Neal Cahoon & Maria Kotlyachkova. Photo credits: Evgenia Bektasova & Abudi Alsaleh

The project received funding because of:
The project group Pikene på Broen has previously worked with high quality and they have a clear influence on developing Nordic regions with their way to work outside of national borders. Furthermore, the project has established collaboration with partners from several Nordic countries.

The applicant wrote about the project:
Bridging Borders will contribute to the long-term ambition of Barents Spektakel to expand collaboration through several border communities. Northern infrastructure is currently a political topic as the region is not viewed as a priority within recovery models following the COVID-19 pandemic, risking connections being reduced or cut. This project aims to open up these conversations.

Bridging Borders will develop discussions on the materiality of borders and the infrastructures that exist across border areas within the Nordic Barents region. It will consider the connections between these areas in terms of cultural, historical, artistic, environmental, and community issues, and will establish a platform for sharing of experience and speculating on the future. 

Pikene på Broen will form a curatorial team with two curators based in Sweden and Finland, each with experience working in the Northern Barents region, and each acting as ambassadors to find and work with collaborators in their country bases. This new network will form a working group to develop the project that will be embedded within the festival Barents Spektakel in February 2021 in Kirkenes, NO. Barents Spektakel has an established history of promoting cross-border communication and collaboration between Norway and Russia, and this project seeks to harness this expertise and expand the scope of these activities in new ways within the northern Nordic region.

The curatorial team of Pikene på Broen (NO) Maria Kotlyachkova (RU/SE) and Neal Cahoon (IE/FI) will take on different roles to research and develop a networked collaboration, based on their respective bases and networks in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. We envision a model where each team member will work with artists and organisations from within their respective country bases, before developing the wider project together and embedding it within the 2021 edition of Barents Spektakel.