Colourful stairs at the Belomorie Hotel. Photo Kenneth Mikko

KANDALAKSHA. Russia is going through a period of fast modernization. New shopping centres, skyscrapers in big towns and self-service shops are mushrooming around the country. At the same time, old trams, trolleybuses and buildings disappear from the urban landscape. The Soviet design and architecture is replaced by more western-influenced styles.

A year ago, the Belomorie Hotel in Kandalaksha found  a new owner, Vladimir Komarov from Polyarny Zori. Built in 1980, the building at the main square is in great need of renovation, and Kamarov has now started a big project to renew the facilities.

From one of the economy class rooms. Photo Kenneth Mikko

To get a glimpse of the Soviet design, barentsculture.com gives you a last glimpse of the Belomorie Hotel and its old-style colourful premises and details, before they will disappear.

Have a look at our GALLERY

Lars Öberg, Elin Berge and Johan Gunséus are taking part in "Us and Them". Photo Yvonne Rittvall

The topic will be further explored by a group of eight Swedish photographers – Elin Berge, David Dahlberg, Alexandra A. Ellis, Malin Grönborg, Johan Gunséus, Sara Lindquist, Linda Thompson and Lars Öberg. In addition to the photographers portraying people, the characters themselves will also take photographs of the situation. The project “Us and Them” is one of many events during the Capital of Culture year in Umeå 2014. It will result in an exhibition to be displayed at the Sune Jonsson Centre for Documentary Photography, and along Umeå’s local bus routes. The exhibitions has also been invited to Riga’s PhotoMonth next year. Riga is the other European Capital of Culture in 2014.

Info: Umeå 2014

Culture journalists taking photos of Guardian journalists, London. Photo Kenneth Mikko

Peter Franzén. Photo Bonnier publishing

KEMINMAA. Peter Franzén, born and raised in the small northern town of Keminmaa, northern Finland, has made an international career and is today one of Finland’s most famous actors. He has appeared in more than 40 films and tv-series. His autobiographical novel “Tumman veden päällä” [On dark waters] was recognized as a sensible story about a small boy growing up with a violent and alcoholic father. The novel has been turned into a theatre play, and will also be released as a film in the autumn.

At the Kemi city theatre, a staged version of Franzén´s novel can be seen until 20th of May . Photo Kenneth Mikko

This spring, shootings have been made on location in his home town. Peter Franzén directs the film himself, and also plays one of the main characters. At the same time, Franzén can be seen in the new Finnish film “Purge “, based on Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen’s acclaimed novel about some Estonian fates during the Soviet occupation and today’s Estonia.

Info: Biography on IMDb

Info: Kemi City Theatre 

– You should be here next week and see another performance, a friend told me. This annual show was just from the Metallurg dance groups. We have many more dance collectives only here in Kandalaksha.

Metallurg dance groups. Photos Kenneth Mikko

Confetti, flowers and celebration after the show. Photos Kenneth Mikko

Media covering media at the radio festival. Photo Kenneth Mikko

The public is welcome to join the festivities in place, but might as well take part in the event at home, in the car or just anywhere – thanks to the practicality of the  sound medium.

Live broadcast from Tornio. Photo Kenneth Mikko

Info: Program

The source material is of course great – the preface states that the Murmansk region has 111,609 lakes and 18,209 waterways, not to mention mountains, swamps, towns, villages, bays, capes and so on. The book contains about 7,500  geographical names (toponyms) of the Murmansk Region. Historically, many toponyms are of Sami and Finnish origin, and has since received Russian pronunciation and transliteration.  Jaur (Sami for lake), and luokta (Sami for bay) are such common Russian toponyms on the Kola peninsula.

The word Murman is explained. It comes from the Norwegian word "norrman" meaning Norwegian person.

The book serves well as an appetizer for further investigations. For example the name Afrikanda. Some claim that it’s a settlement with especially hot weather, situated 27 kilometres east of Polyarny Zory. Others cling to  the fact that africand is a metallic element, that has probably been found by geologists in the surrounding. Such questions can be answered in Russian etymologic wordbooks.

Setting up the chum (lavvo). Photo Sebastiao Salgado

LONDON. Brazilian-born Sebastiao Salgado is one of world’s most famous photographers. Since the 1970′s he has been working on issues like workers in slave-like conditions, herders living at the edge of the Sahara desert, and indigenous peoples around the globe. His strong engagement in social and ecological questions is combined with a suberb technical skill and an eye for the beauty of the world.

