Art Across Borders: Dislocating Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region

Abstract

The present article investigates the role of artworks in processes of bordering in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Drawing upon a neo-formalist framework, it firstly analyzes works that were exhibited during the X-Border Art Biennial to identify disruptive potentials vested in the artistic pieces’ formal properties, before it, secondly, addresses potential performance effects of these works and of the curatorial decision to distribute exhibition space across three cities in Sweden, Finland, and Russia. I argue for an ambivalent role of artistic and curatorial practices that have the inherent potential to articulate opposition and de-familiarize established frames for perception and cognition, and at the same time inhere the capacity to reinforce regimes of exclusion and facilitate processes of commodification and capitalization.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to Anne Laure Amilhat Szary for her constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1 Of course, a neo-formalist approach is only one way of addressing the impact of art on the spectator including the analyst. As, for instance, Greve (forthcoming) argues with reference to literature, art does more than play upon and potentially challenge particular cognitive and perceptual schemata. According to her, attention to an artwork's peculiar concern provides a suitable approach to singular interpretation that is distinct from the present study's attempt to explain how works of art invite particular responses at a general level.

2 I conducted fieldwork at the X-Border Art Biennial in Rovaniemi, Finland, June 14–20, 2013. I observed the process of planning and setting up artworks at two exhibition spaces and three outside locations in and around town, and conducted a total of 16 semi-structured interviews with artists and curators. My gratitude to the EUBORDERSCAPES-project for funding the stay and to the curators and artists in Rovaniemi for hosting me and supporting me with my investigations.

3 I had the chance to follow the setting up of Maruyama's work during fieldwork in Rovaniemi, Finland, June 14–20, 2013.

4 The interview with van der Merwe referenced in this section is accessible here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bACPq7xSxeU (visited February 19, 2014).

5 Paglen and Gach's (2003) article is not paginated. It can be accessed here: http://www.joaap.org/1/TacticsWithout/index.html.

6 Repeated statements made by artists I interviewed at the X-Border Art Biennial in Rovaniemi in June 2013 indicate a strong awareness for the subversive potentials of specific artworks, but at the same time revealed a lack of concern for public availability and dissemination of the articulated ideas. Only a minority of the interviewees had consciously included the biennial's virtual online exhibition space into the conceptualization of their artworks. As such, the intention of these works to influence politics and actualize the articulated challenges to naturalized exclusionary frames and positions might easily be undermined by a lack of public availability and access.

7 The X-Border Art website can be accessed here: http://www.x-border.info/

8 In his own work, Paglen conducts a form of experimental geography – “a hybrid of empirical science, investigative journalism, political activism, and high end art” (Gustafsson 2013, 150) that aims at unveilling secret “black worlds” (Paglen 2010, 61) of state surveillance and oppression. See Paglen (2014) for his recent work that sets out to visualize the institutional architecture behind the NSA surveillance scandal.

9 Both Vukov and Sheller (2013) and Amoore and Hall (2010) refer to the Transborder Immigration Tool that was developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre at the University of California, San Diego, to electronically assist illegal crossings of the US–Mexican border as an example for an artwork with direct performative effects. For additional examples of performative border interventions at the US–Mexican border see for instance Walsh (2013, 975–979) and Weber (2012, 487–493). For a broad overview over US–Mexican border art see Amilhat Szary (2012).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article has been funded by the European Commission through the FP 7 project EUBORDERSCAPES (project number 290775).