The Nordic Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, featuring The Altersea Opera by Lap-See Lam, enters the heart of an ongoing Nordic debate: who gets to define culture? Amid discussions in Sweden over establishing a national cultural canon, this multisensory installation—part ghost story, part digital opera—questions the authority of institutionalized memory. In an era of increasing scrutiny over cultural symbols and “cancel culture” in the arts, Lam’s work offers a fluid, haunting response: reimagine rather than erase.
Set aboard a spectral ship carrying fragmented voices and folklore, The Altersea Opera becomes a metaphor for Nordic identity adrift in history, migration, and myth. It critiques not just the canon, but the impulse to “fix” or “purify” culture—reminding us that memory is always contested, layered, and in motion.
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