Creation in the Mystical Darkness A decent Beyond the Self LARA KRISTJANSDOTTIR
is a small town Spointeyðisfjörður located at the innermost of a narrow fjord in the
East of Iceland, about as far away from the capital of Reykjavik as you can get while staying on the island. Covered by mountains and solely accessible by a road over a mountain pass, when driving into the fjord and looking over the colourful houses surrounding the still lake, the town of 680 inhabitants seems a world away from anywhere else. However, once you settle in this town that far away feeling is accompanied by a sense that still you are close to just about everything. Amid this sense of distance yet closeness, Seyðisfjörður has a distinct, spiritual essence which is accompanied by an ever-evolving, international cultural- and arts scene. In contrast to Icelandic summers which are marked by endless light, loss of any sense of time and unbounded energy, the winters are another story by far. With their unique qualities, the long winter nights are beautiful, cold, dark, filled with a certain weariness. Darkness cloaks the land for all but a few solitary hours during the hardest part of these months. Despite the additional layer of gloom as the sun disappears behind the mountains, as well as its geographical isolation, Seyðisfjörður’s uniqueness attracts even the young and international to dream of settling there, and yes, during winter as well. The town’s distinct artistic atmosphere leads you to wonder how the absence of natural light can influence the creative thinking processes, and creation in general. How can such a remote town of dour winters draw the attention of artists which would usually be considered more probable to reside, develop and create in the atmospheric and inspiring cities of Europe? The fact that Seyðisfjörður was constructed not by Icelanders
but by ‘foreigners’ (Norwegian fishermen had settled the town in the mid-19th century, and the Danes largely contributed to its economic upheaval) is considered to have contributed to the multi-cultural element characterising it to this day. Despite the town’s remoteness within the island - intensified during the winter as isolation becomes increasingly felt with difficult weather- and road conditions - the Smiryl Line ferry arriving once a week from Denmark through the Faroe Islands has served as the town’s lifeline for decades. It can be seen as a reflection of the unique notion the town has always held, of not looking towards Reykjavik but directly over the fjord towards Europe. This awareness has moreover fed into the uniqueness of Seyðisfjörður, its cosmopolitan ambiance, the high threshold the town has for foreigners, and for freaks, for untypical people coming to do untypical things.
“The young and the international come to share an experience of studying art; develop an interest in everything that surrounds oneself; and live the process of constantly conversing, collecting, and experimenting.” One of these distinct individuals was a conceptual artist known for always doing the opposite of the conventional, world-renowned Swiss-German Dieter Roth who first came to Seyðisfjörður in his search to get as far away from the capital as possible. Turns out the town brought him happiness and ease, nobody paid any particular
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attention to him, he was just like all the other freaks, those who had arrived as young hippies from Reykjavik to work in the fishing industry and live cheaply. A few decades later, around 2000, a particular ‘rural romance’ atmosphere had swept over a generation of Icelandic artists who came to find charm in moving from cities like Berlin and settling into affordable Seyðisfjörður - probably noticing a certain allure in both its electric summers and mystic winters. One of the most interesting elements of the cultural life of Seyðisfjörður is LungA, which for twenty years has been a yearly celebration of creativity and culture in the form of an art festival during the summer, and the LungA School, an independent and experimental art school with its main studio space in an old fishnet factory. An institution, a commune, a ‘situation’ in which artistic practices are experimented with as a way of doing and thinking. It is built around a sense of community rather than obedience to a certain authority and specific policies and hosts 12-week programmes and an artist residency in Seyðisfjörður, mostly stretching over the winter months. The young and the international come to share an experience of studying art; develop an interest in everything that surrounds oneself; and live the process of constantly conversing, collecting, and experimenting. The school is continuously developing - intending to never stay constant or the same. Since its establishment in 2014, every year two groups of twenty new ‘Lungis’ are welcomed and invited to take part in shaping the community and the environment. Persistently generating new understandings of the circumstances while learning to understand themselves – LungA focuses on self-reflection and the nature of the creative process itself instead of on particular outcomes, making it different from ‘traditional’ art schools.
