Norberg Festival 2023
Curated by Alice Söderqvist and Lina Lundqvist
2023


The visual arts program of Norbergfestival 2023 takes as its starting point the different narratives of resistance present in Norberg, reflecting political development on a global scale. By linking deindustrialisation, fictional readings of historical events and subcultural movements, the exhibition reflects on spatial and temporal conditions for the social and political imaginary. The works in this year's exhibition remind us of familiar environments and objects, mirroring the contexts within which they are produced. Bearers of memory or loss thereof, tracing the debris of dreams and desires in a society keeping itself obsessively occupied with restless acceleration.

Norberg, with its underground labyrinth of mining shafts and the sky-scraping edifice of Mimerlaven, became a scene for alternative music in Sweden when Norbergfestival began in 1999. This narrative is related to deindustrialisation elsewhere, where abandoned industrial buildings later housed the music of the counterculture.

This year's exhibition passes on some of the questions posed in last year's program. Exampled in the commissioned video work New Centuries Are Rare, made by the artist collective coyote for Norbergfestival 2022. The film explores the entwined histories of resistance and electronic dance music, and was installed in the former kiosk Nora Livs at Engelbrektsgatan 69. The visual arts program 2023 goes further underground, to the basement of the same building, among other abandoned or transformed sites around Norberg.