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What 10 young people – curators created for the festival “Bastard” in Norway and got from taking part in the project “The Shake Down” (Part 3 – Interviews)

[Continuation of the project story] 

Video interview with young curators about the festival programme

In April 2023, five Latvian teenagers travelled to Norway, where together with five Norwegian teenagers they took part in the creation of Trondheim’s most important art event – the Bastard International Art Festival. In the video young curators introduce with self-created programme in the festival “Bastard” (in English, with subtitles in English):

In early 2022, thanks to the EEA grant, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia, in collaboration with Rosendal Teater in Norway, launched a project to train young curators, with the aim of providing visibility and agency to teenagers who are usually not given such opportunities, even though the decisions and cultural developments that will have a major impact on the future of society will have a direct impact on their lives. During the more than one-year curatorial training programme “The Shake Down”, 14–18 year olds have curated two performing arts festivals, including part of the International Theatre Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” and Bastard International Art Festival, participating fully, if only for a few days, in the organisation of the city’s cultural life according to their own experience and rules.

A conversation between young curators. Culture is a form of caring.

Santa Remere and Mārtiņš Kreilis met the young curators on the second day of the Bastard festival.

Who are you and what do you do?

Annie Strand Molster: We are participants of the curatorial training project “The Shake Down”. We have just finished curating our second festival and are now just enjoying the festival.

Nikolai Rushfeldt: “Bastard” is Trondheim’s most important international arts festival and we made up about 2/3 of the programme. We are responsible for the programme of performances and for the way the environment of the Rosendal Theatre and the outdoor spaces where the performances take place are designed. We worked on this festival for about six months.

Margit Adde: The Bastard Festival is usually held in collaboration with local communities: this has always been Rosendal Theatre’s strategy – to involve local people from all walks of life. Especially those who live really close by. We have spent the last few months working on the concept of the festival, selecting artists who fit the bill, contacting them, deciding how to adapt their work to the location, etc.

Karu Treij: This year’s festival is dedicated to the theme of relaxation. It was important for us and the theatre team to put an end to the grind culture and make the festival as accessible and cosy as possible. Of course, our festival also hosts various social events and parties, but it was important for us to make sure that all visitors feel comfortable here. We have designed and arranged the space so that people feel as little anxiety as possible, and those who are prone to anxiety can have a break from the hustle and bustle of the festival in this quiet space. Everyone can also take one of the specially prepared fidgets with them before the performance. Festivals often have a stressful atmosphere, with excitement and elation, but we wanted the festival to be calm and undisturbed.

Annie: We started planning the festival by choosing keywords that we all felt were important – environment, community, power relations, sanctuary. We told the artists that these were our themes and that they should be reflected in their projects. For example, Nagirchallmid chose the queer community as a theme because they are part of it.

Nikolai: It’s important for us to make the festival as inclusive as possible and for everyone to feel that they fit in… We worked with Skeiv Scene and Skeivt Opprør, who work with the local queer community. It was a unique opportunity to get to know them better, and they fit perfectly with our festival idea.

Karu: This aspect was also important in the Riga festival – some curators and artists were queer – but this time we wanted queerness to not only be represented, but to be the theme of the festival. Nagirchallmid’s performance “Transpire” is based specifically on the transgender experience, which often tends to remain in the shadows of the homosexual experience.

Photo: Atle Auran

Margit: “Transpire” is the joyful coming out story of gay and transgender people.

Annie: People often associate the process of gender reassignment with sad emotions, but we wanted to show that it can be a joyful and positive experience.

Kara: Yes, these experiences are often portrayed as tragic stories in the media and in films. Even in the queer films shown in Latvia, tragedy is predictably encoded. We want to change this attitude. Of course, the transgender and queer experience has its sad sides, but in essence, the experience of self-discovery should be a way to rejoice and enjoy who you are.] I love that at the Bastard Festival we were able to take care of these seemingly small, seemingly unimportant details – like putting all the trigger warnings in the programme. I would like to hope that future festivals will keep these features… I feel that there has been a lot of snobbery in festivals so far, giving the impression that they are only for the elite and the educated. We believe that festivals are for everyone, regardless of physical abilities or limitations, living conditions, background or education.

What other artists are taking part in this festival?

