8
Creativity and Crisis
In this chapter, anthropologist Tinna Grétarsdóttir and her artist colleagues Ásmundur Ásmundsson and Hannes Lárusson look into the neoliberalization of culture and nation branding. They build on previous research each of them had carried out individually and collaboratively— research that eventually brought them together curating the exhibition Koddu, or Come Along, exhibiting more than forty artists at the Living Art Museum and the Alliance House.
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Political changes occurring in Iceland since the 1990s have sailed in on a tidal wave of market rationality, neoliberal enterprise culture, and shifting fields of governing and social engineering.1 The small island nation turned into a veritable microcosm of the ethos of privatization that has become dominant over the last two decades in Euro-American societies. Iceland had high hopes of becoming more visible in the global competition for power, influence, investment, export, and tourism.
Other chapters in this volume have discussed the toolbox of Viking metaphors that neoliberalists used to promote their ideas. Based on the Icelandic term útrás, both the state and private sectors used words such as “incursion,” “go Viking,” and “occupation” to create a new national narrative and impose “new representations of the world” (Fairclough 2000, 147) on Icelanders, as evoked by the image in Figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1. The Viking Ship Arrives, by Einar Falur Ingólfsson. From Ásmundsson, Lárusson, and Grétarsdóttir 2011a, 101. Reprinted with permission.
The neoliberal shift in ethics and values that demanded a new mind-set of creative enterprise, entrepreneurial endeavors, and risk-taking were presented in Iceland not as breaks from tradition, as would be the case in many Asian nations (see Ong 2006), but as in line with the society’s historical, cultural, and natural heritage. Creativity and innovation were repetitive themes in public discourse during the acceleration of neoliberal enterprise culture and are cherished in the production of various images, such as that of Icelanders as free-spirited, innovative Vikings and entrepreneurs bursting with creativity in every sector—from art to business. Images of creativity based on so-called Icelandic heritage and, not least, on Iceland’s untamed nature were central to reinventing national narratives to manage the nation, harmonize the national with the international, and represent difference in the phase of forming a globalized, neoliberal nation-state. Language, images, and iconography were central not only to engineering and redefining the nation-project but also to making and presenting the Icelandic brand, which was given higher priority than ever before. The process of nation-branding and highly coordinated public- and private-sector image-making has become not only an instrument of power but also an “institution” of government, reworking people’s agency and their practices.
In this chapter we address the range of discourses, images, and technology used to regulate and shape individual activities (including artistic production) and to reform and direct the population to be enterprising and creative as appropriate to the neoliberal project and to “corporate nationalism” (Mackey 2002, 123). One of the conclusions in the report of the Special Investigating Commission established by the Icelandic Parliament in the wake of the economic meltdown was that Icelanders should be encouraged to develop more “realistic, responsible, and moderate identit[ies]” and to engage in critical thinking and media literacy in order to resist the hollow propaganda of marketing and branding masters (Árnason, Nordal, and Ástgeirsdóttir 2010, 195).
Icelandic society has become an interesting “laboratory,” bubbling with a combination of neoliberal rationality, economic meltdown, and societal transitions. We address drastic transformations in the field of cultural politics in Iceland, both prior to and after the economic meltdown, as we look at the neoliberalization of culture, including the arts, and reflect upon its subtle methods of governing.
Contemporary Iceland has seen a blurring of the boundaries between public, private, aesthetic, and entrepreneurial spheres that has given rise “to a new way to channel conduct and enable action” (Yúdice 1999, 18) and generated shifting values, ethics, and norms. This restructuring of government’s role and channeling of conduct “require new legitimation narratives for the arts and culture” (ibid.). David Harvey (2007) states that the acceleration of neoliberal reforms has been a form of “creative destruction,” modifying and even debilitating social institutions. These neoliberal transformations have affected the Icelandic art world. The Icelandic art world has attempted to legitimize itself using increasingly pragmatic, utilitarian descriptions of its outcomes, such as revenues, employment strategies, international networking, enhanced corporate image, nation-branding, and corporate and economic growth, to name but a few.
