Kjetil Berge
Kjetil Berge is an artist, and this year’s main curator for AMIFF. Kjetil Berge har invited the artists Sanjey Sureshkumar, NO and Louisa Minkin, UK, to this year’s festival in Harstad. He is behind the festival title, BEND IT, MAYBE. Read more about the theme further down the page here.
Bio:
Berge studied in Bergen, Lisbon, has an MA from the Slade, UCL London, and lives in London and in Kvalnes, Lofoten, Norway. Each year, Kvalnes attracts creatives locally and from the rest of Norway and abroad. Berge’s invites artists to contribute to his initiative the Midnightsunscream Festival, a collaborative curatorial project, and an important part of his artistic practise.
Kjetil Berge has exhibited at Ryvarden in Sveio, Nordens Hus, Reykjavik, and was invited to the 9th Havana Biennale, where he participated with ALYAN’s, a social sculpture, w. performance and events. He has made large sculptural towers in Norwich UK, for EAST International, in Belize as part of the Paustinia Project, for LaSalle, Singapore and at Nordberg fort, Lista.
In 2013, the North Norwegian Artists Center, Free the Word, the Norwegian Arts Council and Nabroad supported the project, Breaking the Ice, where Berge, midwinter, traveled from England via Russia to Barents Spektakel, Kirkenes in an ice cream van. Along the way, he exchanged ice cream for conversations about the weather.
Collaboration is often part of Berge’s practice. Together with Jason Havneraas, he participated in the Autumn exhibition in Oslo in 2021. Invited by Ida Lykken Gosh as co-curator, they created the exhibition BEND IT at Atelier Nord 2022. During Pride Reykjavik 2023 he will, with works now in KODE Museums, Bergen, again exhibit his first collaborative project with Gøran Ohldieck in Nordens Hus, Reykjavik.
Curator text:
"This year's festival title, BENDIT, MAYBE, is conceived as an open and solution-oriented call for deliberations on relational themes, with a focus on identity and affiliation.
These themes are constant topics in human interaction. In social media the stream of opinions flows on a large and persistent battlefield full of combative headlines with polarising and predictable arguments. Trolls and bots fight to publicise othering opinions with hateful headlines about people they don’t think belong. A bullying attitude meant to exclude people from the public debate as well as IRL.
BEND IT, MAYBE encourages a position of embrace, it shows the beginning of a curve, that can accommodate and change direction. It is humorous, invites reflection and deliberation and is an alternative to a default defensive stance. To envisage flexibility, afterthought, inclusion and open-mindedness as effective tools in relational power structures seems radical at this point.”
-Kjetil Berge