Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) 2015 is pleased to announce the international artists who will present work for Disappearing Acts, the 2015 edition of this unique, biennial festival, which takes place in Norway’s remote Lofoten Islands, an archipelago in the Arctic Circle:

Anna Ådahl (SE), Sam Basu (UK / FR), Sissel Blystad (NO), Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni (FR), Roderick Hietbrink (NL / NO), Hedwig Houben (NL), Tue Greenfort (DK), Steinar Haga Kristensen (NO), Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen (FI), Dennis McNulty (IE), Benedict Drew (UK), Mercedes Mühleisen (NO), Katja Novitskova (ET), Ciarán O’ Dochartaigh (IE / NI), Emilie Pitoiset (FR), Elizabeth Price (UK), John Russell (UK), Jason Dodge (USA), Jon Benjamin Tallerås (NO), Eva La Cour and Kristian Poulsen (DK), Carl Johan Hogberg (SE / NL) and Isabel Nolan (IE).

Organised as a large-scale group exhibition, Disappearing Acts features a diverse selection of international contemporary artists, with many works commissioned especially for LIAF 2015. Each artist’s work will respond to the 2015 title, Disappearing Acts, curated by Matt Packer and Arne Skaug Olsen, ranging from documentary film, video and sound installations, to sculpture, text, performance, textiles and photography.

Disappearing Acts is themed around the idea of human agency disappearing through the processes of history, ecology, and technology. This approach is informed by the context of the unique festival location of Norway’s Lofoten Islands within the Arctic Circle, with its precarious economic-environmental dependency, its highly marketable “screensaver” scenery, and its cultural legacy of self-sufficiency and retreat from the antagonism of the urbanised world.

The “Jern & Bygg” premises in the island town of Svolvær serves as the main venue for LIAF 2015 and will act as a site-specific hub. Jern & Bygg was a familyowned hardware store and furniture outlet that operated continuously from 1948 to 2010. The business developed through the decades and new sections were repeatedly added to the original building. When it closed in 2010, it had expanded to a scale of 3,500 square meters across several floors.

The history of the premises runs parallel to the post-war history of Norway and Lofoten, from the expansive rebuilding after WWII, the rise of Social Democracy, the re-creation of Norway as a petro-state in the ’70s, the discontinuation of industrial production, monopolization of the fishing industry and subsequently the gentrification and touristification of the new millennium. The building is now the last example of pragmatic waterfront architecture in Svolvær. After LIAF 2015, the building will be demolished.

The LIAF 2015 exhibition will be accompanied by a full public programme and publication, to be announced later this summer. Further details of artist commissions and artworks will also be announced in the coming weeks.

For further information visit: www.liaf.no