Selection of Island Connect artists is complicated because we have so many partners involved, and it is only now that the last participants have fallen into place. We have 3 sub-programmes this year – Artistic residency, Co-creation and Islander Focus.

 

 

For the Artistic Residency, actor/dancer Nanna Finding Koppel has been chosen together with her Italian partner Marco Colocci and will work on an exciting project about mermaids – for 2 weeks on Bornholm and 2 weeks on Tenerife. We also receive Sara Reyes an exciting choreographer from Tenerife.

 

 

The second call is called Co-creation and BIRCA is responsible for it this year, therefore we had previously selected the Danish participant Ilon Lodewijks, who will also facilitate the first residency on the journey. Together we have helped to select a participant from each of the other islands who will join us at BIRCA 17-23/6:

 

 

Charlotte Arrighi de Casanova/Corsica

Kristina Pongrac/Croatia

Emma Lohan/Ireland

Albert Herranz/Mallorca

Marta Pala/Sardinia

Héctor Gardez/Tenerife

 

 

In the third call, called Islander Focus, we have selected artist Christina Jonsson, who lives in Allinge on Bornholm. Christina is an exciting artist who has lived most of her life abroad but has now found a home on Bornholm. Christina works on themes of cows and farming from an ecofeminist perspective – you can find more about her here.

 

 

Islander Focus is a project where the network is reaching out to other islands in a study of the islands’ culture and identity, and for that we invite people other than performing artists. At BIRCA, we have worked to create a connection to the island of Saaramaa in Estonia, and we are happy to have succeeded this year in creating a kind of pop-up residency there. The residency on Saaramaa is organized by the Estonian artist Mari Männa, who grew up on the island. In addition to Christina, Roman-Sten Tõnissooo from Estonia and Cecilia Hernández Molano from Mallorca will participate – and they will also all come to Bornholm, where we will show the results of our exploration during Culture Week. Christina is also going to Corsica for 2 weeks.

 

 

You can find more information about all participants – also whose to all the other islands – on Island Connect’s website. The project is supported by Creative Europe.