At Barents Spektakel 2019

The project bar "TANG" presented by the Tromsø-based artists Kåre Aleksander Grundvåg and Trond Ansten in collaboration with Moscow-based lighting designer and scenographer Tatiana Ludanik, was this year's festival bar, at Barents Spektakel. TANG was both an installation and a bar, where the public could relax, watch performances, listen to music and dance, with performances from norwegian Marita Isobel Solberg, DJ sessions from Matti Aikio, DJ Mental Overdrive and two Russian DJs from SPB4 band.

The festival bar TANG invited the audience into the algal universe of Devils Apron`s social and ecological experimentation around the use of seaweed and marine resources. Their world was closly linked to this year's festival theme "The world's northernmost Chinatown"

TANG housed a social seaweed SPA created in collaboration with Arkhangelsk Experimental Industrial Algae Factory, which sponsored the project with spa products and dried kelp, a secret TangBar - a dialogue-based project with samples of different algae brews from the artists were local politicians, priests and poets performed as bartenders, a pop-up restaurant were Håkon Kinakål (Håkon Lindbäck), presents authentic street-style Chinese food infused with seaweed and kelp.

TANG was open from morning until late at night and beyond from the classic bar concept, the place served as an arena for various events and activities for all ages and preferences: artist talks, sci-fi screenings for children and adults, debates and film screenings.
It was the place where guest performers take to the stage by night and a whole range of speakers share ideas by day
— and of course, karaoke played untill the last orders are taken.

— an installation, as much as a social retreat and a seaweed bar, all generously hosted by a king crab.

TANG — as well as being one of the most common surnames in China — is the Norwegian word for seaweed. Tang is packed with a dizzying amount of nutrients and it is said to have once been brewed into beer by the indigenous civilisations of the Kamchatka peninsula in far east Russia.

What is the taste of the future?
What can we learn from crafts of the past?
Can Chinese mould spores create wine from northern seaweed?

WELCOME TO TANG!

-Kelp as areas of use is well expressed in the festival bar TANG, a social art project by Kåre Aleksander Grundvåg and Trond Ansten. As Devils Apron, they have been brewing beer on seaweed for several years. This beer is given to the public to taste in a secret bar, hidden behind the official bar. The intimate, seaweed-walled bar is served by various local celebrities and when I pop in it's one of the town's priests who happily serves me seaweed beer.

-Hilde Sørstrøm / Se Kunst

“Huge bundles of seaweed harvested in the Russian Solovki Islands were transported to the old fire station in the center of Kirkenes to be part of the Barents Spektakel art festival.

Seaweed is in the time. Sør-Varanger Utvikling has financed research on the possibility of growing and harvesting seaweed in local fjords, and several artists are taking up the trend that is predicted to be the new big boom in Norwegian fjords. The artists Trond Ansten and Kåre Aleksander Grundvåg have created a social space in the old fire station. Chinese food is served here, people can take a bath in the seaweed or they can visit a secret bar. - Right now I'm cleaning the water in the fish containers, says Kåre Grundvåg, we use them as spa tubs. He shows off large bundles of seaweed that are ready to be used in the spa treatments. The seaweed is brought from Arkhangelsk. - How did you get it across the border?
-It was heavy! There were many people who had to be involved, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and many agencies.

Grundvåg explains that they wanted to get the seaweed from the Russian side to have the opportunity to gain experience from the Russians' long-term use of algae. That it becomes part of the boundary-breaking collaboration is also an added value. The Arkhangelsk Experimental Industrial Algae Factory opened in 1919. Then the Germans stopped the export of iodine to Russia as one of the war sanctions and the Russians had to find alternative sources. They started by trawling and it went on for a few years, but it quickly became clear that it was not a good way to harvest as it is not sustainable. Eventually they started harvesting around the Solovki Islands and then from small boats where the seaweed is cut off with a knife, over the algae's reproductive organs.”

-Birgitte Wisur Olsen / SAGAT

-At TANG you can also take a bath in the fish tanks that the artists have turned into a spa with seawater, algae and seaweed. A fun gimmick, but the work of Devils Apron is also an invitation to explore our own physical natural surroundings.
To teach us to know what we have around us in new ways. To ask new questions and to see what wonderful forces are hidden in nature. This is how the art project fits in well with this year's festival art, where Barents Spektakel manages to shed new light on the climate crisis, which has already been discussed countless times both in art and in the social debate

-Hilde Sørstrøm / Se Kunst

The exhibition was supported by Arts Council Norway & Arkhangelsk Experimental Industrial Algae Factory