SATELLITE EVENTS

Just as the moon was once a part of the ancient earth, so it is that the organisers of Barents Spektakel’s satellite events each have a common history of making culture within the Barents region. In 2023 the festival will again build digital bridges to different towns and countries, uniting people to reflect together on the topic of TRUST as it is approached through the prisms of art and culture, and accessed through discussions, debates, informal dialogues, music, screening of films, animation workshops, “home-theatre” performances, events for children, lectures and research sharings.

The festival satellites are the meeting places for people who, despite their geographic distance from Kirkenes, can still take part in Barents Spektakel through social gatherings in their own localities. In 2023, Barents Spektakel have satelittes in Berlin (Tyskland), Tumanyan (Armenia), Tromsø and Tornio/Haparanda (Finland/Sverige).

Berlin, Germany:
TRUST-MITTERS is a discussion on various aspects of trust among Russians today. They find themselves in a vulnerable and dubious position. Their national identity has been compromised and discredited by the actions of the Putin regime, regardless of their political positions. They are now not welcome in the societies where they thought they had support. This complex situation generates a lot of questions about people's dis/trust to each other. What is trust? How do we build our trust? How do we restore it in a situation of repression and a thriving culture of surveillance? How do different contexts influence the process of building trust and what does this mean for civil society and our future?The format of Kitchen Sociology evenings allows us to talk about complex and sensitive topics in a comfortable atmosphere over a glass of wine, as sincerely as we do in the kitchen with close friends. This is not a lecture or seminar, but a lively discussion stimulated by guest speakers.

The event is organised by the Center for Independent Social Research (CISR) e.V. (Berlin)

Stories of the Snow Globe – A workshop for children by Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane
Do we believe that there is always something that connects us on many levels? Unexpected things help us understand that between very different people there is a common ground shared by all. It increases trust in each other and creates a sense of closeness. We offer the theme of snow as such a substance. In this workshop, snow acts as a medium. It is something that unites us in our different countries (Germany, Russia, Norway etc.) and on many levels: through memories, fairy tales, dreams, representations, ecological changes and the gradual disappearance of snow in German and many Russian cities.

Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane is an artist, curator and a cultural pedagogue (born in Latvia, raised in Moscow, and living and working in Berlin since 2003). She is the co-founder of the international cultural project BUTTERBROT, and creative atelier BESONDERmüll.

Curator of the festival in Berlin is Lilia Voronkova, social anthropologist and curator of cultural projects (CISR e.V. Berlin).

Home Theatre Performance: "Kalykhanka" ("Lullaby" - in Belarus language)
Documentary tea-party-performance based on a documentary play from 2021. The starting point for the play were the massive protests in Belarus in 2020, which of course becomes a point of thinking on the protests in general, and then expands to a reflection on the experience of forced emigration. Chamber kitchen talks with tea with thyme and cookies.

Author: Masha Sapizhak, theater- and cinema-maker, stage director, performance artist. Born in Arkhangelsk, lived in Saint-Petersburg, moved to Tbilisi a year ago, now staying in Berlin. Has worked and continues to work a lot with environmental, feminist and anti-war agendas.

Tumanyan, Armenia:
A Social Anthropology and Animation workshop in Tumanyan. The research is focused on the life of participants of the Abastan community - consisting of artist-immigrants, who have found themselves in a small town of Tumanyan in the province of Lori in the North of Armenia.

The project consists of two stages - a research phase, where social anthropologist Maria Gun’ko (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford University), will implement and process interviews with Abastan artists and the local community of Tumanyan. The second stage is a creative reflection of information, received through the resulting research. The team of Tsekh Animatsii with participation of animated film directors Yura Boguslavsky, Asya Kiseleva and sound producer Sasha Chirkov will organise an animation laboratory, where participants will create a short animation film, based on the interviews.

Animation-documentary film, created within the laboratory, will tell the story of an unexpected neighbourhood and daily life in a picturesque and culturally rich region of Armenia, trying to adapt to post-industrial and post-socialist reality with all of its ups and downs.

Do not be afraid to be happy
The play "Don't Be Afraid to Be Happy..." - is a "dialogue in three parts" about trust and happiness during the war and in post-war times, not only between the characters of the story, Lika, Leonidik and Marat, but also a dialogue with the audience, addressed to anyone who sees the events unfolding before their eyes. The spectator will find himself in a real abandoned Soviet house, where he will follow three stories intertwined with each other. A Soviet military drama is presented in the form of an immersive theatre play. Each time period of the story, created by Alexey Arbuzov in March 1942, March 1946 and December 1959, will be presented in a new location of the house and even its courtyard. The spectator, along with the characters, will experience the fear of war, the consequences of terrible events and the impact on their lives in the time of peace. The story being told right here and now, although, telling about the past, will awaken the viewer's humanity, teach them to trust the people around, and prove that one should not be "afraid to be happy"; everybody should value their life and the lives of people around them.

Director - Arkadiy Konovalov
Theatre designer - Mikhail Barschevskiy
Producer - Vladimir Gorsky

Tornio/Haparanda:
On two sides of the river both Finnish Tornio and Swedish Haparanda are going to share and host the events as a Barents Spektakel Satellite.

Bye, Dad is a play about the life of Kudryashov Anatoly Alexandrovich, a contracted soldier and veteran of the Second Chechen War, told through the voice of his son.
The story of Anatoly Alexandrovich’s life is not at all like the heroic stories about a defender of the Motherland, typical of Russian propaganda. We do not know what Kudryashov Sr. believed in and fought for, what was behind his choice, except for the desire to be like his friends, who were also contracted soldiers. His son deliberately speaks nothing of the motives. However we do know what he got in the end: a country that paid him a little over two thousand rubles a month (300 NOK) and suppressed what happened in Chechnya even to this day. (text by Anton Khitrov) Director - Alexander Kudryashov; Playwright - Vasya Sharapov. The event is held in Tornio.

Book Presentation: Audiences are also invited to the Haparanda City Library for the presentation of a book: A European tragedy – how Russia and the West became enemies, and how they can find together again, which will turn into an open discussion and a talk with the authors - Sten Inge Jørgensen and Leonid Ragozin. The book doesn’t only dwell with the ongoing war, but it also looks into the past and future. The authors argue that Russia historically is deeply locked within the rest of Europe, and that many mistakes, also by the West, led to the growing conflict after the fall of communism.

Tromsø

Home Theatre: Koridor
28. Feb 18.00
Address: Karl Pettersens gate 30B, Tromsø.
Registration link: https://forms.gle/t5oYDeWcM3zvDGHV6

Cataclysms, wars, great migrations, metamorphoses occur constantly all over the world .... And people follow these events and transformations, they watch the big, high tribunes, the important people in suits and ties, they listen to loud and well-written speeches. But behind all this people can not see a simple individual, perhaps their neighbour, who is so similar to oneself. They cannot see how the individual and their loved ones are trying to live and cope with the events taking place around them. How the individual comes home in the evening, watches the news, starts a conversation about something disturbing, meets misunderstandings, insists on their own views and experiences, then begins to prove them right... and now this individual screams, lets it all out at their loved ones, fights with everyone ... then sits down on a chair and, perhaps, cries, perhaps like you do. Cries out of despair, pain and helplessness. Or maybe it's not quite like that.

The performance (work in progress) Koridor invites you to look into the homes of ordinary people, watch their lives and perhaps come to the realization that you are not all alone in this raging world ocean.

Disclaimer: the text is written in conditions of freedom of speech and self-expression. Project created by RuNo Teater in collaboration with Teater Innlandet, with financial support of The Barents Secretariat.