in the Lavvu : Traditional Activism By The Collective

Circumpolar Collaboration

By The Collective invites you to join them inside the Sami lavvu for stories, conversation and art.

Tuesday, June 28, 2022 from 3:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. MST

Last year, the Hásstuheaddji collective approached Norwegian Craft to ask whether they would be interested and able to fund a project that was developing through joint conversations between Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Timimie Maräk and Beaska Niillas. All three had for some time been working in different capacities to realize the Sámi Pavilion project in the 59th Venice biennale – Timimie as the poet in residence, while Beaska and Liisa-Rávna worked as curators Their interaction with the Western world of art during the preparations for the biennale gave rise to many different and problematic discussions, but all were related to ideas of indigeneity andperformativity. In time, these discussions created a need to look beyond.

Starting from the idea of searvevuohta, or collectivity, the project was initiated from the Indigenous Sámi perspective of the world as one of relations, shaped collectively by and through the interactions between and to humans and land, water, other-than-human-beings, spirits, and objects and things. How we perceive the world[s] we live in, or otherwise engage in/with, is as such shaped by the collective interactions of all these relations coming together. The result is “By the Collective”, an ongoing discursive performance that create searvelatnja, multiple and collective space[s] across borders of time and place to discuss how we may act to decolonize art, or more to the point, indigenize it.

Because it is an ongoing performance, “By the Collective” has since appeared in different guises. For Arctic Art Summit 2022, “By the Collective” will present itself as “lávvu jođus”, or lávvu on the move.

A lávvu is an old Sámi dwelling that is meant to be temporary, and although its structure has similarities with other Indigenous dwellings, the lávvu has been developed within the context of the plains found in the Arctic that often has little natural shelter by way of trees from wind and harsh weather. As part of the summits section, “On the Land”, lávvu jođus will in collaboration with the land and the people living on it, forge, not only a metaphorical, but also visual searvelatnja