at Markomeannu

School for Dissent is my workshop group, we meet now and then, and was asked to be Markomeannus Festival Artist 2010. Joar Nango, Sille Storihle and myself decided to bulid a structure at the festival, which is arranger at an outdoor museum site, inbetween a collection of local Sámi structures.
The structure we wanted to add, should be a modified/re-built already existing structure, from the village. A modern Sámi structure, without being typical Sámi, or recognized as Sámi, just being Sámi.
And then we would change it into something else, which is so typical for the Sámi areas. All over you’ll find answers to peoples needs that hasen’t been answered by going to the local shop, but improvized at the spot. Garages made by busses, airplanes or just made by whatever leftovers you had at hand, and with the knowledge of what is needed, really needed, to build a well functioning garage. Or maybe a structure to dry meat, or fishing nets, or an answer to another need that is spesific to you and your way of living.
When you make yourself, you also repair and change yourself.

So, we decided to take any available small building and build a sauna in three days. I was very much against the idea og building a sauna, it is done again and again as art in the northern areas, often at festivals, so it is well used and a bit banal, but planning time was short and in the end we decided to go for the sauna.

The building we got hold of (by putting up notes in the local shop) was an old garage built by the late John Nyheim, school teacher and Sámi culture/language pioneer. It got moved up to the museum at Sunday night, Monday morning we started the dynamic repair. The goal was to buid a sauna that would last for the festival and would keep around 70-80 degrees Celcius. ( we got 85). Most of the material was either panel from the garage or bits and pieces that already was lying around because of the ongoing preparations and work of the festival. The stove, pipe and some of the panel was new, when it was discovered that most of the available on site materials were to full of glue and chemicals for the sauna.