Jiennagoahti

News: Jiennagoahti are still under turfing maintenance but is open!

We will announce a new turf workshop coming up this spring of 2025 here soon incase you wanna join.

 

Program 12.3-30.5.2025,  the Borealis festival presents:

 

Sondre Närva Pettersen: Vi som er máilmmiid gaskkas // Mii geat orrut mellom verdener

 

Can music exist between worlds? Between Sami and Norwegian, between tradition and modernity, between heaven and hell? This new listening work for Jiennagoahti by Norwegian/Sami composer, musician and joiker Sondre Närva Pettersen recorded through a special collaboration with Bergen Cathedral, brings together ancient joik, Sámi hymn traditions, and modular synths, inviting us into a borderland where sound seeks to explode established categories and explore new connections.

We live in a world that is increasingly polarised, with two camps set irreconcilably against each with no room for an in-between. In conversations about colonisation, Norwegians as colonists and the Sámi as indigenous people are often juxtaposed as completely separate groups and categories. But Närva, who comes from a Sea Sami and Kven family subjected to harsh Norwegianisation policies, finds himself between Sami, Norwegian and Kven identities. In the same way, whilst the Sámi joik has been demonised by the church for centuries, we also hear the sound and ornamentation of the joik existing in the Laestedian hymn tradition. Närva asks what kind of music can arise in this in-between space between the hymn and the joik? And if joik and the church organ really are two opposites, who represents heaven and who represents hell?

Vi som er máilmmiid gaskkas // Mii geat orrut mellom verdener was commissioned and recorded especially to be played in this unique listening room on Fløyen. With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report from 2023 as its background, the work examines, among other things, the role of music and art in reconciliation efforts and is part of Borealis’ ongoing commitment to exploring Sámi sonic experimentalism today, and how new forms of sound and music can explore the resurgence of culture and language in the aftermath of colonial policies of erasure.

Presented in collaboration with Jiennagoahti & Birgon ja biras sámiid searvi. Special thanks to Bergen Cathedral and cantor Kjetil Almenning for use of the church and organ.

Commission supported by Arts & Culture Norway
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Visual art (dajdda) and duodji:

As part of Jiennagoahtis’s inauguration, we received funding from Sámediggi-The Sámi parliament to acquire art-and duoddji works by Joar Nango, Unna Girje Gumpi, a guest book by Hans Ragnar Mathisen, Čohkkát-gáma by Máret Rávdna Buljo and a rákkas (sleeping tent) created by Katarina Spik Skum.

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Program curation 2025-2026.

The sound-works presented in Jiennagoahti in 2024-2025 are curated by Sážžá Káhtariinná/Katarina Dorothea Isaksen, a Bergen-based artist/filmmaker from Sážža/Senja and artist/composer Elin Már Øyen Vister (NO), based on Røst in Lofoten/Lofuohtta, Sábme (Northern Norway) as well as the Borealis festival.

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Supported by