Film and artist talk

About

Artist and filmmaker Olga Krüssenberg visited Longyearbyen for the first time in November 2019. Encountering the icy settlement during the polar night, she didn't see much of the landscape, but instead had what she describes as an intense bodily experience of the place. The darkness challenged the senses she usually relies on to form a picture of the world around her - what looked like houses from a distance turned out to be fences, and the glimmer in the sea, resembling sapphire, was bioluminescent plankton.
In an attempt to find safety in surroundings that felt elusive and prone to misinterpretation, Krüssenberg used filmmaking as a tool to structure the narrative. Film's ability to manipulate time, space, and perspective mirrors the fluidity of Svalbard. The original purpose of the film was to explore Longyearbyen's collective memory, a place where few stay long enough to remember the past. After interviewing locals, she quickly realized that there might not be a collective memory in the conventional sense, but rather shared bodily experiences of a place in constant transformation - much like her own experience on first encountering it. The result was the short film "Iceblink," which explores bodily experiences, or rather memories, of a place in constant change.
On Monday, April 25th at 6:00 PM, the documentary, which premiered in Rotterdam earlier this year and has been screened at several film festivals in Sweden, will be shown for the first time in Svalbard at Nordover. Following the screening, there will be an artist talk with filmmaker Olga Krüssenberg, where we also will open up for questions from the audience. Welcome!