See festival slide show (All photos by BarentsObserver.com)
For five days every year the small border town of Kirkenes is transferred from a quiet coastal community, into an explosion of exhibitions, art, concerts and international debates. The festival gathers people from all over the region, and for some days the rest of the world is put on hold while the numerous events of the festival display some of the creativity and possibility which this region holds.
The slogan of this year’s festival was Mind the Map, which was also the name of the main exhibition of the festival. Borders around the world, at sea and on land, are challenged every day. In April 2010 the maritime boundary in the Barents Sea was drawn between Norway and Russia. In November 2010 a visa-free agreement applied to the border areas along the Norwegian-Russian border was signed.
Almost at the same time NATO and Russia entered a strategic partnership about the ABM-system, and activities in the vicinity of the borderline between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea led to escalating of tension on the Korean Peninsula. Pikene på Broen invited a Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, Olga Kisseleva from Russia and Stefano Cagol from Italy to comment on the maps undergoing changes.
