A series of short films and videos has been created to complement the exhibitions and serve as promotional material for the AAE initiative. These productions highlight AAE’s core values of eco-cultural sustainability and partnership, sharing the project’s vision with wider audiences.
Nomadic Hub of AAE in Karasjok
In spring 2024, the AAE Nomadic Hub was set up in Karasjok, organised with the Sámi Centre for Contemporary Art (Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš), Karasjok School, and AAE partners. It engaged scholars and students in local ecoculture, Sámi art, storytelling, and land-based learning. A collaborative painting with schoolchildren celebrated the Karasjok River’s cultural meaning, symbolically linking nature, community, and northern ecocultural materials through shared artistic action.
Face Off
The Video shows the making of sustainability portraits in Maniitsoq, Greenland. Young people made the portraits with visual artists, Tina Enghoff and Soeren Zeuth, through collective learning involving the community. The portraits become artivism as they allow the community to present themselves through their own gaze. They powerfully overcome colonial narratives, reclaiming agency and dignity by celebrating people as they see themselves.
In the Footsteps of Teno’s Astronomer Ándaras Kitti
The celebration week of the Teno’s astronomer Ándaras Kitti (1844–1926) took place in February 2024 in Utsjoki. In collaboration with local partners, community art workshops were designed and led for the elderly, kindergarten children, and hotel guests, as well as a winter snow sculpture workshop for elementary and high school students. In line with the goals of the AAE project, the activities explored artistic methods for engaging with Arctic and northern environments, with a focus on people and respect for local ways of knowing the North.
Solastalgia
Solastalgia is a socially engaged artwork which presents young people’s thoughts and feelings on climate change. The artwork was presented at the opening of the Arctic Spirit conference in Rovaniemi, 2023. The video is an artistic interpretation of the original live performance.
Stepping in the River
Inspired by Heraclitus’s words that one cannot step twice into the same river, the artwork reflects on the ecological and cultural transformations caused by gold mining along two northern rivers—the Yukon in Canada and the Ounas-Loukinen in Lapland, Finland —seen through the eyes of grayling and those who fish it. It contemplates loss, resilience, and the evolving bond between people, rivers, and culture across the circumpolar North.
The River Speaks in Us
The River Speaks in Us (12 min) is both an independent artwork and a lyrical and expressive documentary of the collective creation of Meän vapaa Ounas – A Memorial to the Free Flowing River. The work illuminates the intimate relationship between a riverside village and the river that has shaped its life, culture, and identity across generations. The river is not only a landscape but a teacher, guiding eco-cultural values and sustaining a sense of belonging.
The Sámi Starry Sky
The Sámi mythology of the starry sky as taught at the Teacher Education program at Nord University, Campus Nesna, Norway. Although the Sámi story of a cosmic hunt is closely connected to our way of life as Northerners, it is less well-known than Greek mythology. An authentic setting helped connect people and communities under our common starry sky. The myth about the Sámi starry sky is deeply rooted in our northern way of life.
Min Muorra ja Máinnasiid Vuovdi – Our Tree and the Forest of Stories
The video tells the story of the creation of a large, community-based public artwork. The community from the multiethnic Vuohčču (Vuotso) village transformed the school’s black asphalt yard into a vibrant mural, a forest expressing local ecocultural values. In the centre of the schoolyard, the pupils painted the big, colourful shadow of an old pine tree. This initiative is part of the Rievdan project, which continues the development work of the New Genre Arctic Art Education / Nomadic Hub of AAE.
Beloved Place – Ráhkis báiki II
This video highlights new genre Arctic art education practices, showing how the installation Beloved Place – Ráhkis báiki was co-created with local communities in Kárášjohka (Norway) and Vuohčču (Finland). The installation includes three elements: lávvu poles, workshop-created postcards, and a soundscape. It premiered in Rovaniemi at the “Made Visible” exhibition by the University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art and Design (Aug 22 – Oct 12).
Spectrum of Arctic Art Education – Clips of Art Projects Through the Year
AAE operates in intra-action with the seasonal cycles, highlighting the intertwining of nature and culture. From an artistic perspective, it explores ecocultural becoming through the material, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of ecosystems and other nature-based practices that shape Northern and Arctic ways of life, forming the core of AAE.