Stein Henningsen

32nd dokumentART – European Film Festival 2026
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MY WORLD - is in the competition

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From October 6 to 11, 2026, the 32nd dokumentART invites you to discover European documentary films and engage in conversation with one another. For over 30 years, the festival has been known for its carefully curated programs, powerful cinematic voices, and a personal atmosphere.

The festival will present 70 films across various sections. For the European Competition, a total of 50 films from 21 countries were selected from approximately 1,000 submissions. Organized into ten thematic programs, these films explore identity, memory, community, solidarity, and the big questions of our time.

THERE IS NO OUTSIDE

PROYECTOR 2026 ・ HYPER HOUSE

Opening: 12 September 2026 (19:30)

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Curated by: Mario Gutiérrez Cru and Natalia Colina
Artists: Stein Henningsen (Norway), Rui Soares Costa (Portugal) & André Gonçalves (Portugal), Ilaria Di Carlo (Italy), Ángel Biyanueba (Spain), Chus García-Fraile (Spain), HeeSue Kwon (South Korea) and Alan Kwan (China)

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Looking is never a matter of remaining outside. The works brought together in There Is No Outside begin from different places — landscape, surveillance, war, the machine, the body — yet they share the same suspicion: that the distance between the observer and what is observed is far less stable than we believe. In the first movement, the image turns crisis into landscape and forces us to ask from where we are contemplating it. In the second, that distance is definitively broken, and the viewer enters the apparatus itself.

“When it reaches the city, / no harbour will shelter it,” wrote Mário Cesariny in O navio de espelhos. Perhaps this programme begins there: with an impossible ship, covered in reflections, suspended above the water, waiting for a slowly rising tide. There is no catastrophe yet. That is precisely what is unsettling. Contemporary catastrophe almost never bursts through the door; it tends to arrive as a period of waiting, as a beautiful image, as a repetition we prefer not to fully understand.
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The works gathered here inhabit that interval between signal and disaster, between beauty and its reverse, between looking and being looked at. In Stein Henningsen’s work, a man dressed in a dark suit furiously strikes the ice on the drifting ice floe he is standing on.

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The sea is no longer simply the sea. The sky is no longer simply the sky. Fire is no longer simply celebration. Landscape is no longer simply landscape. Every image is permeated by a suspicion: are we looking at a warning or a spectacle? A reflection or a threat? A celebration or a domesticated form of violence? Here, crisis does not appear as some distant future, but as a condition already embedded in our way of seeing.
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There is something almost comic — if it were not so serious — about that man striking the ice that supports him: a small climatic Sisyphus in a suit, determined to negotiate with physics by means of a sledgehammer.

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From the text by: Mario Gutiérrez Cru

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The video MY WORLD received the 1st Acquisition Prize awarded by the jury, and is now part of the Hertzog da Silva Collection.

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BANGKOK - PHATTHALUNG - NANODE - TAMODE - TALOY NOI

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I took part in BLURBORDERS 2026 International performance art eXchange from August 5-19. This is the performance made for Taloy Noi, the wetlands in the south of Thailand. The performance is called Intimate Distance which was the theme of the festival.

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I started the performance by walking into my space with a bucket filled with ice cubes. When in my spot I put the bucket down and took my time transferring some ice cubes into another metallic container which had small holes. I lifted the smaller dripping container with ice to the top of my head. The water was dripping ice cold from my head and down to my upper body.

After a while I lowered the dripping container and poured the ice back into the bucket. I then lit fire to the bucket which was once again filled with ice. I put my body to the ground and moved the burning bucket onto my chest. I held the bucket on my chest a while before I put it to the ground. Then I stood up and left the space.

Broken Water, a performance in a riverbed where the government want to make a concrete waterway for the water from the inland to the lake. Such an act will remove the natural riverbed with all its life.

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I am working with ice cubes, transparent plastic bags, a steel container, a rope, local money and a piece og wooden board.

Duration: 25 min

Working with 12 glasses, 3 liters of water, carbide, rope, hammer and one nail.
Duration: 20 minutes.
Photos: Apisak Ratchakwan.
Location: Nadode, Thailand.

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I am drawing a full circle in the ground. Then I place the glasses with the same distance between them on the circle. Walking against the clock I am filling the glasses with water before I go back to the center of the circle. I wait a bit before I go out to the glass placed where 11 is marked in a clock. I drink the glass of water and walk into the center again and place it in the center. I repeat this 11 times and all the glasses are now piled up on top of each other in the center of the circle. I have been drinking more than 1,5 liter of water. I now start pouring water over the pile. The pile of glasses falls just after the topp glass is filled and I continue poring the water until the second bottle is empty. I then light fire to the ground and leave the ground and glasses burning.

