Festa Kraftverk - artist in residence
Festa Kraftverk has been abandoned for more than 50 years since the building stopped making electricity in 1973.
It lies alone in the landscape inside a forest next to the river Driva in the mountain village Oppdal, Norway.
We have now brought the place back to life with creating a new community that revolves around creativity and experiences in nature.
The artist in residence is an initiator of this community, adding new layers to the transformation of the once forgotten power plant.
Who we are
We're independent and artist-led, with no ties to an institution, museum, or school.
A small team has started the residency and is now running it.
We are reshaping the residency every year into a context that we believe in, together with the artists that come and stay here.
Community
Around eight artists at a time. Small enough that you'll know everyone by the end of the first week.
We eat together most days. It's practical, but it's also where the unexpected things start: conversations, collaborations. Once during the stay there's a communal dinner cooked for and with whoever's around, and an open workshop, where you show what you're doing to people who aren't artists.
The month ends in a shared exhibition. The theme and the curation are decided by the group. It stays up into Festafest, so the work meets a few thousand people who came for the music.
History
Built in 1951 to bring electricity to Oppdal. It ran for twenty-two years. In 1973 a bigger plant took over, the turbines were pulled out, and the building was left to the forest for fifty years.
In 2019 we started clearing it out. In 2022 we opened the doors for an exhibition. Since then we've become steadily clearer about what the place is for.
The place
It's 12 km west of Oppdal, the last stretch on a narrow gravel road. The Driva runs below the building. Oppdal is the nearest thing to civilisation.
The machine hall is the biggest room: nine metres high, concrete, tall windows, the bolt-marks where the turbines stood, and a movable crane nobody took away. Above it are smaller rooms, a kitchen, a common room. Outside there's a fire pit, forest, and hiking tracks going up.
In June and July it never properly gets dark.
What we're looking for
We're looking for site-specific, spatial work. Inside the building or out in the landscape.
Work that answers to something already here: the concrete, the water, the noise the building used to make, the people who worked in it. We're less interested in finished work looking for a wall.
You don't need to arrive with a plan. You do need to be the kind of person who'd rather respond to a place than impose on it.
Any discipline.
Practicalities
Housing is free, food is free, you will get your own private space, there are small structures scattered around the Power Plant that the artists will stay inside, a shared kitchen and common spaces, the run of the whole building as workspace, and a ticket to Festafest.
There was a materials budget of 50 000 NOK across the group in 2026. It was not split evenly, the group worked out together who needed what.