First impressions its fucking cold and where are all the non-smokers?!!!! Everything I wear is soaked in cigarette stink. It’s really quite disgusting. It was actually after my first trip to Europe in 1998 that I completely gave up smoking due to the same kind of disgust. Once upon a time I said I would never travel anywhere that was colder than Chicago. It’s just not right to leave Chicago when it’s just warming up. But of course how often do I get to go to a remote place like The Faroe Islands – let alone share performance work with a completely different audience – everything paid for and then some! Second impressions: the weather is more unpredictable than Chicago; the Faroese love their sheep – meats and wools; mullet hairdos are still popular in Europe; I can’t really eat much of Faroese food – heavy carbs, lots of veal, and super creamy; a majority of the Asians you see in Scandinavia are adoptees; it never gets completely dark here.

Torshavn (pronounced Tors Hawn) is like a little New England town built on a giant series of grass covered rocks. Homes are colorful boxes with large windows built with corrugated metal rooftops. They look like “Lego” homes – many with grass grown on their roof. The Faroe Islands is a colony of Denmark and there are very few people who still talk about independence here. I was told that there was a time that people could not speak Faroese. Somehow the language survived as people secretly spoke it and taught it to their children. Now they are allowed to speak Faroese openly and use Faroese currency as well. What’s impressive about the Nordic Countries is that most people speak more than 2 languages – being their resident country language plus English and sometimes neighboring languages like Danish, German, Swedish, Finnish, etc.

Our time here was so short and full that I didn’t really gain a deep enough understanding of the culture. We arrived late night on Thursday (May 11) evening and had a difficult time finding food since places close down after 9-ish. Our hosts/curators found us some yummy veggie thin crust pizza – apparently the best pizza in town is found at a restaurant owned by an Iranian man. The Faroe Islands is also home to one of the most dangerous runways – apparently the runway is a little short so there have been numerous accidents. We didn’t know this coming in to the country.

The only Faroese word I picked up was “Skaal” which is something one shouts out when one wants to make a toast. Its like saying “cheers!” People here can drink and party – hard! Maybe it was just the artists I happen to be around – maybe we were all just trying to stay warm – maybe because the island life here is so boring. I didn’t pack warm clothes and ended up borrowing a down jacket from an Indonesian artist – tropical girl was more prepared than I was. Shame on me! The artists I rolled with gave the island a good dose of color and fierceness. I swear every time we ran into a person of color which was like all of 2 people they would look at us and have this strange curious expression of, “what are you doing here? Are you real?” The Faroe Islands has a total of 50,000 people with Torshavn numbering 16,000 people within the city.

The project I was invited to be part of is called “Rethinking Nordic Colonialism” which is a curated event in 5 parts that is hosted in 5 different cities within the Nordic countries over the course of 2006. What’s really powerful is that the curators wanted to have an international dialogue about living in post-colonial societies. The organizers not only wanted to bring attention to the marginalized voices of the Nordic country but also present powerful perspectives from performers and artists outside of the Nordic region. The goal was to show how history continues to structure the Nordic society today and how contemporary problems of intolerance, xenophobia and nationalism have their roots in this same history. So I was part of the spoken word series of performances on Saturday May 13 held at the Nordic House on The Faroe Islands. No one has ever heard of spoken word before on the Faroe Islands so I was happy to introduce the genre through my lens. All in all it was fabulous. I wasn’t nervous at all and just did my thing. I had a translator who translated the work simultaneously into Faroese in a headset

Thanks to the local Faroese band “200” – I realized that I’ve always had a special place in my heart for punk rock and I love rocking out to hard rock! I have a crush on the entire band ‘cuz they’re so damn political. The drummer gave me a copy of their CD and I had an interesting conversation with the lead vocalist about why he believed that the Faroese people are not in a post-colonial period ‘cuz they are still living as a colony. What’s so cool about this band is they rock hard – all in Faroese which apparently has never been done. The punk rock bands that come out of this island usually sing in English or Danish – 200 – was the first band to rock out in their native language and in a very political way. The band is not afraid to speak out about the Danish Empire, homophobia and Christian fundamentalism. 200 has an interesting sound that combines Elvis, the Ramones and everything anti-establishment! Oh and what’s so cool is that they rock out with a huge 12 feet tall rotating silver “fuck you” finger. (see picture below).

I was honored to share the evening with this local band along with NYC artist/activist Imani Henry, and fierce activists/artists Jane Jin Kaisen and Tobias Hubinette who through their work and research compared transnational adoption to a modern slave trade. Jane and Tobias are both Korean adoptees who’s ideas are a radical break from the usual dialogue regarding Scandinavia and international adoption. I was deeply moved by the details they provided in their accompanying installation project. My other favorite piece from the art exhibit was by local Faroese painter Rannva Holm Mortensen titled “Communication” – this painting was fiercely feminist, and full of images related to liberation, consumerism and violence. Her piece made me feel like she took one of my poems and made it come alive on her canvas.

Not sure if I’ll ever be back in the Faroe Islands but I was glad to have come and share my stories. I guess you can never really know what kind of impact you make. I know I was present and in the moment and gave pieces of myself and my stories without hesitation. Two young Faroese people did come up to me much later after the show – one was a teenage boy who is into rapping who told me he was very moved by my words and he wanted to keep practicing his own raps so he could sound as articulate one day. I took that as a compliment. He later showed me magic tricks he did with playing cards. The other is another young woman who didn’t have the words to express herself shortly after the performance so she wrote me a comment in my journal. Thanks Ditte for your words of support. It meant a lot!!!! I also connected with a Greenlandic artist – someone I consider to be an elder and doing very important work in documenting indigenous Greenlandic history through photography. By the way, the indigenous people of Greenland look Asian! I gave her a chapbook of my poems and hope we can stay connected despite the distance. All in all – I loved the people I connected with, was deeply moved by the breathtaking ecology of the Faroe Islands, and I know I’ll be back in this region again.

Thanks to Anna for coming out and helping with tech details for the show. And thanks to Tone Olaf Nielsen and Frederikke Hansen for inviting me to participate.

Now its on to Copenhagen and Paris for the week!!! Watch out for more subversive jumping action to happen!!! The world is in need of more local friendly activists – so says my friends from UFOlab!

View more of my pictures on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicshogun/sets/72057594136039409/