PERFORMING LANDSCAPES NORDIC/BALTIC

Teaterfestivalen i Fjaler is an annual performing arts festival based in the rural community of Dale in western Norway, the second weekend in September every year. Since 2013, the festival has explored how contemporary performing arts can grow from, respond to and enter into dialogue with a specific place and its people.

Landscape, ecology and our relationship to nature have been recurring themes in our artistic programme. We are interested in how landscapes carry memory, resources, conflicts, identities and different ideas of value – and in how art can make these perspectives visible and bring them into conversation.

The festival combines performances, artistic residencies, site-specific work, public conversations and local participation. Through our close collaboration with PreForm and Samvirket cultural centre, we also provide a year-round space for artistic development and production. In recent years, we have expanded our Nordic perspective through collaborations across the North Atlantic.

Hangö Teaterträff is an annual festival where performing arts are presented, experienced, discussed and developed. The festival is one of the main events within the Swedish-language theatre of Finland, connecting the local, international, traditional and experimental. It is a gathering of performing arts in the small town of Hanko in the unique archipelago of the southernmost point of mainland Finland.

The annual International Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit, comprised of a curated exhibition and an event programme, was initiated in 2009 as a response to the economic crisis affecting Latvia at the time. Each year, the festival's appointed curator (or curators) carefully selects the themes explored, inviting artists from around the world to offer alternative scenarios of survival. The festival's mission to critically investigate and reflect on the evolution of contemporary society has made it a key platform for the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) to showcase its commitment to research, creation, and development of contemporary art processes in Latvia and internationally since 2000. Survival Kit's choice of venue is an integral part of the festival's identity, as it inhabits empty buildings in Riga, exploring their potential and possible development strategies that could be used to revitalize them. Despite the often challenging nature of these spaces, the festival emphasizes the importance of accessibility, assisting people with disabilities.

New Theatre Institute of Latvia (NTIL) is a project based organisation working in the field of contemporary performing arts. Since 1995 NTIL has been organizing the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre Homo Novus, which is the largest performing arts platform in Latvia. NTIL also produces and presents projects and long term collaboration programmes together with local and international partners, strongly believing in the necessity to explore the contemporary performing arts field together with artists and audiences.

§112 Fredrikstad develops artistic and cultural projects that explore the relationship between people, place, democracy, ecology and the public realm. Through site-specific projects, public programmes and collaborations, we use art as a tool for dialogue, reflection and engagement with environmental and societal challenges.

Festspillene i Nord-Norge (The Arctic Arts Festival of Northern Norway) is one of the Nordic region's leading multidisciplinary arts festivals, held annually in Harstad above the Arctic Circle. For more than 60 years, the festival has presented contemporary performing arts, visual arts, music and literature while fostering dialogue between local, Indigenous, Nordic and international artistic perspectives.
The festival has a strong commitment to presenting art in relation to landscape, ecology and social responsibility. Northern Norway's dramatic environment is not merely a backdrop but an active context for artistic creation, inviting audiences to reflect on the interconnectedness of people, nature and place. Through site-specific works, public art, community-based projects and interdisciplinary collaborations, Festspillene explores themes such as climate change, biodiversity, sustainable futures, cultural resilience and our shared responsibility for the Arctic. Sustainability is embedded in both the festival's artistic programme and organisational practices, with a focus on long-term partnerships, local engagement, environmental awareness and creating meaningful encounters between artists, audiences and communities.

K-LAB is an artist-run, inernational, interdisciplinary, and site-specific platform for land art, established by Ane Øverås in 2007. The Biennale takes place in Nevelsfj​ord, Kjerringøy in Northern Norway, above the arctic circle, 67°49’ N and 14º 89’ E. Now we are working to become an artist residence, AiR Kjerringøy, during the school year with workshops for producing and conveying art.

Wild Bits is a technological art outdoor exhibition triennial that explores the intersections of art, technology, ecology, and landscape. Taking place in diverse natural and rural environment of Southern Estonia, it presents site-specific works that engage directly with local ecosystems, environmental processes, and the evolving relationship between humans and the more-than-human world.

Bringing together artists, researchers, and practitioners across disciplines, Wild Bits enables critical reflection on how technological and ecological transformations reshape our perception of place and landscape. The programme highlights artistic practices that respond to environmental change, multispecies coexistence, and shifting cultural understandings of nature.

Beyond its main edition, Wild Bits operates as a travelling and adaptable platform. It is actively seeking partners and co-commissioners and develops satellite exhibitions that travel across Europe in collaboration with local host institutions and umbrella organisations. These nomadic iterations allow the project to take different forms in dialogue with new contexts and landscapes. So far Wild Bits satellites have been exhibited in the Baltics and in Northern Finland.

By situating contemporary art outside conventional gallery spaces, Wild Bits invites audiences into immersive encounters with landscape and process, creating space for experimentation, exchange, and shared reflection on ecological futures.

Tuvumi is an independent dance organisation characterised by creatively innovative productions and the systematic, sustainable dissemination of dance performances and events. It is difficult to separate Tuvumi from its founders—the dance artist collective IevaKrish—whose choreographic work largely takes place under the organisation’s umbrella in a symbiotic collaboration. While based in Riga, Tuvumi strategically expands its activities to Latvian regions, the Baltics, the Nordic countries, and Europe. Tuvumi and its associated artists regularly represent Latvia and the dance sector at international events, including festivals, conferences, symposiums, and platforms.

Since 2022, Tuvumi administration has been supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation’s co-funding program for professional non-governmental performing arts organisations, which has enabled Tuvumi to implement an extensive dance performance and event program at the renovated Riga Circus building, launch HOROS, a dance exchange program in Aizpute, Southern Kurzeme, featuring dance residencies, a curated mini-festival, and regular guest performances, transform previous occasional guest performances into structured national and international tours, making high-quality contemporary stage art more accessible to audiences in Latvia, the Baltics, and the Nordic region, and in 2024, expand its participation in the Latvijas Skolas Soma program, focusing on engaging and developing young audiences.