It started during a project at Harpa in Reykjavík with Atlí Bollason, Owen Hindley and Rasmus Stride. We were already hacking the Harpa facade together for Sónar, and NAVA came out of wanting to keep that collaboration going beyond a single festival.

I got into VJing at 21, through a Modul8 workshop run by Pixelvärk in Stockholm. From there I ran a VJ collective in Montreal called APM300 with Thien Vu Dang and Charlotte Risch, two fantastic video artists, and that projection work was part of how I ended up at Moment Factory. NAVA continued the same thread. When we started in 2016, Aavistus in Helsinki and Nonagon in Sweden did not exist, and neither did most of the audiovisual festivals that came after. We were one of several small initiatives across the Nordics pushing for the art form, and while we had no direct hand in what grew up alongside us, it felt good to be part of an early wave.

Through open calls NAVA paired musicians with visual artists, starting at Sónar Reykjavík and the Countdown Stage at Roskilde Festival from 2016 to 2019. In April 2019, after Sónar Reykjavík was cancelled, we and Plútó put on Skaðablót at Bíó Paradís in a few weeks, a one-day festival with DJ sets from Phil Hartnoll of Orbital and Kero Kero Bonito, proceeds going to an emergency fund for Icelandic electronic musicians. We also ran Tiny/Massive at the Reykjavík Winter Lights Festival, and Icelandic designer Katrín Hauksdóttir joined NAVA that year.

In 2020, Tour de Lux turned bicycles into projection platforms in Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki, rolling through parks and courtyards for pop-up audiovisual nights.

In 2022, Nordic Lights paired twelve artists into six new audiovisual acts across three festivals: Monument in Norway, Nonagon in Sweden and Aavistus in Helsinki. Residencies ran first: a mountain cabin above a Norwegian valley, a disused steel silo in the Swedish forest, and a wooden farmhouse in the Finnish countryside. Each duo spent a week together writing the piece, then we brought the six new acts to each festival over the summer and autumn.

A week together in a cabin or a silo, then the piece on stage: that rhythm is what NAVA is really about.

In 2023, Annie Tådne, Merle Karp and I spent three weeks in Sisimiut, Greenland for Arctic Lights, running workshops and performing at Arctic Sounds. In 2024 we connected with Kokong on Åland and Baltic Analog Lab in Riga. NAVA is currently working on DOME DREAMING and ÖTOPIA, a Creative Europe project.

NAVA is supported by Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point and NAPA.