All events in the Winter Lights Festival are free to attend and the full schedule can be read in English here.

Reykjavík mayor Jón Gnarr will formally begin the festival at 19.30 with a short speech by Hallgrímskirkja before handing over to Marcos Zotes who will paint the cathedral in moving light themes inspired by the elements of water, fire, air and earth.

Dance, film, exhibitions, theatre, music and more will all compete for attention at a festival which truly has something for everyone – despite how cliché that phrase has become.

The festival also includes free access to many of Reykjavík’s swimming pools this Saturday evening and pool guests will be artistically stimulated all the while.

www.vetrarhatid.is

Franek Rozwadowski, the permanent representative of the International Monetary Fund in Iceland, has completely denied claims the the IMF asked Iceland to close cultural centres following the banking crash and the country’s subsequent international bailout.

The claims were made by Minister of Education and Culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir to the Alþingi parliament last Friday. Roswadowski this week responded with a press statement saying that the IMF was only ever interested in the overall size of Iceland’s budget deficit and not the individual components making it up.

“The cornerstone of the recovery plan was the main rule that the government was completely independent in how it intended to reach its goals to close the deficit; how taxation should be organised and where the cutbacks needed to be made,” Roswadowski said — adding that it is simply not true that the IMF recommended cutbacks to the government at any specific cultural institutions or even any individual sector of the national budget.

Summer events in Reykjavik draw hundreds of visitors every year to experience Iceland’s great atmosphere and cultural practices.

The Reykjavik Art Festival, taking place May 18th – June 3rd, is Iceland’s premier cultural festival bringing together the best in local and international theatre, dance, music and visual art. The programme offers a variety of curated exhibitions, concerts, dance, theatre, and opera performances across downtown Reykjavik.

The National Day of Iceland has been celebrated on June 17th since 1944. The festivities in Reykjavik include colourful parades, street theatre and music, sideshows, and dancing.

Hotel Odinsve is located just a few minutes walk away from downtown Reykjavik’s main shopping street, Laugavegur, where over 100 bars, restaurants and cafes are situated, alongside numerous boutiques and retailers.

All of its rooms have wooden floors, comfortable beds and high quality duvets and pillows from Kronborg of Denmark.  Each room includes a shower, minibar, complimentary coffee and tea, satellite TV, radio, telephone, and hair dryer.

The hotel holds a range of amenities for its guests, including a restaurant, a coffee shop, a café, a bar lounge, all located on-site – it also boasts free wireless Internet for its customers.

For more information regarding the hotel in downtown Reykjavik, visit http://www.hotelodinsve.is.

Café Teatret has used Breivik’s so-called ‘extremist manifesto’, published online shortly before he killed 77 people in Norway on 22nd July last year, as the inspiration for their drama Manifesto 2083.

The play, directed by Christian Lollike, will see the right-wing extremist’s views performed as a monologue, with Christian Lollike playing the lead role. The announcement has however attracted heavy criticism, as the car bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utøya Island still sits fresh in the minds of survivors and victims’ families six months on.

Entitled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’, Brievik’s manifesto praised Denmark for being “the only Scandinavian country with some spine left”, regarding the “ideological war” against Islam. Many felt that such comments referred to the right-wing Dansk Folkeparti’s (DF) attacks against multiculturalism.

However, Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of DF, was one of the first to speak out against the new production. Writing on her Facebook profile, she said, “I find it deeply embarrassing, distasteful and shameful. Personally, I would be ashamed to go in and see the show. [Breivik] can sit back and rub his hands together because he gets all the publicity he longs for.”

Also offended by the offering are some of the families and friends of Breivik’s many victims. Ragnar Eikeland, who lost his son at Utøya, said it is, “so offensive that I really have no words”.

“It will be an extra burden for [the victims’ families] to know that it will be performed while the court case is underway,” he told Norway’s NTB news bureau. “No-one should do something that spreads Breivik’s opinions.”

In a written submission to Politiken however, Lollike defended his artistic decision.

