UK Premiere of permafrost (barentsburg), a short film set in the Northern-most human settlement in the world: the Svalbard archipelago, Spitsbergen (only 800km to North Pole). The video focuses on the Russian town Barentsburg, situated at the latitude of 78º N.

Fernando José Pereira investigates the remoteness of the extreme North, having travelled extensively in the North, and in 2009 reached one of the last frontiers: the Svalbard archipelago. Above here, only the sea ice from the North Pole. The video shows both fascination for this utopian untouched landscape, and on the other hand the dystopian condition of abandoned places, almost ghost towns, lost in time but imprisoned in its own economical net that sustain them until now, not in a documentary way but as a fiction, the usual way for the gaze of the artist in his approach to reality.

Barentsburg is a coal mine town; with coal from the arctic greatly appreciated by our energy industry, this is also the cause of both economical progress and ecological disaster. It is a closed circle: the coal that is exported by Barentsburg and consumed by the European south countries is one of the main causes for the climate changes in the arctic.

Fernando José Pereira, Porto, 1961. Lives and work in Oporto, Portugal. Graduated in Fine Arts – Painting at the School of Fine Arts of Oporto (1987), PhD in Fine Arts at the Vigo University, Spain (2002).

Pereira is founder (1997) and co-director of Virose, an interdisciplinary non-profit organisation dedicated to art and media technology (www.virose.pt), as well as a teacher in the Painting Department of the Fine Arts School at the University of Oporto.

When is it happening?

23 April 2010 – (10:00 – 18:00 daily, looped video, 10 mins)

Where is it happening?

Stage 3

What makes this project Northern?

The film is located in Svalbard archipelago, north of the Arctic Circle, only 800km from the North Pole, and is made by an artist from Northern Portugal

Ticketing Information

Free