work in a supportive and creative environment that includes a thriving artist community and purpose-built working spaces with nature around the corner. Malakta AiR continues to build a multi-art residency programme that has a clear and direct impact on local and regional communities, and that contributes to a more versatile and virile art scene and creates new forms of participatory and community art in the region.

Spaces, equipment, resources:
A private studio and 24 hour access to other work spaces and tools. Wood and metal workshop. A studio with a wooden dance floor. An editing suite (built as a mini-cinema). A photographic dark room. Accommodation - a choice of 3 double rooms with access to shared kitchen and bathroom facilities, a total capacity for 6 people at same time. Access to traditional Finnish wood-burning saunas (one larger and one small). A laundry room with a washing machine and dryer. The use of a car and bicycles. Large outdoor spaces suitable for activities and events with a fireplace/barbecue.

Staff and support:
Guest artists will be assigned one contact person, from the board of Malakta, who will guide and support the guest. Additional support from 1-2 artists from Malakta's communityl. Visits to other artists and organisations, partaking in other arts and culture events.

MALAKTA ARTIST IN RESIDENCY, MALAKTA, FINLAND

Røst AiR is a non-profit, multi- disciplinary, artist-in-residence and artist-run association. We are based on Røst and during the summer season we also move out to Skomvær Lighthouse on Skomvær island in the Røst archipelago, Northern Norway/Sápmi, (67°North), a stones throw from Nykan nature reserve, home to one of Northern Europe's largest pelagic seabird colonies.

Our focus and interests include but are not limited to: The ecological transition, geo-politics, diversity, self-sufficiency, race, gender and intersections between ecology, de-colonial thought and action, post-colonial feminism and queer theory. Site-specific projects, process- work and interdisciplinary meetings are encouraged. Having said this we would like to underline that we are open to an infinite number of singular or communal expressions of artistic practices.

Røst AiR is working on alternative ways of navigating, creating and being in this world, exploring for instance the post- fossil fuel potential. We are inspired by the coastal Sámi and Northern Norwegian fisherman- farmer tradition and are slowly restoring the old lighthouse vegetable and herb gardens.

Residency:

We host a varied number of artist in residencies during a year. We also organise and host workshops, seminars and happenings. Røst AiR works by invitation, but there will be a few spots available for open call and some for guest artists. All artistic and theoretical practices are welcome.

The residency includes a combined living and working space, as well as support towards "green" travel expenses. The food is mainly organic and/or local, and is included in the stay, with one to two communal meals a day. A grant for green travel and stay is given to each artist. Sometimes we also offer material stipends.

We have a eco-friendly profile and ask people to travel "green" and stay as long as they can. Artists in residency (and people travelling from abroad) should stay a minimum of one month(including the green journey).

RØST AIR, IN LOFOTEN, NORDLAND NO/SÁPMI

The residents

Marie-Andrée Gill

Marie-Andrée Gill is Pekuakamishkueu and identifies primarily as a poet. Mother, friend, lover, student, her research and creative work concern transpersonal and decolonial love. Bridging kitsch and existentialism, her writing is rooted in territory and interiority, combining her Quebec and Ilnu identities. She is the author of three books: Béante, Frayer, and Chauffer le dehors. In 2018 she was the winner of the Indigenous Voices Award. She lives in L’Anse-Saint-Jean, Quebec. Marie-Andreé Gill will be a resident in Sápmi and in Røst.

Marije Jenssen

Marije Jenssen is a Norwegian-Sámi painter and installation artist from Balsfjord, Norway. Her work is inspired by Northern Norwegian landscape, lifestyles and traditional materials and techniques within weaving. Her focus lies on highlighting the processes of cultivating traditional resources in a sustainable contemporary context. Marije graduated from UWC Adriatic (2014) and Kunstskolen i Bergen (2018). She spent the first two years of her Visual Art Bachelor at KMD in Bergen (2018-'20), and completed her degree at Tromsø Art Academy in May 2021. Marije Jenssen will be a resident in Nunavik.

Tanja Maria Koistinen

Tanja studies diverse identities in the North. Using multi-disciplinary working methods, such as artist-led community art workshops, environmental art and art & science collaboration, Tanja builds her art in the forms of visual arts, installation, documentation photography and storytelling through self-reflection, simplifying, portraying and color. Tanja Koistinen is a lappish person, who is connected to Inari Sámi culture through her ancestry, family homeland (Njellim, Sapmi) and livelihood. Currently she works and lives in Äkäslompolo, North-West Lapland, Finland.Tanja Koistinen will be a resident in Sakha.

Tatiana Filippova

Tatiana Philippova is a writer, focused on fragmentary prose. That’s how she as a queer person, a lesbian and a Sakha woman recollects her «self» by decolonizing her experience. Her grandparents were forced to leave their land during the WW II, now global climate change gradually transforms their former home into some other place. Can modern Indigenous people of Yakutia find new homeland elsewhere or should they continue to live on their ancestors land – this is the question she tries to answer in her expression. Tatiana is a winner of Znamya literature magazine award 2020. She lives in Yakutsk.Tatiana Filippova will be a resident at Malakta and in Røst.

Svetlana Romanova

Svetlana Romanova was born in Yakutsk, Russia and studied visual arts in Los Angeles. She has received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design, and MFA at California Institute of the Arts. From 2009 to 2014, she lived and worked in arts education in California. After returning to Siberia in 2015, she started working on several film projects about her hometown and regions around it. Her video project is an investigation of two local Indigenous groups that she belongs to (Evenk and Sakha). Her work has been screened and shown in various art venues in California and Russia. Svetlana Romanova will be a resident in Nunavik and in Sápmi.

Nancy (Niap) Saunders

Based in Montreal, QC, Niap (Nancy Saunders) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who divides her time between the city and her home community of Kuujjuaq, Nunavik – a place that continues to deeply influence her work. Working across media, Niap thoughtfully investigates her cultural heritage and identity as an Inuk woman through her practice. Working across painting, performance, sculpture and photography, Niap has produced a wide ranging body of work from murals to immersive installations to portraiture. Niap will be a resident in Sakha and at Malakta.

About the project

¹ The title of the project comes from the long battle of Inuit to have their rights linked to climate change. The book of the same name by Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2015, Allen Lane Publication), testifies of her pioneering work in connecting climate change to human rights with the Inuit legal petition she and 62 fellow Inuit from Canada and Alaska launched to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights in Washington DC in 2005. Inuit leaders and climate change activists use this expression to capture their struggle and hope for political leaders to realize their communities are being severely impacted by climate change. Although the Commission did not go ahead with the Inuit petition they did have a historical hearing on the legal impacts and connections between climate change and human rights. Okalik Eegeesiak, Former Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) used the expression in her discourse at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 21 December 3, 2015 in Paris, France: “Climate change is not just an environmental issue it is a human rights issue and the melting of the Arctic is impacting all aspects of Inuit life, therefore, the final text must make the rights of Indigenous peoples operative and keep it in Article 2.2. We have the right to be cold” argued Eegeesiak.

Return to The Right to be Cold¹

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The Right To Be Cold Residency Relay

Videos

Residenz in Gáregasnjárga (Finnland) Marie Andrée Gill

Residenz in Inukjuak (Kanada) Marije Jenssen

Residenz in Malakta (Finnland) Niap

Residenz in Yakutsk (Russland) Svetlana Romanova

Residenz in Yakutsk (Russland) Tanja Koistinen

Residenz in Malakta (Finnland) und Røst AiR (Norwegen) Tatiana Fillipova