“Is it not precisely the task of art to help understand how something so terrible could happen?” he wrote. “Where do we go with our anger, our pain, our frustration and the big ‘why’? How could this happen? What kind of mindset and view of humanity has he filled his mind with, and where does it come from?

“Writers, journalists and analysts have sought to answer these questions based on the manifesto. They have a right to. Doesn’t theatre – based on Breivik’s manifesto and with the critical and analytical resources of the performing arts – have the right to examine these same questions?” Lollike wrote.

Hjálmar Ragnarsson, the head of the school, has now confirmed that the advertisements are a wind-up.

One course being taught after the new year mixes all second-year students from all courses together to work on a specific issue. “The goal is to study and discuss among themselves and take on some subject which they find interesting and exciting,” Hjálmar told Vísir.is.

One of the small working groups decided to try and find out what brings happiness to people’s lives. The group discovered from the reaction to their advertisements that H&M does indeed make Icelanders happy. “They found it really interesting to bring attention to what things can make people happy,” Hjálmar said.

He would not rule out that other pranks of this nature will happen in the future; but added that they are done in good humour.

Not everybody was so pleased, however. After Vísir.is reported on the seemingly-real signs saying that H&M was about to open its first store in Iceland, the website’s editors received an angry phone call claiming that the news could have a negative impact on Hagar’s share price. Hagar is Iceland’s biggest retail consortium and has recently been re-registered on the Reykjavík stock exchange.

(Photo: Vísir.is)

(Press release)

Luis E. Arreaga, the American ambassador to Iceland, signed a contract with Reykjavik Art Museum, the Icelandic Art Center and the Icelandic Academy of the Arts who are initiating a collaborative lecture program under the title TALK Lecture & Visitor Series. The program is intended to offer an ongoing platform for encounters with art professionals on an international level. Comprising visits by leading figures in the visual arts, this program initiative will bring to the Icelandic art community and to the public at large the burgeoning ideas and diverse practices that shape the dialogue within the international contemporary art scene. The American Embassy in Iceland is the main sponsor for TALK Series 2012.

Dorothe Kirsch Director of the Icelandic Art Center, US ambassador to Iceland, Luis E. Arreaga, Hafþór Yngvason Reykjavik Art Museum Director and Hulda Stefánsdóttir professor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

“The US Embassy is pleased to sponsor this program bringing together the American and Icelandic arts communities” said Ambassador Arreaga. “Art is a universal language and we can all learn from each other.”

TALK Transfers

Each series will have a thematic focus, where speakers offer a specific insight to the field. For spring 2012, under the title TALK Transfers, the series places its focus on topics such as work and ethics of the artist, his role and responsibility; and how he transfers roles with different intentions. Participants are Americans Eleanor Heartney, Helen Molesworth and Alanna Heiss, and America based Briton Claire Bishop.

First guest arriving in January
Eleanor Heartney is the first participant in the TALK Series. She will give a lecture on Thursday 26 January 8 p.m, on the topic of art and labour with reference to the exhibition of Santiago Sierra at Reykjavik Art Museum. Heartney is a Contributing Editor to Art in America and Artpress and has written extensively on contemporary art issues for such other publications as Artnews, Art and Auction, The New Art Examiner, the Washington Post and The New York Times. She received the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism in 1992.

Events will take place at Hafnarhús – Reykjavik Art Museum and are open to everyone, free of charge. Further information about the program can be found on the Reykjavik Art Museum website.

According to initial figures from BoxOffice.com Contraband took USD 24 million in its first weekend in cinemas; which is not far short of ISK 3 billion.

The film is an English-language remake of the Icelandic film Reykjavík-Rotterdam, which was directed by Óskar Jónasson and produced by and starring Baltasar Kormákur. Contraband stars Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale and was premièred in the USA on Friday, taking USD 8.7 million on its first day.

Contraband has received mixed reviews from critics; but that does not appear to have impacted upon ticket sales. Critics’ general opinion seems to be that it is good for a January thriller movie and keeps the viewer engaged; but that it is not especially memorable or original. According to BoxOffice.com, Contraband grossed USD 24 million over the weekend, beating number two film Beauty and the Beast by USD 2.5 million. The next highest grossing film of the weekend was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on USD 11.5 million.

