Joar Nango and Ken Are Bongo
Post-Capitalist Architecture-TV ‘270° Version’, 2024

In their most recent work together, artist-architect Joar Nango and filmmaker Ken Are Bongo share an episode of the ongoing series Post-Capitalist Architecture-TV, featuring six episodes to date. As part of across, with, nearby, this work, which is hosted on Bergen School of Architecture’s uppermost floor, called ‘The Cathedral’, contributes to a wider exploration of visual culture and histories.

Inquiring into Indigenous architecture, land-based knowledge, and the politics of space, the series is conceived and filmed in relation to Sámi experiences and their formulation of visual compositions that exceed the constraints of perspectivalism (the philosophical idea that individual viewpoints shape knowledge). The episodes combine performance, non-scripted conversation, and landscape in a multi-sensory kaleidoscopic format. The artists’ methods incorporate collaborative research, improvisation, and travel, often drawing upon low-tech constructions and encounters in lived environments.

The episode on view explores nomadism: its meanings and pitfalls in relation to land rights, as well as questions of being ‘rooted’. It engages ideas of Indigenous internationalism, presenting a 270-degree view across 13 screens, placed in an open circular form that allows for constantly shifting and multiple perspectives. The temporary media architecture is shaped by ideas of mobility, reciprocity, and resistance as a way of proposing alternatives to dominant frameworks of urbanism, ownership, design. More than a documentary, this series is a practice: a method for producing architectural, visual, and cultural knowledge with others.

Joar Nango (b.1979, Alta) is a process-based artist and publisher working with sculpture, performance, and architecture. He belongs to the Indigenous peoples from Sápmi, the territory that the Sámi people lived in and cared for throughout history. An engagement with Indigenous people is integral to his methodology, learning local histories through interactions with artists, writers, and architects. Nango, who studied at Bergen School of Architecture for one semester, has participated in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada (2019–2020); the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019); Tensta Konsthall (2018); and documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017). In 2020, the artist presented a solo exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall. He also brought the Girjegumpi, the Sámi Architecture Library, to the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023). Joar Nango lives and works in Tromsø, Norway.

Ken Are Bongo (b. 1983, Guovdageaidnu) is a Sámi film director, cinematographer, and editor, who graduated from the Nordland Art and Film School in Kabelvåg. Since 2006, Bongo has been working in film and television. His practice is framed by a specialisation in indigenous storytelling and the artist has a deep connection to the Arctic climate that surrounds him. Bongo produced the short fictional film Wolf (2018), which premiered at the Reykjavík International Film Festival. As a cinematographer and (co-)director, he has worked on the short films Biegga savkala duoddariid duohken lea soames (The Wind Blows Behind the Mountains) (2007) and Ara Marumaru (2018), as well as TV miniseries Hvem ringer? (Who’s Calling?) (2020), documentary short Ealat (2021), the Cannes award-winning TV series Power Play (2024) and the Netflix feature film Stolen (2024).