Artica Listens
Since 2019 Artica Listens has brought together artists, writers, researchers, architects, historians, scientists, policy makers and communities to discuss some of the key issues facing the Arctic and beyond.
Past Events
Artica Listens 2022
In 2022 Artica Svalbard collaborated with LPO Arkitekter and UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Arts, landscape architecture programme on Return to Nature? The Transformation of a Post-Coal Mining Landscape. Combining both our annual Artica Listens event and Artica Writings essay series we offered a platform for leading experts from the Nordics in architecture, ecology, archaeology, history and the arts to discuss the Svea environmental clean-up project and its related issues.
Artica Listens 2021
For Artica Listens 2021 Ignas Krunglevičius created HARD BODY DYSPRAXIA, a sonic installation inside a disused coal power plant in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The power plant was built in 1920 and after WWII saw various extensions and reconstructions. Finally closing down in 1983 when the new larger energy plant took over. Since then the doors have remained closed and the building untouched, until now.
Artica Listens 2020
In 2020 together with Norwegian Pen, Artica Listens focussed on the most urgent issues that Svalbard and its inhabitants are facing.
At a time when mining is being phased out, tourism is growing, the proportions of Norwegians living on the island is declining and climate change is affecting both nature and people, we are asking ourselves the questions, where does the road go from here? What will Svalbard become, and for whom?
Artica Listens 2019
In 2019 Artica Svalbard and Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) invited Cristina Lucas as the guest artist for Artica Listens 2019, co-curated by the two organizations.
'It seems natural to think that what begins has to end, but how easy is this to assume when it is our own species in question? Will it be possible to reverse the processes that otherwise undoubtedly lead us to a not so far off apocalypse?' – Cristina Lucas