SO... WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It’s a weird feeling. Yesterday I arrived to Seydisfjordur and today I’m leaving. Or at least, that is how it feels. The three months I have spend here in this little town at the edge of the world, seem to have slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the ground. Yet it feels like I’ve been here for a year.

So much have altered inside of me and it’s this strange sensation of feeling the same as I arrived, and yet it feels like something changed. Something vital. On Saturday the course will come to its end, and people will slowly start returning to their respective countries.

It’s been three wild months here at the LungA School in Seydisfjordur. I’ve experienced the most incredible art crawling out of the fingers of my fellow students, and I’ve seen the most impossible ideas brought to life. This weekend we had our final exhibition, which was the climax following two intense weeks, where everybody was set free to do their own projects.

The exhibition, which took place over the course of two days, was an explosion of creativity. It was everything from interactive performances, concerts, video installations, photography and sound pieces.

When I was walking around the different spaces in which the exhibition took place, I found myself being constantly amazed and stunned by the variety of completely different mind-sets and the sublime things they had created.

I saw my roommate Katla sitting vulnerable on a stage only illuminated by a spotlight, reading a poem with the sound of the song she had been humming for the last months, playing softly in the background. Seeing her sitting there, strong as a statue, with soft eyes gazing into an invisible horizon, brought tears to my eyes.

I saw Sammy throwing her naked body against a painting she made, while she screamed and laughed against the dark sky.

I found myself hanging from the ceiling in the old factory, getting ready to descend. And waiting for me on the ground was a sculpture of a woman, covered by contact microphones and ready to be played. When I was dangling in the air, I found myself thinking of the day I arrived. All I had in my head was photography. All the photos I was going to take. And suddenly there I was, hanging in the air, with an observing audience beneath me. It seemed somehow unreal. I think that is a very general thing when it comes to the LungA School; you arrive with some small idea of what you’re going to do with your time in Seydisfjordur and then all of a sudden you find yourself miles away from your comfort zone.

Describing LungA is almost impossible, but one word that seems to be fitting is wild. LungA is a wild ride, a whirlwind that swirls you around, until you don’t recognise up from down. It’s like being inside a protective womb, packed between mountains and water. And now we get reborn into the world outside. And then where do we go?

We’ve been living in constant symbioses with our surroundings and each other, feeding of each other’s minds and receiving constant inspiration through conversations. And now we have to leave. The whirlwind is going to spit us out all around the globe, and hopefully we will be able to bring all the valuable tools we’ve received here with us.

All photos by Emma Egede.

Do, don’t think. Make for the sake of making. Dwell in the process and get lost, instead of putting the focus on a final piece. I’m leaving now, but I don’t think that Seydisfjordur will ever leave me. Here I learned that if you are able to set your mind free, creation has no limitations.