From the exhibition in the Natural History Museum, London. Photo Kenneth Mikko

His latest project, Genesis has taken eight years and is ” a photographic homage to our planet in its natural state”. Together with his wife Leila, Salgado has travelled around the world, documenting nature and peoples that are still not effected or destroyed by modern society. The result is an enormous exhibition, recently opened at the Natural History Museum in London, and a huge book with photos. Most material is from South America and Africa, but the Salgados have also visited Nenets reindeer herders on the Yamal Peninsula.

Nenets family in their chum. Photo Sebastiao Salgado

He travelled with them for forty days, and discovered a sense of the essential. They “live in the most extreme weather during the winter, minus 30 – 40 degrees, they can carry with them only what the reindeers can take on their sleds. It’s the minimum we need to survive”, Salgado tells.

Info: Salgado’s homepage 

Natural History Museum, London

Tuula Lampela and Titta Court at the opening of the "8 Seasons exhibition". Photo Kenneth Mikko

KEMI. Photographer Tuula Lampela has a studio in Sodankylä, northern Lapland. – I wanted to do something outside my ordinary work, she says. She contacted dancers Titta Court and Miikka Ryytty and started the project ” 8 Seasons”. Finding interesting locations in Lapland’s nature, she called the dancers to show up on different occasions and perform in forests, wetlands or snowfields. It could even be at 5 0′clock in the morning, to catch the right light.

"Autumn Wings" was shot in a swamp. Photo Tuula Lampela

Some samples of Tuula’s photos can now be seen on an exhibition in Gallery Voima in Kemi, 8/4 – 26/4.

"October" by Tuula Lampela

Cover: Detail of “The Song of Darkness” by Tuula Lampela

Info: Gallery Voima
Tuula Lampela’s home page 

Widow Popova points her gun at creditor Smirnov . Photo Kenneth Mikko

 
This Easter, Anton Chekhov’s short novel “The Bear” , transformed and staged for the opera, was performed by Carina Henriksson in the lead role as widow Popova and creditor Smirnov by Karl Peter Eriksson from the Gothenburg Opera. Other participants were singer Anders Rimpi and pianist Joakim Kallhed, and director Catarina Gnosspelius, who made an introduction to the audience.

The dramatic and humorous opera was also philologically unique, with texts in Swedish and minority languages ​​Meänkieli and Sami.

A close scene from opera "The Bear". Photo Kenneth Mikko

After a short break, the audience could enjoy Mikael Niemi’s play “Tukkipojat” , the first queer play in the Torne River Valley, with  Daniel Sandström and Markus Forsberg from the Torne Valley Theatre.

Info: Opera Vildmark

Mikael Fahlander presents the "Barents Center" project. Photo Kenneth Mikko

But already at the end of 2013, a joint Swedish-Finnish travel center will open next to the border. Buses from both Sweden and Finland will dock at the center, which also will include a café and shops.

The travel center will serve buses from both Sweden and Finland.

At the Victoria square, the border between Haparanda and Tornio is marked with water. Photo Kenneth Mikko

Bror Astermo has worked with theatre for many years and is now also in the media business. Photo Kenneth Mikko

PAJALA. With the Internet, anyone with passion, time and knowledge can open a TV-channel on their own. Enthusiasts Bror Astermo and Kjell Kangas at Tornedalen Media have run their local TV-station in the mining town of Pajala for many years now. In their online archive you can find news, culture, history etc. The public is also invited to send their videos to Pajala TV for broadcasting. Globetrotter Bengt Enbuske, for example, has submitted 47 films from his journeys around the globe.

Pajala, located in the middle of the Torne River Valley is a meänkieli stronghold, and there is a lot of material here about this minority language, or translated to meänkieli.

Have a look at these really amusing meänkieli clips from The Shark  (Iso Lohi), James Bond (Bondin Jeimsi) and The Godfather (Jumalan Pappa):

http://www.pajalatv.se/film/meankieli/

Inf0: Pajala TV

Bondin Jeimsi gets instructions how to handle a mini aeroplane

Marriage of Fish and Bear. Painting by Pavel Mikushev

In the book “Шаман и шут : сборник статей по истории этнофутуризма в Республике Коми” (Shaman and Fool: a collection of articles on the history of the Ethnofuturism in the Republic of Komi) Alexander Kotilev and Irina Kotileva  present the development of the Komi branch of the genre.  Pavel Mikushev and Yuri Lisovsky where among the painter pioneers , while Irina Fedosova created ethnofashion collections.

Archbird by Yuri Lisovsky

The ethnofuturist movement has existed for about twenty-five years now. One could ask where it’s heading in the future. Talking to a critic in Syktyvkar, she meant that if it will survive as a vital stream in the Finno-Ugric cultural world,  it has to develop further, with new content and forms.

Some Komi ethnofuturists. From the book Shaman and Fool. ISBN 9785793405188

Cover: Performance “Chuds”