New North Academy is both a conference, performance, seminar and concert at the same time.
New North Academy drives bulldozers through the landscape of narratives that together form our notions of the North, with the ambiton to tear and dig, clear and mess, plow and build. Behind the levers are not politicians, principals or directors, but the local, free-thinking, northern art.
New North Academy gives you the sound of the North, Arctic movement patterns, provocative clarity, art research, music and critical self-examination.
More than ever, there is a need for new stories about and from the North, there is a need for relevant compasses in a world of fake news, there is a need for alternative arenas for knowledge production, insight and education.
The Canadian researcher Daniel Chartier refers to the "idea of the North" as an imaginary landscape that creates space to reflect on the relationship between place and imagination. Fantasies about the North have existed in literature and art prints for centuries. Depictions of desolate landscapes, almost without humans and animals have prevailed. The repetitions of dreamlike images of a place beyond human existence, help to cement a narrative about the North that does not necessarily harmonize with a modern North. Former festival director Maria Utsi put it this way: "An Arctic future without a strong narrative of human space in the north is incomplete, and new perspectives, images and thoughts must be reflected from the inside out." At New North Academy, we are interested in the future: What is the North? What does the new North look and sound like?
New North Academy springs from the research project ART Vapo at the University of Tromsø - The Conservatory of Music, and embodies different views of the north in the circumpolar area.
The project is led by Geir Davidsen, Hilde Synnøve Blix and Amund Sjølie Sveen.