Art has always been involved with powerful agents of the state and the capitalist market, but it is the realignment of the public-private partnership in the neoliberal regime that has redefined the scope of, and discourse on, contemporary art (Wu 2002). Scholars have argued that this restructured/reframed space shaped by neoliberal rationality and values not only affects the content of artworks and the ways in which institutions operate within the art world, but also influences the “different meanings art takes on in the social milieu” (ibid., 269; see also Sholette 2011). Discourses of creativity and innovation are central to the neoliberal regime, reflected in its emphasis on the creative industries and creative class (see Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011). Advocates bid on investment in such creativity and the rising creative class to point out “solutions” for the current economic crisis; yet loss of autonomy has become a concern in terms of artwork and cultural policies, causing scholars to talk about “the end of cultural democracy” (Jacquermin 2005, 52), and a “contemporary crisis of voice” (Couldry 2010, 1). Artists have not only become prototypical icons of creativity in the neoliberal project; they have also become the prototype of immaterial labor—the role model in the Post-Fordian work environment (Hardt and Negri 2004; Gielen 2010). Moreover, as Pascal Gielen (2009, 12–13) argues, immaterial labor “does not mean that the material—in this case the work of art—simply vanished, but it became staged within a performance of ideas.” Reflecting upon the booming number of people identifying themselves as artists (also referred to as cultural workers) in the neoliberal moment, Gregory Sholette (2011, 117) suggests that artists have acquired increased social legitimacy within the neoliberal economic reforms as the “enterprise culture has so de-radicalized” them, that they have come to stand as a compromise, a kind of détente. Thus, instead of the “longstanding role of artist as a force of independent social criticism” (ibid.), artists are more like a part of the managerial class suited to solving sociocultural problems, soft versions of the technocrat and the bureaucrat.
Inspired by Iceland
Sociopolitical changes brought on by the rise of neoliberal enterprise culture have affected the arts, as they have affected other sectors of Icelandic society. In the process of entering the world stage (komast á kortið) and in creating reimagined, national narratives in accordance with the neoliberal project, Iceland saw a highly coordinated image-making and nation-branding campaign take shape in the late 1990s and early 2000s, whereby creativity became a mantra in motivating and representing Icelanders, Icelandic culture, economics, and nature.2 Artists and the image of untamed creativity have gained improved social status in this new order. Moreover, catchphrases in the language of the branding have increasingly been applied to artworks and artists: “Nordic Miracle” was used in the late 1990s to spotlight the creativity of the Nordic “periphery” and the rise of international interest in Nordic art (Ekroth 2007).
In collaboration with governing bodies, such as the state and marketing agents, administrators, entrepreneurs, artists, and other representatives of the creative industries have become an indispensable catalyst for redefining Icelandic culture as adventurous and innovative in accordance with marketing strategies carried out under the logo of the Icelandic brand. Artists and other representatives from the creative industries might be described as Iceland’s new “beauty queens”—icons of free spirit, originality, and innovation, all of which is in line with the branding of the all-inspiring, creative, and market-friendly Iceland. The synchronized, consistent, and coherent “Iceland” brand—projected internationally—provides the nation with a symbolic system of national paradigms, peculiarities, aesthetic distinctions, and taste. The brand thus becomes a kind of disciplinary institution, dictating the development, management, and streamlining of the Icelandic image as it is directed both outwardly at the larger world and inwardly at Icelanders themselves. Such dual focus is perhaps best reflected in Ímynd Íslands (The Image of Iceland), a report officially compiled by the Public Image Committee and directed by Svafa Grönfeldt, then a rector of Reykjavík University. Grönfeldt assembled the report for the Icelandic Prime Minister’s Office in 2008 to strengthen Iceland’s brand, image, and reputation. The findings of the published report are quite peculiar in that the Public Image Committee explains the process of branding with a model of an erupting hot spring. In other words, the Icelandic brand arises from “natural” Icelandic characteristics: a bubbling, erupting core that can be defined by the slogan “Power, Freedom, Peace.” The report states:
Powerful economic innovation, freedom of speech, security and freedom to act characterize the governmental system, the society and the economy. The untamed forces of nature are analogues to Icelanders’ wild and often bold and unpredictable behavior. Yet, these characteristics should not be intimidating, as they have been central to the life-struggle of the nation; they should be celebrated and used. (Forsætisráðuneytið 2008, 5)
The report thus echoes the illusions and the self-congratulatory discourse that was asserted with certainty in Iceland during the útrás. One could hear maxims such as “Iceland, best in the world” even used by the director of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce at its business convention in February of 2007.3 In addition to ministers and business people, one of the main members introduced at the convention was an expert and international advisor to various governments and cities in identity management and branding.
