Performance Studies in Sápmi
On 28 and 29 June, Performance Studies in Sápmi brought together artists, researchers and performance artists from Sápmi, Norway, Finland, the USA and Lithuania in Bodø The festival was initiated in 2024 by Marija Griniuk, department head in Nordlandsmuseet , as part of her postdoctoral research on political performance art.
The 2026 edition spotlighted meetings between generations of performance artists and researchers with connections to Sami culture and political performance. Over two days, the festival filled the conference hall and outdoor spaces at the City Museum in Bodø , and ended at The Jekt Trade Museum The program included performance works, academic presentations and a yoik workshop.
The festival is supported by the Norwegian Directorate of Culture, Nordland County Council and the Nordic Culture Fund.
All photos in this story were taken by Dan Mariner
Contributors to the festival at The Jekt Trade Museum .
Marija Griniuk opened the festival with Performance Art Techno Youth, created in collaboration with young performance artists from Bodø — Daphne Hanssen, Aurora Elisabeth Berg Nilsson, Marie Agate Støver and Oskar Zhang. The work explores the relationship between history, tradition and technology.
Outside the City Museum in Bodø Annette Arlander performed Birch to Birch — a performance in which she uses a harmonica at a birch tree in Bodø and connects this via QR code to a pre-recorded video work by a birch tree in Helsinki. She acts as a messenger between the trees, sharing breathing and oxygen exchange between human and tree.
Marit Bringedal Anti and Greta Balčiūnaitė from Sápmi and Lithuania, respectively, dressed as mythological beings from their cultures and examined how cultural differences shape notions of the mythical.
Kurt Johannessen presented Landscape 9, a minimalist and poetic performance piece that relates to nature and its elements. Johannessen has worked with performance, books, video and installation since the early 1980s.
Yoiker and artist Elin Kåven from Karasjok performed yoikers with drums and taken from Sami mythology and tradition.
Joana Gelažytė performed The Hearth of Memory, a ritual exploration of shared cultural heritage.
The festival day ended with The Jekt Trade Museum , where Johan Sara Jr. and Katarina Skår Lisa performed a collaborative performance about coastal life and Maritime Sami heritage through dance.
On June 29th, the festival continued with a seminar where artists and researchers presented chapters for the upcoming publication Liveness and Performance in Museums, facilitated by Professor Philip Auslander. Kurt Johannessen spoke about his own work in museums and connected it to the experiences from the project About Something. Theresa Thuv from Nord University presented reflections from 12 years of collaboration with Løp farm. Elin Kåven held a three-hour course in basic yoik.
