Reykjavik, Tórshavn, Tromsø, Boden, Luleå, Hyrynsalmi, Helsinki

Residents: Paulina Ascencio (Mexico), Marten Esko (Estonia), Alessandro Facente (Italy) Siân McIntyre (Australia), Vanina Saracino (Italy), Lea Vene (Croatia), Nina Wöhlk (Denmark)

Supported by Nordisk Kulturfond; HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Finland; Frame, Finland; The Mustarinda Association, Finland; IASPIS, Sweden; ArtNorth - Norrbotten Contemporary Art Development Center, Sweden.

Moving further away from the dominant capitals, our nomadic residency program: CPR 2018: Dimming the Northern Lights offered curators the chance to explore remote spaces and times. Our sixth Core Program visited a collection of art scenes with peculiar situations and addressed the complex subject of integration. Social integration stands for the act of incorporating individuals from different groups into a society as equals, while behavioral integration is when an individual stands in harmony with the environment. CPR 2018: Dimming the Northern Lights aimed to tackle these two sides of integration.

We will challenge ideas of social integration through the following questions: How do these distant, insular societies deal with integration? What is their relationship with their past? Are native communities fully integrated into the local art scene? How have small towns received and integrated the recent waves of refugees? To exam behavioral integration, we posed questions related to the individual and the environment: What are the local communities' relationships with nature? How do these progressive societies integrate the issues of mining, fossil fuel, oil exploitation and weapon exports, with their dedication to sustainability and persistent recycling?

These are all complex, yet impending questions that drove the group towards the main questions behind CPR 2018: Dimming the Northern Lights: Does integration really work? How are these two types of integration alive in the local art scenes? We attempted to answer these questions during the four weeks traveling through Reykjavik, Tórshavn, Tromsø, Bonde, Luleå, Hyrynsalmi, and Helsinki.