Efforts such as the “Image of Iceland” report, designed to pinpoint Icelandic strengths, relied on harnessing Icelandic confidence and projecting that confidence abroad. Any disconnect between Iceland’s self-image and its international reputation was meant to be properly remedied via marketing Iceland as a strong, coherent brand. By design, this brand, as it was presented in the report, was supposedly mapped out with public input. The Public Image Committee asserted that it was the result of focus groups and roundtable discussions. Such reliance on public input was meant to lend the report authenticity. The report states that successful branding rests on the “true” identity of the nation and of Icelanders, “which are true or ‘authentic’ and have deep roots” (Forsætisráðuneytið 2008, 24). Yet the process demonstrates the manipulation of the “participating public” in brand-making. The report is characterized by endless clichés and myths about Iceland, which, as ever, are described by creativity, freedom, power, adaptability, and endurance, qualities that support the belief that the nation can “perform the impossible” (ibid., 5).
All of these pre-crisis assurances of Iceland’s superiority show how Iceland’s self-image was based on illusion, which ironically rendered Iceland unable to fully apprehend the unbridgeable gap between image and reality. Yet nation-branding did not slow down after the meltdown; instead, it was rolled into a politics of crisis—not just economic but environmental—due to the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull. Again, Icelanders were encouraged to participate directly in creating the brand by becoming involved in the promotion of Iceland and by disseminating Icelandic imagery to friends and business partners abroad through greetings and an invitation to Iceland. A central example of such marketing strategies is the recent Inspired by Iceland video—part of “The nation invites you home” campaign—which was made for Promote Iceland (Íslandsstofa), an institution run jointly by the government and the private sector in order to promote Iceland abroad as a destination for tourism and investors.4 The minister of finance urged Icelanders to circulate the video across Iceland’s borders and advocated that directors and managers give their employees leeway to circulate the video at work (“Þjóðarátakið ‘Þjóðin býður heim’” 2010). Telecommunications did not charge for overseas phone calls during one whole weekend so that the nation could call their friends and clients overseas and “invite them home.” The campaign also produced videos of Icelanders volunteering to provide tourists with a personal experience by opening their homes and playing music, talking to them about knitting, cooking pancakes for them, etc.
The marketing effort seems to be one of the few things that created a sense of solidarity among the nation in the wake of the collapse and volcanic eruption. Icelanders have adopted the inseparable interests of the state and the market as their own with what appears to be spontaneous enthusiasm, and these interests have become an integral part of their own identities, as evidenced by the volume of web traffic to the video Inspired by Iceland. Those who refuse to protect the brand are often attacked from within—accused of undermining a small nation’s reasonable options for self-reliance and self-sufficiency. As it turns out, Icelanders have proven themselves quite receptive to this virtual reality. Perhaps in times of uncertainty and diffusion, the iconic image of Iceland gives them a break from their sobering and painful resentment after the party ended and the bubble popped (see also Ellenberger 2010).
In accordance with these marketing strategies, artists have become central catalysts for redefining and remodeling the culture of Iceland as one of adventure and innovation. The arts are subordinated to rational, technocratic management techniques that arguably serve the select interests of the powers that be. Artists are addressed as suitable agents expected to create, perform, and promote appropriate “success stories” of Icelanders on the global stage. Such possibilities are advocated in the “Image of Iceland” report, which shows how contemporary Icelandic artists, as representatives of the creative industry, can be useful in the business of branding, design, and image enhancement.
The instrumentalization of artists and art for an economic purpose is the theme of an article by Halldór J. Kristjánsson, the director of Landsbankinn (which was a key patron of Icelandic culture); he elaborated on the fusion of branding, art, and enterprise culture in the following statement:
. . . culture can, as everyone knows, be a pure source for business with its inspired thinking and innovation . . . With increased globalization of the workforce, the promotion of Icelandic culture becomes a more important factor in strengthening business relations. For a company that builds on trust and security, cultural issues are one of the best marketing venues available. (Kristjánsson 2005, 8)
In the early 2000s, the expansion of private sponsorship was welcomed by the government and had a significant effect on policy regarding the funding of art and culture. The presence of executives from corporations and financial institutions, referred to as Vikings of enterprise, became pervasive in the cultural milieu. This “partnership” of art and corporate culture, generally addressed as corporate social responsibility (CSR), did not, in general, result in the establishment of autonomous nonprofit, art-supporting organizations run with professional independent boards. Instead, it took a pragmatic direction by making the private funds established to support contemporary art in Iceland more or less controlled by their donors, the banks and corporations.
