Bergen Fringe Festival 2024 postponed indefinitely – artist Ori Lenkinski will drop out – NRK Vestland

Bergen Fringe Festival has received criticism for withdrawing the invitation to the artist Ori Lenkinski and her play because she lives in Israel.

After NRK contacted the organizer on Wednesday, it is clear that the board postponed this year’s festival indefinitely.

“We regret that such a principled decision affects individual artists and companies. We deeply apologize that the communication around this has been unfortunate, and could have been misunderstood. On the basis of the nature and extent of the case, we are taking the consequences of this, and have postponed this year’s festival indefinitely,” wrote a collective board in an e-mail to NRK.

The background is, among other things, the Israeli artist Ori Lenkinski, whom the festival decided to omit from the program this year.

Dagen mentioned the Ori Lenkinski case first.

Now they confirm to NRK that the whole festival has been canceled for the time being.

Sorry for the cancellation

The festival will be held for the first time in 2017.

To NRK, the management says that employees, artists and companies who will be affected by the decision.

The board writes that they “strongly distance themselves from all racism, anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, and discrimination of all kinds”.

– Due to Israel’s ongoing acts of war, we do not want to
program artists supported by the Israeli state for our festival, they write further.

Invited Israeli artist

The background is the criticism they have faced for uninviting the artist Ori Lenkinski, on the basis of her nationality.

She should have come to the international festival for performing arts to present the play “Birth Preparation Course” in June.

But on 8 April, the artist received an email from the organizer stating that they “feel it necessary to break all ties to Israel and the ongoing attack on the people of Palestine”.

“Only after sending the letter of intent did I realize where you live,” wrote festival director Maja B. Sundt at the start of the email.

Therefore, a unanimous board of Bergen Fringe Festival withdraws the invitation.

Referred to financial aid she does not receive

The artist herself, Ori Lenkinski (42), informs NRK that she has both Canadian and Israeli citizenship from birth. She has partly grown up in Canada and the USA, and has lived in Israel for the past 16 years.

On each side of her family there are both people who survived and who perished during the Holocaust. She is a trained dancer and has also worked a lot in the theater industry and some in the Israeli press as a journalist.

The performance “Birth Preparation Course” she should have shown in Norway is about preparing for a birth.

– It is not about the Gaza war, but is a means of conveying information that I feel is lacking in the public eye about the birth process and the female body, says Lenkinski to NRK.

She was actually supposed to have performed during last year’s Bergen Fringe Festival, but didn’t get the chance to travel anyway.

Then she got confirmation that she was also invited this year.

– I was fired up. I was so disappointed that I didn’t make it to Bergen last year, and I was really looking forward to visiting Norway and getting a taste of Norwegian theatre, says Lenkinski.

But then a counter message came from the festival.

Showed to residential address Israel

In the first e-mail, they showed where she lives.

In a later email, the festival organizer points out that Lenkinski is not a public critic of the Israeli “regime”, and that she receives financial support from the Israeli embassy.

Lenkinski has posted the e-mail correspondence with the festival director, which is in English, on his website.

The artist confirms to NRK that she sought support from the Israeli embassy, ​​but that she received nothing this year. Thus, she had to have received support from others, or cover the expenses herself, which she considered doing.

To a small extent, the festival covers travel and accommodation for artists.

Lenkinski also applied for support from the embassy last year, and could then have received a smaller sum, had she traveled.

She questions why such support should have anything to say, and points to the festival in an official letter last year allegedly encouraging the artist to seek financial support from exactly embassies and the like.

Gets criticism from several people

This causes many to react and ask questions about discrimination, cancellation and public support for the festival.

– Eg reacts strongly to someone who has been invited and has accepted, subsequently being canceled because she is from Israel, says Silje Hjemdal, Frp’s cultural policy spokesperson at the Storting, to NRK.

– This is very unfortunate at a time when anti-Semitism and hatred towards Israelis is increasing, adds Hjemdal.

Now she is asking Culture and Gender Equality Minister Lubna Jaffery (Ap) to get on track in the case, through a written question to the minister.

– As minister for equality and discrimination, she should say something about what she thinks: Is it okay to discriminate against someone on the basis of nationality, religion or ethnicity, asks Hjemdal.

Bergen municipality reacts

Culture council Reidar Digranes (Sp) tells Dagen that the wording in the refusal is “unfortunately worded”, and that the case is in the gray area when it comes to the guidelines for municipal support to cultural actors.

– When they justify with country of origin, it can remind more of discrimination, says Digranes to Dagen.

To NRK, the city council says he is happy that the festival board is now apologizing.

At the same time, he hopes that the festival will actually be organized, all the while it has received public support.

Subjekt editor Danby Choi has also made a critical statement about the matter to the newspaper, but he believes it will be wrong if politicians interfere and withdraw support from cultural organizers.