GRAC joins Nasjonaljubileet2030!

We are very happy (and quite proud!) to announce that GRAC has officially joined Nasjonaljubileet 2030, Norway's National Jubilee marking 1,000 years since the Battle of Stiklestad and the death of Olav Haraldsson in 1030.

But this is not simply a celebration of something that happened a thousand years ago. The jubilee invites us to reflect on how history has shaped the Norway we know today, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of society we want to shape for the future.

Questions of identity, belonging, community, heritage and renewal are at the heart of the jubilee. And as it turns out, these are questions we at GRAC are already rather obsessed with.

A perfect match for our residencies

At GRAC, we have a particular interest in what happens when artists and curators encounter a place they don't yet know.

Through our two annual residency programmes, Artist in Residence (AIR) and Curator in Residence (CIR), we invite artists and curators from Norway and abroad to explore Agder through its contemporary art scene, cultural heritage, landscapes, people and traditions.

We visit studios and workshops, meet artists and craftspeople, learn from local knowledge holders, explore historical sites and encounter practices that have been passed down through generations. And somewhere along the way, new ideas, relationships and artistic expressions begin to emerge.

We are especially interested in the space between heritage and contemporary expressions and renewal. And we don’t just mean br preserving traditions behind glass, but in discovering what happens when they encounter contemporary artistic practices, unfamiliar perspectives and entirely new questions.

This is why joining Nasjonaljubileet feels like such a natural way of joint forces, still holding the focus on our region Agder.

Towards 2030

From 2027 to 2030, we plan to connect our annual residencies to the themes of the National Jubilee:

• 2027: Belonging
• 2028: Stories of Norway
• 2029: Folk Traditions
• 2030: Community

These are to be seen as open invitations to explore, question, challenge and reinterpret.

What does it mean to belong somewhere? Who gets to tell the stories of a place? Which traditions do we carry forward, and which do we transform? And what can we learn about ourselves when we encounter a place through someone else's eyes?

In addition to the annual themes, Nasjonaljubileet 2030 has identified a series of overarching themes, known as Tusenårstema, which invite us to explore different aspects of Norway's history, identity and development across a thousand years. Three of them are particularly interesting:

• Music
• Food and drinks
• Arts and craftmanship

For GRAC, these offer yet another exciting point of departure for artistic exploration. They allow us to connect questions about Agder's cultural heritage and contemporary art to broader conversations about how societies evolve, how knowledge and traditions are passed on, and how our understanding of the past continues to change.

We believe contemporary art has a wonderful ability to make familiar things unfamiliar again. By connecting our residencies to the jubilee, we hope to bring new perspectives on Agder into a larger national conversation, while creating new connections between local knowledge and international artistic practices.

And something bigger is brewing for 2030...

Alongside our residency programmes, we have also begun exploring the possibility of a larger interdisciplinary artistic production for the jubilee year itself, tying the programs together. Together with the Symphony Orchestra and local sound artist Even Røstad, we are in the very early stages of developing a project inspired by Agder's history and knowledge.

Our ambition is to develop a contemporary artistic work that brings together historical research, music, sound and other artistic expressions, with the hope of presenting it at Stiklestad in 2030.

There is still a great deal to investigate, develop and figure out. Which, luckily, is exactly the kind of process we enjoy.

Ultimately, we hope to contribute something distinctly from Agder to this national celebration. Not by simply looking back at a thousand years of history, but by inviting artists, communities and knowledge holders to imagine what we might carry with us into the next thousand.