Another example of the co-option of artists by enterprise culture can be found in the motives of the Future Group of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce (Framtíðarhópur Viðskiptaráðs Íslands). The chamber invited the visual artist Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson to a lunch meeting where Iceland’s future was on the agenda. Subsequently, to his surprise, both his name and his portrait appeared prominently in the report Ísland 2015 (Viðskiptaráð Íslands 2006). He was featured alongside other business leaders and representatives from the creative industry as a member of the Future Group and as one of the authors of the report. Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson rejected being an author of the report.
Iceland = Nature = Creativity = Art
During marketing campaigns abroad, artists have been invited by the public and private partnership to participate in “lobby exhibitions,” as one artist has put it, to promote the nation’s characteristics, spicing up Iceland’s idiosyncrasies in order to promote a distinction based on nationality. Promoting national stereotypes has indeed been a part of the national project at home, a necessary “pep talk” in a small nation’s alleged fight for independence. During these campaigns, artists are used as mules to pull the marketing wagon, to enter communities across borders and catch foreign attention at critical moments in international politics and business. Often their work is sought by government and business in a desperate measure to bolster the “Iceland” brand.
One such exhibition created turmoil within the art community—the panoramic exhibition From Another Shore: Recent Icelandic Art at the Scandinavia House in New York in 2008. The exhibition, featuring a selection of the National Gallery of Iceland’s permanent collection, is often referred to as an example of a partnership of art, international politics, and business. The exhibition was sponsored by Alcoa’s community fund (as explicitly stated on Alcoa’s website) and by the Icelandic government,5 and was held in connection with Iceland’s campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council. It was very much in sync with the aforementioned “Image of Iceland” report. The exhibition highlighted the unique qualities of Icelandic art—and thus “Icelandicness” in general. Specifically, the exhibition tapped into the clichéd equation: Iceland = nature. What differentiates Icelandic artists and their work from others, as stated by the director of the National Gallery of Iceland in the exhibition press release, “is the[ir] attitude . . . to nature, which is the basis of their art whether it is conspicuous or not” (Scandinavia House 2008, n.p.). This cliché fits perfectly with Iceland’s branding campaign in which Icelandic originality and entrepreneurship are not only comparable to the forces of nature but can also be traced back to nature, taking root in the natural world and finding expression in the individual Icelander.
The concept of nature in Iceland has become a master narrative in Icelandic contemporary cultural politics. While nature has always had a prominent place in the eighteenth-century romantic nationalist movement in Europe, influenced by the German philosophers Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, it seems like nature has replaced the Icelandic language as the fundamental symbol of national pride, unity, and difference (Hálfdanarson 1999, 328). Central to the narratives of nature found in the contemporary cultural politics is the conflation of art, nature, and ethnicity that dominates discussions and presentations on Icelandic art. Whether we speak of it as a serious factor in the development of Iceland as a nation, or tongue in cheek, nature is considered a major player in the shaping of not only the Icelandic physique but also the Icelandic character. Nature is seen as fueling Icelanders’ creativity, which contains a primal energy that correlates to human qualities such as wildness, honesty, innocence, and so forth. These qualities lie at the heart of Christian Schön’s description of Icelandic art. According to Schön, a former director of the Icelandic Art Center, “Icelandic art has kept a bit of its creative virginity, which most other European societies had already lost centuries ago. That is my explanation of what makes Icelandic art so special” (quoted in Canarezza and Coro 2010, 182).
According to one master of Iceland’s branding program, Iceland Naturally, the program has been quite successful because people are increasingly perceiving Iceland and Icelandic products in line with the slogan “Pure, natural, and unspoiled.” On the side of the arts, Icelandic music is seen to be distinctive on the world stage. At Iceland’s pavilion website at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China, for example, Icelandic musicians were presented as inspired by nature, and Icelandic music was presented as pure and profound. Ironically, while Icelanders are promoting the “pure” and “unspoiled” nature of the island, they are simultaneously turning it into one of the world’s greatest aluminum smelting sites.
Meanwhile, many Icelandic artists find themselves tied down, or even haunted, by this reduction of Icelandic art to the simplistic conflation of art with ethnicity and the land/nature. This reduction is so prevalent that it has even become a recurrent feature of foreign analyses 6
A “Win-Win” Situation?