Hedda Osmo Rohde: I’m mainly working with Danish artist Pelle Brage’s project “Inflatable Museum”.

Photo: Atle Auran

Annie: It’s a museum that exhibits all kinds of objects. The paintings, sculptures and other objects in museums are usually very expensive and take a long time to make, but this museum is different – they are things that don’t cost much, but they also have their value and we can see how they are made. Some of the things are made by Pelle Brage and his team, others they have got from people who have visited the museum before. You can also play different games in his museum, and it’s really different from the museums we usually go to.

Photo: Atle Auran

Ikars Graždanovičs: I would say that “The Inflatable Museum” is more of an event than a performance. It will also feature various installations and interactive, visitor-engaging events. “The Inflatable Museum” will be installed in the central square in front of the Trondheim Torg shopping centre. Any passer-by will be able to see some of the unusual art objects on display outside the museum and decide whether they want to go inside. The museum allows the viewer to ask questions about the value of different works – how we perceive an art object in itself and what really determines its value, what makes an object count as a work of art. These questions are asked in a playful way, and in this way people can get positive emotions as well as think about something important. I think it’s very cool that in this museum we can pass on the curatorial baton to the visitors, and it fits in with the overall thrust of the Shake Down – also in the sense that it’s an event that you hardly notice at first, but it turns out to be a lot of fun. This time the process of choosing the artists was a bit different than at the “Homo Novus” festival, because each of us anonymously put in a list of the artists he would like to invite. And then we voted, and the final choice was a collective decision. Pelle was voted in because it is a fun and playful project and many modern theatres and museums are not like that.

Annie: I wanted the audience to be happy just to see it happening or to be involved in a festival event, and Pelle’s work is 100% about that. He is a professional of joyful art, if you can say that.

Photo: Atle Auran

Samuels Ozoliņš: I curated the work “Ladies” by Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelyte. We thought we should bring a Baltic artist to Norway, and Lina is also an internationally known artist. She won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for “Sun & Sea”, but “Ladies”, which Trondheimers will be able to hear at our festival, is also a very cool piece. It features four female players of the traditional Lithuanian instrument, the kankle. In Soviet times, the kankle was in a sense colonised – an instrument that was used in pagan rituals to worship the gods was now played as a stage instrument. But now it is part of Lina’s performance.

Alberts Roze: I think “Ladies” is an important piece in the overall concept of the festival, it corresponds to the keywords “care” or “caring” and “rest”, and it is also closely connected to Lithuanian culture. Culture is probably the highest form of care that we experience in life in general. In this work, it is manifested precisely in the principle of continuous repetition, which seeks to explore sound but goes well with the theme of ‘relaxation’.

Estere Dimitere: We had mentors available all the time to support us, to look after us, to remind us when we needed to do something.

Samuels: Sometimes when you talk to a mentor, you feel like you’ve met a walking encyclopedia. You can say any idea or topic you’re interested in and they can immediately give you examples – oh, yes, there’s such and such an artist working on this, he was in such and such a festival in 2015 with such and such work. I can’t understand how they keep that in mind.

Estere: Usually our conversations start with, “Oh my God, there’s this insanely cool artist…” (Laughs) But I liked that the mentors took us seriously: not as teens or kids, but as equals. I am also very grateful for how much they have shown us, how many shows they have taken us to. We have also experienced a lot together outside the actual process of preparing the festivals.

Photo: Atle Auran

Samuels: Jānis Balodis and Nahuel Cano are also participating in the Norwegian festival with their performance “The Last Night of the Deer”. We all saw it at the Homo Novus Festival and we all thought it was wonderful – we knew straight away that they had to go to Norway. The aesthetic – as Nahuel said in an interview – the vintage feel of the piece appealed to me. I like the way they play with the classical theatre form, but also involve the audience. Jānis and Nahuel were surprised that their work appealed to teenagers – they hadn’t counted on it appealing to a younger audience. I think it’s really cool when a curator can give an artist a new perspective on how to look at their work.

Ikars: Everyone decided unanimously on this performance. There was more discussion about the other artists. I think it’s because we all experienced it together and it felt familiar – it connects to the audience in a very particular way, even if we weren’t the target audience.