According to the figures so far, Contraband has already covered its expected production costs of USD 25 million. But the film’s actual cost to produce was reportedly closer to USD 41 million. There are, however, great hopes that it will cover its costs very quickly, and much more besides, based on its excellent first weekend, Vísir.is reported.

According to later figures reported by RÚV the weekend gross figures for Contraband might be closer to USD 28 million and are an all-time record for Working Title Productions; bumping Notting Hill (1999) into second place.

The document released earlier this week by the Guggenheim Foundation proposes the south waterfront area of Katajanokka as the site for the facility. A feasibility study also said found that the museum would come at a cost of EUR 140 million and would attract some 500,000 visitors annually.

Helsinki deputy mayor Tuula Haatainen said in a statement, “By giving artists, designers and architects access to major international networks, and by promoting new types of conversations of the arts, a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki would offer global exposure and unprecedented opportunities to practitioners in the field of visual culture in Finland as well as in the Baltic and Nordic regions in general,” YLE reports.

An official decision regarding the construction of the museum is expected from the City of Helsinki and its city council within the next few weeks. If given the green light, additional approval would be needed from Guggenheim Foundation’s board.

The proposed facility is slated to be about 12,000 square-metres in size, with nearly 4,000 square-metres dedicated to exhibitions. Helsinki officials say that funding will come via a combination of private, corporate and public sources.

The Icelandic Sound Poetry Choir was established in 2003. It performs two to three times per year, and the choir has performed various works by Icelandic and foreign composers like Magnús Pálsson, Philip Corner, Eric Andersen, Kristinn G. Harðarson, Rúrí, Harpa Björnsdóttir, Ásta Ólafsdóttir, Eiríksína Ásgrímsdóttir, Áka Ásgeirsson, Magnea Ásmundsdóttir, Þorkell Atlason and Magnús Jensson.

The choir performed at the PPF Polipoetryfestival in Reykjavík 2006, it has performed twice at the Reykjavík Arts Festival and twice at the Sequences Art Festival.

Conductors have been from the beginning Snorri Sigfús Birgisson and Hörður Bragason. Hörður is now the main conductor.

The following works will be performed on Friday:

“Ekið úr bænum“ (for 4 voices).
By Kristinn G. Harðarson. Conductor Snorri Sigfús Birgisson. Premièred by the choir at the festival “Orðið tónlist” in Reykjavík Art Museum in 2005.

“Á strönd og sjó” (for 10 voices and a video).
By Kristinn G. Harðarson. Conductor Snorri Sigfús Birgisson. Premièred by the choir at the Living Art Museum in 2004.

“Samhverfun”
By Guðmundur Vignir Karlsson and Sigtryggur Baldursson, who also conducts.

Free admission.

Skúlagata 28, 101 Reykjavík.

In an interview with Stöð 2 television it was revealed that an important Game of Thrones character who did not die in the second book (called A Clash of Kings) will die in the second season of the television programme.

Icelandic media have been very interested in the Game of Thrones film shoot in their country; which is not surprising given the global phenomenon the series has become. After Stöð 2 aired its programme on the shoot, it quickly found its way onto the internet and interviews with producers were, unsurprisingly, in English. the videos quickly generated plenty of gossip; especially on the communications site Reddit.com. Game of Thrones fans are eagerly awaiting season two, which is currently being filmed in Iceland.

Some fans believe that Jeor Mormont will be the unexpected character to die; because that would eliminate the need to create Craster House as a film set. Yet others believe it will be Daenerys who will die; because that would simplify the production of the whole series.

Who will die has yet to be revealed, and it is still clear how serious the producers are about keeping secrets — and how much they are enjoying doing so. Keeping fans guessing is the best way to maintain interest, they believe. Snippets like those revealed to Icelandic television this week are part of the game.

Vísir.is photographs from the Game of Thrones film shoot can be seen by clicking here.