Many artists criticize that when funds are invested in promoting art abroad, as in so-called lobby exhibitions jointly organized by the public and private sectors such as Promote Iceland (Íslandsstofa), these projects are often propped up far removed from the aesthetic and critical context of the art world. In Promote Iceland’s case, such exhibitions are evaluated based on its potential to strengthen Iceland’s good image and reputation, promote tourism, investment, and trade, and create other synergistic opportunities. For example, Promote Iceland criticized an ambitious exhibition at Fargfabriken Norr in Östersund, Sweden, titled The Nordic Third World Country? Icelandic Art in Times of Crisis (Engqvist and Englund 2010), because it did not portray the “right” image of Iceland. In a personal communication with one of the authors of this chapter, the director of Promote Iceland shared his antipathy toward the exhibition title and detailed his frustrations with the exhibition catalogue, which included critical texts on Iceland. He said Promote Iceland would never have supported it had he known the context of the exhibition. As it turned out, the exhibition had received some dried fish for the opening from Promote Iceland.
As the artist Ásmundsson once put it, both public and private interests will valorize artwork that “in the right context [can] transform into a volcano, declaration of support, an advertisement or something else” (Ásmundsson 2008, 8). The result of such contractual partnerships and anticipated results have little to do with artistic values and strategies, cultivating dialogue, or critical assessments. When it comes to measuring the profit of the partnership, significant achievements are measured quantitatively in terms of marketing value.
The partnerships are presented as “win-win” situations in which everyone benefits, a mantra often repeated in the art world. The morality of the system is reflected in the trickle-down effects of the pyramid, which is “enterprise culture’s version of ‘egalitarianism’” (Heelas and Morris 1992, 21). Artists are generally closer to the bottom of the pyramid, often seen as “cheap labor.” While the creative industries are supposedly a growing sector, artists work in an insecure environment. They are and have to be constantly flexible—a flexibility reflected in their physical and mental mobility; irregular working hours; ability to adjust to multiple jobs, and limited job protection. They often inhabit a space of uncertainty, without access to benefits, and are accustomed to taking on less creative, temporary jobs to fund their own creative projects and unpaid hours (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011; Lorey 2011).
In the neoliberal moment, this description of artists’ flexibility and precariousness is becoming the norm for many workers. Isabell Lorey (2006) suggests that the normalization of precarious conditions, such as those that artists usually endure, is a neoliberal instrument of governance. Or, as Lorey further argues,
creative workers . . . are subjects so easily exploited; they seem able to tolerate their living and working conditions with infinite patience because of the belief in their own freedoms and autonomies, and because of the fantasies of self-realization. In a neoliberal context, they are so exploitable that, now, it is no longer just the state that presents them as role models for new modes of living and working. (Lorey 2011, 87)
Post-Fordist work ethics and the instability of artists’ working conditions have contributed to the silencing of labor exploitation by neoliberal administrative bodies. Thus focusing on “the politics of the field of art as a place of work” (Steyerl 2012, 93) as well as systemic exploitation and self-exploitation is essential when discussing the precarious conditions of artists, their anticipated conformity, the marginalization of critical cultural production, and what modes of subjectification arise in these times of economic uncertainty.
In times of austerity, post-2008 Iceland has witnessed intensification of the valorization of art as predominantly an instrumental labor; an economic stimulant where all types of artistic productions are systematically united under the rubric of the “industry” and associated first and foremost with generating places for tourism, competitions, revenues, spin-offs, and measureable quantities. It is evident that the discourse of creative industries (which penetrates at regional and supranational levels of cultural policies), has been rigidly adopted at governmental level in Iceland. In accord with the government and Promote Iceland, a collaborative platform of the arts was established in 2009 and transformed, in 2011, into the Association of the Creative Industries. One outcome of this structure is the publication “Towards Creative Iceland: building local, going global” which maps the economic scale of those “creative industries” (Sigurðardóttir and Young 2011). The report provides Icelandic artists the ability to point out in a scientific, standardized, and acceptable language, the viability of the cultural sector. It endows them with a set of numbers, graphs and charts, that they can use when members of Parliament or the public voice frustration at endowments given to the arts sector by the state. Interestingly, after the publication of the aforementioned economic report Iceland’s minister of industry, energy and tourism was so thrilled that she proclaimed in a speech, “We are finally starting to understand the importance and the possibilities of the creative industries” (Júlíusdóttir 2011). Shifts toward the development of the creative industries in Iceland have taken place almost uncritically. Legitimating narratives that link art with aesthetic strategies, critical creativity, humanist values, and social dissent seem to be considered odd, disruptive, or irrelevant in the present discourse. Post-economic meltdown, art as part of the creative industry is now subject to performance-oriented, statistically measureable, pragmatic results—results that render its successes indisputably valid.