Performance in Bangkok Art Center (BACC), Inherited Future
Working with a block of ice 40 x 20 x 140 cm, black soil, local money and water.
Duration: 30 minutes

VEM – Video Art in Movement is an itinerant fruition experience of Iberian and international creations exploring environments of transition and passage. Every summer a van travels between Spain and Portugal exhibiting a programe of works by international video artists. 
Curatorial programe with  a historical perspective that its open-air attendance, on a summer night, is accessible and of interest to all audiences. The projections are held in small to medium scale environments, removing the works from the traditional exhibition spaces to take them to open public screening.
 
“It starts with images that interest me, or provoke me”
William Kentridge

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In VEM 2026, the visual experience unfolds from a van travelling between Spain and Portugal, transforming movement itself into a territory where the intimate, the political, the poetic and the environmental meet and come into tension. The selection brings together works that speak of perception and memory, of the frictions of everyday life, of the fragility of social structures and of the relationship between human beings and their surroundings, from domestic and urban spaces to natural, industrial and symbolic landscapes.

Live Performance

at the inauguration of my solo exhibition 'DISRUPTING SERENITY' at Vestfold Art Center, Tønsberg, Norway.
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Duration: 20 minutes - Working with soil, ice and fire

Solo exhibition at Vestfold Art Center.

Video - Performance - Photographs
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Videos: The Boat, No Footprints, My World
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Photos: Two photos from the Boat. Size: 150 x 100 cm

In 2026, Nordnorsken marks its 80th anniversary. Over eight decades, the exhibition has been one of the most important platforms for artists with connections to Northern Norway, and a key arena for the development and visibility of contemporary art in the region.

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The exhibition opens on 20 March 2026 at Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter in Svolvær and will be on view there until 24 May. Nordnorsken then continues as a touring exhibition to Senja Kunstforening, Terminal B / Pikene på Broen in Kirkenes, Rana Kunstforening, Alta Kunstforening, before concluding at Bodø Kunstforening.

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For this year’s edition, North Norwegian Art Centre received 287 individual applications, and the jury reviewed a total of 618 works. The result is a selection of 25 artists represented by 34 works.

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For the 2026 edition I got two VIDEO works accepted:

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Timeline I & My World

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This year’s jury consisted of Marianne Moe (Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts, Northern Norway), Simen Engen Larsen (Northern Norwegian Visual Artists), Annika Borg (Norwegian Visual Artists), and Adriana Alves (curator at North Norwegian Art Centre).

V Arctic Art Forum

The Climate House at Natural History Museum, Oslo, Norway
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Ina Otzko & Stein Henningsen will be presenting the short film: EYE IN THE SKY.

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EYE IN THE SKY is a different documentary, a poetic, political reflection on a shifting geopolitical landscape. The film unfolds across sound and vision to ask urgent questions:
What happens when industrial presence ends — and digital presence takes over?
What remains of sovereignty when decisions are made elsewhere, and enforced from above? And what kind of peace are we building in a world of constant surveillance?

As Norway’s last coal mine on Svalbard shuts down in June 2025, the film captures this moment of transition — from resource extraction to signal extraction.
“Svalbard is no longer a periphery,” the artists say. “It’s a strategic center. Power today is exercised not through flags and armies, but through infrastructure, observation, and access.”

EYE IN THE SKY invites viewers to look again — not just at Svalbard, but at the global systems of mapping, monitoring, and governance that shape our shared future.

Stein Henningsen puts a strong emphasis on intergenerational responsibility in his creative practice: as he claims, the world we have inherited now is shaped by the “result of choices made by our ancestors”, hence we also bear the same duty towards the future. He is interested in how to raise awareness of pressing social, political and especially environmental issues through his artworks. Living in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, his attention is directed to climate emergency, and his video works – that are based on performances – often thematize the disastrous consequences of our inattention to this looming catastrophe. The images we see are constructed with minimal visual elements, often just the infinite natural scenery and a lonely figure, nevertheless they are very efficient in making the observer start interpreting the many layers of the works, including questions about our position in the world, the reasons and implications of the difference in proportions of man and Nature, the diverse temporal perspectives, the rhythms and cycles of natural and human life, as well as, of course, the urgent need to find solutions to the constant destruction of our planet.