Samuels: You just have to see it. It’s hard to put it into words. There are all these different energies in the air that you can literally feel. Even though it’s a text-based performance, in this case the spoken language can also grab you very deeply and involve you. And there are all kinds of mystical elements, dark Nordic moods – something that Latvia and Norway have in common – the story of the snow storm, the deer, the mystery…

Hedda: When I came to Latvia, of course I didn’t feel at home. It’s a very different culture. But during this performance I felt at home for the first time. I was very drawn into the performance and I felt I belonged. More precisely, I didn’t care where I was, it just felt right.

What are the “aftertaste” talks that are also included in your programme?

Samuels: I came up with the idea for this format of conversation with the artists and curators of the festival after we watched “The Last Night of the Deer”. In that show, the artists don’t go backstage at the end of the performance, but stay with the audience – you can talk to them. It was so warming and pleasant to have a space for a human conversation with the artist that we realised that it is important to have such a space and moment in other events of the festival, so that the audience feels more welcome, more important. There is no pressure to stay or to talk, but there is this opportunity and space to do it.

Photo: Atle Auran

Estere: We thought it was important to change something in the opening of the festival. We wanted the opening to take place in several places at the same time – not in the centre of the festival, but in the places where the festival performances and events will take place later in the city. The curators met people at these points, and then everyone gathered at the Rosendal Theatre. Even though it was raining, it was nice to be together for something yet to come.

Samuels: “The Last Night of the Deer” will be shown in a gym near the Rosendal Theatre. A small group of people had gathered for the opening of the festival at this location and we all walked together to a nearby petrol station, where we were greeted by the creators of the show, Jānis and Nahuel, who gave a short talk and offered to have a coffee with them. It was an exclusive experience to watch this scene in a petrol station. I imagined how cool it would be if the whole performance was a procession, stopping at petrol stations with warm coffee and hot dogs. It was very authentic.

What is your biggest takeaway from this project? What have you learned?

Annie: I think I’ve learned to draw my personal boundaries better – I know where they are now. I know what I want to do and what I don’t want to do. I also have more confidence in my ideas, opinions and creativity.

Nikolai: I agree, I understood how to communicate with other people in the artist community, I trust more what I think. I now have experience of working internationally and I’ve learned a lot more about contemporary art, which I didn’t have much exposure to before this project.

Karu: Apart from the curatorial experience, we’ve made a lot of contacts, met a lot of great people who have achieved a lot in their fields. We have had the opportunity to learn from them directly.

Margit: I have more contacts in the local queer community now. We worked a lot with them. It was also a challenge for me as a curator to figure out how to use the saunas, where the “sauna talks” would take place, to plan the performances, to make the hats with the artists.

Zahida Kardu: I learned that potato pancakes exist. I tasted them for the first time in Latvia and found out that they taste very good.

Annie: I learned how cultures can differ. Before I thought Norwegians were very strict with themselves, but it turns out Latvians are even stricter. In Riga, people are more closed. I think Norwegians are shy, while Latvians are somehow tighter. Norwegians tend to be shy, they don’t want to bother, but Latvians approach everything with a great sense of duty – we definitely have to do this and this and this.

Ikars: I learned that Norwegians drink very diluted coffee. Norwegians have a healthy work-life balance, which I think is very cool and I would like to learn from them.

Zahida: But the biggest benefit is that we did two festivals and so far nothing has gone wrong. I’m worried about that because it tends to happen.

Ikars: It was very important for me, both in this festival and in the last one, to see that people were attending. To see how the production team, the artists and everybody else works to get the result. To see the set designer come and appreciate how everything came together. It’s been a great learning experience to see the inner workings of a large-scale event.

Estere: The fact that we’ve had the opportunity to do two international festivals is absurdly incredible. In the first festival I designed the brochure, the posters, Samuel did all the texts, but in Norway the marketing team did all the marketing and the production team did everything else. On the one hand it’s easier, but in a way it’s also harder – we can’t do everything ourselves, we have to be able to work together.

Alberts: As young people who are still thinking about what to do in life, this experience has helped us to realise what our strengths really are and what we still need to develop. But I think the main thing I’ve learnt is that sometimes you just have to do it yourself, because there’s nobody else to do it. You have to take responsibility, you have to make the calls, you have to act.

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