Yet a few are beginning to speak up. Incorporating nonprofit sectors (such as alternative artist-led spaces) and commercial sectors (such as video gaming, music, etc.) within the framework of the creative industries, despite their different needs and intended agency, runs the risk of uneven developments and declines to consider the benefits of the nonprofit sector as marketing forces become too powerful (Hesmondhalgh 2012). The obvious risk surfacing is that the development of creative industries fails to recognize the value of artistic productions that are “difficult,” ones that do not support the demands of the market, profit, or the promotion of the good image.
Conclusion
In Iceland we are seeing a boom in the number of people identifying themselves as artists or, if you will, “cultural workers,” in the neoliberal moment. The artist, the adaptable and mobile entrepreneur, is indeed celebrated as the agent of creative solutions and dynamic nation branding. In the wake of neoliberal restructuring in Iceland, we have witnessed the neoliberalization of art and culture, which is increasingly associated with competitiveness and insecurity among creative workers, as well as with performance-oriented, statistically measureable results. In the meantime, the increased integration of cultural policy with economic wealth in art/culture legitimation narratives in the system has become a concern to many artists. While this is the reality within the Icelandic art scene, it remains unspoken as utilitarian expressions of legitimation have become so pervasive that “even ‘progressives’ have found a way of making peace with it” (Yúdice 1999, 17).
Raising questions regarding “the destiny of the power of creation” (Rolnik 2011, 23), we enter into a space where we can critique creativity and at the same time begin to address the disquieting issue of alternative, subversive and dissident creative practices and from where they can arise. Perhaps it is more important now then ever to dwell on how it is possible to creatively develop spaces where one is not at work in the neoliberal labor system—in the structured, channeled, and supervised relations and “communication” of branding—and how it is possible to dismantle spaces that prevent one from being active citizens.
Notes
1. The following discussion is largely based on writings that we published in the catalogue Koddu (Ásmundsson, Lárusson, and Grétarsdóttir 2011a) and the paper “The Cultural Worker,” presented at the conference Þjóðarspegill on October 28, 2011, at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík (Ásmundsson, Lárusson, and Grétarsdóttir 2011b) We want to thank EDDA—Center of Excellence for supporting our research. Return to text.
2. One of the first nation-branding programs, Iceland Naturally, was established in 1999 to promote Iceland in North America. The slogan “Pure, Natural, Unspoiled,” created with the assistance of the US public relations firm FleishmanHillard, has been used to describe the main qualities of the Icelandic “brand.” Return to text.
3. For a summary of the presentation by Halla Tómasdóttir, director of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce, see “Hvernig verður Ísland best í heimi?” http://vi.is/malef nastarf/frettir/536/. A link to her slide show, “Ísland, Best í Heimi!” (Iceland, Best in the World!), appears at the bottom of the web page. Return to text.
4. The video used in the campaign is accompanied by the song “Jungle Drum” by Emilina Torrini. Inspired by Iceland is available at http://vimeo.com/12236680. Return to text.
5. The exhibition was supported mainly by the Alcoa Foundation and the Icelandic government. Additional support was provided by Baugur Group; Icelandair Cargo; Blue Lagoon; Iceland Naturally; and the Icelandic Cultural Fund of The American-Scandinavian Foundation (see Alcoa website http://www.alcoa.com/iceland/en/news /whats_new/2008/2008_05_scandinavian.asp). Return to text.
6. A New York Times review of two Icelandic exhibitions held in New York, From Another Shore: Recent Icelandic Art and It’s Not Your Fault: Art from Iceland, was entitled “Inspired by Vikings and Volcanoes.” Reviewer Karen Rosenberg identified a “friction between global contemporary art and an island nation’s folk traditions, between urban hives and otherworldly landscapes. . . .” She goes on to ask, “What, then, makes their work recognizably Icelandic? In some cases, a yearning for the volcanic and glacial landscape of home; in others, an interest in local folklore” (Rosenberg 2008). Echoing Rosenberg’s review, Gregory Volk also sees nature as central to Icelandic art. In an article published in Art in America, Volk states that “eventually the country itself comes to figure in their work: as a physical locus, as a trove of images and materials, or—more mysteriously for outsiders—as comprehensive forces with which one is perpetually in dialogue” (Volk 2000, 40). Return to text.