Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.10.2009, Blaðsíða 52

20
the reykjavík grapevine
Issue 16 — 2009
The Sequences arts festival has been
pretty awesome these past few years. It
is a unique offspring of the big happy
Icelandic arts family, and it takes place
every October. At Sequences, artists
from Iceland and all over the world
gather to cook up some really incredible
stuff. Rumours had that this year’s
program would differ somewhat from its
previous incarnations, so us Grapeviners
caught up with festival manager Klara
Þórhallsdóttir and art director Kristín
Dagmar Jóhannesdóttir to get the word
on what to expect.
What’s Sequences all about?
Klara: Sequences started in 2006 and
was founded by four artist-run galleries:
The Living Art Museum, Kling og
Bang Gallery, Gallery Dwarf, Gallery
Bananananas, as well as the Center for
Icelandic Art—CIA. Since then, it has
been held annually in Reykjavík. It has
evolved to an independent organisation,
and is still the only festival in Iceland to
focus solely on visual arts. ‘Sequences
real time art festival,’ is the full name,
and it focuses on time-based media,
such as performances and live art, sonic-
and video art, as well as creating a cross-
platform for these and other art genres.
Each year there have been new
organisers for the festival. So each time
the festival has been quite different
and revolved around specific concepts,
though the main emphasis remains the
same.
How has the festival developed?
Klara: For the first year, everyone who
wanted to was able to participate. It got
very popular among young artists to
finally have some kind of a platform
where they could make an effort and
introduce their work and ideas. Since
then, it has developed and last year the
main board decided to form a curatorial
board that would select the projects or
artists that would participate.
Kristín: This we felt was important in
order to give Sequences a sense of focus,
and to strengthen its identity.
This year you’re changing the
infrastructure of the festival, basing
it exclusively on live shows. What
gives? Did you respond to lack of
funding by making it more guerilla-
ish?
Kristín: Most of the projects this year are
run on a low budget, but that didn’t really
determine our choices. From the visual
arts perspective, performance might
stand as the obvious choice of real time
art and therefore we decided to really
focus on the performative nature of art
for this year’s festival. Next time it might
become something totally different.
Mainly, our concept has grown from
the work of the festival’s honorary artist,
Magnús Pálsson. Throughout his career,
Magnús moved freely between genres
in his art practice. He studied theatre
design and visual art in the early 1950s
and later worked in both fields. We were
therefore interested in finding some sort
of rendezvous between stage arts and the
visual arts.

What are, in your opinion, the most
interesting performances we’ll be
witnessing this year?
Kristín: The whole Sequences week will
be full of exciting events and it is hard to
pick favourites. The opening night will
include Magnús Pálsson ś performance
and a live event by video artist Sigurður
Guðjónsson outside of the House of
Ideas (the festival’s headquarters), with
a performance-party taking place inside
later on. Then we are also offering more
theatre-based work, such as Oblivia
and Ingibjörg Magnadóttir, or dance
collaboration such as the work of Björk
Viggósdóttir, Melkorka Huldudóttir or
Prinz Gholam. We are also very excited
about the work of Spartacus Chetwynd,
who has been called the queen of lo-fi
art performances, and Soren Dahlgaard,
who will close the festival.
It’s also interesting that Sequences
will offer a series of lectures and artist
talks that will run alongside the festival
for the first time. Speakers include some
of the participating artists and other
invited speakers from the fields of visual
arts, stage arts and theory.
What does Sequences future look
like? How do you see it in five years?
Is there something you want to
establish in the long run?
Klara: Sequences has been growing
every year, and now we have gathered
a great deal of experience in how to
run such a festival. And it is getting
recognised for its cultural value that
in the end will hopefully serve our art
society. I am very optimistic that in five
years this festival will be a fundamental
part of the cultural field, and one of the
stronger parts of Sequences is how its
concept has changed along with the
organisers each year. It gives the festival
space to tackle issues that come up each
time, and to reconsider the diversity in
visual art.
