Is the Western world mentally dizzy and socially desperate after months of lock-down among all of us, and amongst the vulnerable, even break-down? While humans held their breath, nature was breathing deeper. 

Refugees and poor people are still suffering more than most of us can understand under this «climate pandemic». It is among these individuals and groups that all of us can learn about surviving and hope. Take note of it. This learning can only take place when we resolutely stretch out our hand and share of our time and money. Etymologically «suffering» means to “bear, resist, undergo», so we must bluntly declare our will to co-suffer with both man & nature. Otherwise we will stop to mature and grow, and there will be no peaceful revolution. How come?

I was an artist in residency in Kjøllefjord, Norway for 6 weeks. 

During my artist in residence, I investigated the possible use of materials found in the local environment in textile design and art. When I arrived, there was still snow and frost. So, the landscape was covered up. But as it started to melt, the landscape and materials started to appear. I soon became aware of the fact that in the north of Norway they are also challenged with plastic waste, as the Faroe Islands is. This is a global issue. But what is plastic? When did it start as a material? How is our behaviour as humans towards and with this material? We are the one who created the material, so is it not our responsibility. There were lots of questions that I needed to address. I set out to start PLASTIC DIALOGUES where I engaged a conversation with my hands in the material. 

The residency was supported by Nordic Culture Point and was organized by Arctic Culture Lab.

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In the maritime setting of Fredrikstad, at the mouth of the Glomma, Norway’s longest river, a unique building is now floating on a raft. It bears the name of the Hope Cathedral and is an interfaith, sustainable art project, led by the artist Solveig Egeland.

«Inspired by Norway’s famous stave churches, the structure rises majestically on its 120 m2 barge made of timber and roots and built in traditional fashion. The roof is a 300 m2 multi-coloured work of art made of plastic taken from the ocean and subjected to an innovative transformation process. More than 1000 fish boxes have been washed, granulated and turned into 4000 roof tiles in more than 50 different colours.

Our point of departure is the ocean, which is borderless and binds us together – nations, continents and people, regardless of our religion. Hope and the ocean belong to us all!» (Source: https://www.hopecathedral.no)

Here you can read the sermon given under the Inauguration by the Dean of Fredrikstad Cathedral, rev. Kari Mangrud Alvsvåg:

Nothing has worked. It’s time for political revolution. 

Dear fellow citizens of Earth.

We invite you to do something which governments and supporters of the status quo traditionally fear and hate. We invite you to join a political revolution. With other paths closed and all other options exhausted, we see this as the only way to catapult humankind onto effecting change on the grand scale our planet requires. 

We all know what led us to where we are. For the last four decades, governments have failed to halt the almost constant rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result, the last six years have been the hottest on record. 

In 2019 the UN Environment Programme came to the discouraging conclusion that the last ten years have been “a lost decade”. We have done far, far too little – and as a consequence, the world is heading for 3.5°C of global warming by the end of the century. This is far beyond the limits of the Paris Agreement. If the signatory nations were to meet the stated goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, they would need on average to quintuple the climate pledges they made in Paris.