https://contemporaryidentities.com

SIOS promotes scientific innovation and sees cooperation across nations and disciplines as an important means to this end. By improving access to new and existing monitoring data, prioritising investment in new research infrastructure and strengthening collaboration, SIOS promotes innovative solutions to answering the big questions in Arctic Earth System Science. The SESS report is the main medium used to achieve this aim.
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'For the SESS rapport 2025 SIOS have been have been working together with the local artist organisation Artica Svalbard and a coordinator for ‘art cruises’ The Artctic Circle to find an artist that could accompany the science talks with their art. We landed on a local performance artist, Stein Henningsen, who has conducted many performances related to climate change and the Arctic. We have selected four of his videos which we think would pair nicely with the four chapters of the rapport.'
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The chosen wideos were: My World, Red Drum, Timeline II and No Footprints.
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The SESS report:
- is established as an authoritative source of information about the state of the environment in and around Svalbard;
- is an important tool to convey knowledge to stakeholders and the public;
- addresses the scientific community, as well as stakeholders and the public. This format ensures that there is synergy between the scientific investigations and the knowledge needed by society to sustainably develop and safeguard the Arctic environment;
- is the main driving force for the science-based development of the observing system and represents an opportunity for research groups to actively influence the prioritisation within SIOS.
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The report is an arena for open sharing of ideas and discussions on measures that should be taken to enable scientists to provide observations needed to gain a holistic view of the Earth System of Svalbard and the Arctic in general.
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Contributions to the SESS report are written by international and, preferably, multidisciplinary teams under the lead of researchers from SIOS member institutions. All chapters are peer-reviewed and subject to final approval by an editorial board. The editorial board consists of two senior researchers, one early career researcher and two representatives of the SIOS Knowledge Centre.
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The report summarises the state of current knowledge of key Earth System Science parameters and analyses how these parameters influence one another. It combines the long-term monitoring data that form the core of the observing system with innovative monitoring and research.

Imagine New Stories, Write New Rules

A curated group exhibition in the Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art in Lillestrøm, Norway from 17.01.2026 - 01.03.2026.
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I will be showing my video No Footprints

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Climate and the environment are among the most urgent issues of our time—questions we cannot afford to stop discussing, nor to stop acting upon.

The artists participating in the exhibition Imagine New Stories, Write New Rules approach the climate crisis through a wide range of interpretations and artistic strategies. Their works invite visitors on a journey that moves from the Amazon rainforest, through the tundra of Svalbard, and outward into space—offering speculative reflections on alternative ways of living and relating to the world.

Rather than advocating for sweeping transformations that may feel overwhelming on an individual level, the exhibition seeks to open spaces for shared reflection, dialogue, and engagement—grounded in each person’s own possibilities and responsibilities. Imagine New Stories, Write New Rules is the result of an open call with clearly defined parameters for both Nitja and the participating artists: no new productions, exclusive reuse of materials for the exhibition architecture, no air travel or air transport, among other sustainability-driven conditions.

ARTISTS:
Ida Blomdahl / Hilde Frantzen / Stein Henningsen Katja Høst / Cecilia de Jong / Søren Krag Maisen Pedersen / Geetanjali Prasad / Gitte Sætre / Qi Tan / Stig Marlon Weston / Io Sivertsen Thomas Østbye / Daniel Hygstedt Hansen / Paweł Stypuła

CURATORS:
Monica Holmen / Jessica Williams

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Interview:
Xiaoxiao Chen, Victor Muzet Herrström, Tanvi Ranjan, Alimo, Marina Pryiomova, Fabian Kindermann, Aurelia Karina, Yuelei Ma, Tetiana Tretiakova, Stein Henningsen, Karina Savina, Jens C. Gehring, Olga Burkard, Maria Bethania López, Pavel Kiselev, Natalie Dunham, Nadine Karl, Suzana Vulovic, Jill Sutherland, Manena Pomeroy, Cathryn Sofarnos, Yukang Tao, Nuno Alexandre, Fabio Adani.

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Featured:
Caro Mantke, Adrian Platkovsky

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Link to Curatory Magazine

Link to Kunstforum International

HENNINGSEN interviewed by ISA BICKMANN for KUNSTFORUM INTERNATIONAL in the December 25 /January 26 issue: FIRE WORKS, Art in Flames