Beside all that, it really is priceless how
the festival becomes a documentation
on art today. It will gain great historical
value in later years, as every event that
has taken place during the festival has
been documented and kept. We hope
Sequences will in the long run establish
itself as a serious platform for visual arts
in an international context.
MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS – EDDAS AND SAGAS
The Ancient Vellums on Display
ICELAND :: FILM – Berlin – Copenhagen – Reykjavík
Icelandic Filmmaking 1904-2008
A LOOK INTO NATURE
The Story of the Icelandic Museum of Natural History
EXHIBITIONS - GUIDED TOURS
CAFETERIA - CULTURE SHOP
The Culture House – Þjóðmenningarhúsið
National Centre for Cultural Heritage
Hverfi sgata 15 · 101 Reykjavík (City Centre)
Tel: 545 1400 · www.thjodmenning.is
Open daily between 11 am and 5 pm
Free guided tour of THE MEDIEVAL MANU-
SCRIPTS exhibition Mon and Fri at 3:30 pm.
art | Sequences Real-time Art Festival
Art In Sequence, Real-time!
Controlled chaos, and a sense of focus
sigurÐur KJartan Kristinsson
Julia staples
We at the Grapevine are no strangers
to the dilemmas and panic that surface
when you see the packed schedule for
such a grand festival as Sequences
– both rich and chaotic. Thus we
present: a bunch of interesting things
we noticed in the programme.
the duMB region of the heart
A 15-minute video loop will be played
on two separate screens in the back
seat of a car. Audiences will be
picked up, two at a time, and driven
around while they watch the videos
on the screens and listen to it through
headphones. The video is a poetic
abundance of sounds, words and
images. It’s an ambiguous voyage to
the ever-equivocal crossroads. It’s
about going and it’s about returning,
or not.
Who Páll Haukur Björnsson: a rising
star in the visual arts scene in Iceland.
This will be his first performance after
returning from the Venice Biennale,
where he’s modelled for Ragnar
Kjartansson for the last six months.
When OCT 30, House of Ideas, 8PM
the Mind
The Mind is about... well, the mind.
The mind doesn’t have a shape, and
we don’t really know if it is inside us
or if it is a part of the outer universe.
Conscience is also a complicated
phenomenon, and we work with that
as well. It is not about a relationship
between two persons. It is more the
relationship of a person with her/
himself and with society in general.
Who Egill Sæbjörnsson is one of
Iceland’s many multi-talented artists
whose work is an unusual fusion of
music, sound, video and installations.
In addition to this, he often appears
in person as part of his exhibition
projects.
When NOV 5, Hafnarhús, 8 PM
spartacus chetWynd
Although we do not know exactly what
she is going to dazzle us with at the
opening party, we can sure expect it to
be spectacular. Spartacus Chetwynd
has become known for her baroque
and surreal performances, charged
with humorous image quotations
from art history and melded with pop
culture references. So grab a beer and
catch some craziness.
Who Spartacus Chetwynd is a British
artist who creates both paintings and
large-scale collaborative performances
that explore notions of the grotesque,
using humour and references to
various cultural icons
When OCT 30, House of Ideas, 8 PM
seMinar at the nordic house
plus an aMaZing dinner party
All through this year’s Sequences,
The Lost Horse Gallery will host an
exhibition, Made up and let down,
with Sofia Dahlgren (SWE), Line
Ellegaard (DK), Pernille Leggat Ramfelt
(NO), Malin Ståhl (SWE) and Anita
Weström (SWE). The piece itself is an
intervention of Nordic artists habited
in London, and is depicted here in
Reykjavik, where it might find similar
culture gatherings, so it should be
interesting.
The artists are throwing a seminar,
“Made up and let down: Nordic art
in an international context,” where
they’ll aim to analyze the exhibition in
a creative way, testing new systems
for critical discourse and ways to
advance as a critical forum. The
best thing is that there is no entry
fee AND it includes a celebratory
dinner afterwards at the famed DILL
restaurant at the Nordic House. Yup,
there you have it!
When NOV 3, Nordic House, 12AM
Sequences Events