Shortly after 70 Icelandic artists and musicians invaded Berlin for the art fall (see LIST #4/2005) it was again Germany which offered the stage for another important Iceland focussed event: This time it was Cologne where the Festival with the at least for German ears strange because oldfashioned sounding title “Islandbilder” took place in November 2005.

The basic motivation for such kind of Festival was the will to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the German-Icelandic Society. The first idea was to realize a photo exhibition but at the end it turned out into a multi-cultural event with numerous participants in various venues. It definetely was an impressive success and hundreds of visitors enjoyed the shows, lectures, movies, discussions and concerts.

The organizers were obviously very much aware of the danger that such kind of Festival could easily turn into a cliché selling mega event. So the curators – Christiane Stahl und Matthias Wagner K – put emphasis on the variety of artistic expression and presented the shows in a very sensitive way. It was helpful that the Festival was split in different venues, although this might not have been originally intended. The small fashion and design exhibition with works by 15 designers was presented in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst right in the citycenter.

Very impressive because of its sensitive arrangement was the photo exhibition in the Forum für Fotografie, where the Icelandic photographers Magnús Ólafsson (with old photos from the beginning of the 20th century) and Ragnar Axelsson (Iceland today) were combined with the German Bauhaus photographer Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984) who brought a lot of interesting and beautiful pictures back from his several tour in Iceland.

The main place for the concerts was the multifunctional hall of the Stadtgarten where among others Mugison, Gus Gus and the Apparat organ quartett performed. An ideal place for chilling with Icelandic music.

The art exhibition with the chlichéd title “Northern lights – Myth and Melancoly” was mainly located in the C.A.T. (Cologne Artspace Contemporary) and presented 14 Icelandic artist – among these were Gabríela Friðriksdóttir with the videopieces she was presenting at the Venice Biennial last year and Finnbogi Pétursson who was showing besides a roaring series of tubes a second sound installation inside an old tower close to Cologne’s chocolate museum. In the context of a nation specific exhibition the strongest statement was probably the performance by Ósk Viljhálmsdóttir. In this she ironically criticised the German misty-eyed view on Iceland and the environmental policy of the Icelandic government at the same time. In red color she wrote on the pure white wall of the exhibitions space: “The Shitgermans love Shitland. They think the Shitlanders live in accordance with nature ...”

It is quite remarkable that the initiative and also the organisatorial and curatorial leadership for this festival on the Icelandic contemporary culture was basically in the hands of the Germans. This once more was an indicator for the special relationship between those two countries.