TIFF 2025 - CLOSING PARTY - KULTURHUSET

It is with great pleasure that we invite the audience, festival guests, and all party enthusiasts to celebrate the 35th edition of TIFF!

On Saturday, January 18th, our legendary Closing Party will take place at Kulturhuset. At last, we are back in the heart of the city, right next to our fantastic outdoor cinema. Here, you'll find several concerts, including Ugress, a cozy lounge area, activities across multiple floors, and a DJ in Sånn. Large parts of the venue will be in use, offering space for both engaging conversations in nooks and crannies and a high-energy dance floor.

Lillescenen:
22:45 Ugress
00:30 High Heeled Giants
02:00 Øm Sludd

Galleriet:
22:45 Folkemølje
01:00 Karaoke(ART)

Café Sånn:
22:00 Otilia
00:00 Oivo

Artists and DJs:

High Heeled Giants is a duo composed of Helle Larsen and Øivind A. Sjøvoll. If Nick Cave and Fever Ray had been stranded at the end of a Norwegian fjord with no exit strategy, they might not have immediately decided to make music together. But if we imagine for a moment that they did, it would probably sound like what happens when Helle Larsen and Øivind Sjøvoll blend their musical styles in High Heeled Giants. Larsen, from Jadudah and Feber, and Sjøvoll, also known as Kohib, come from backgrounds in rock and electronic music, respectively, and together they complement each other in a new and challenging musical universe. With deep beats and an insistent vocal drive, they can fill both dance floors and a lonely attic apartment with atmospheric and futuristic electropop.

Ugress returns to Tromsø with the cinematic sci-fi universe Retrotopia in an exclusive festival concert. The concert is a specially adapted version of the production that recently premiered to a sold-out audience at Parkteatret in Oslo. From early pulp sci-fi through the psychedelic-plastic 1960s to the VR-anxious 1990s and today's utopian solar punk, Retrotopia explores how memories, media, and technology influence our eternal quest for the "right" future. Through speculative stories, sci-fi-inspired music videos, and interactive technology, Ugress creates an immersive audiovisual universe that challenges the audience's perception of time and reality. Ugress is the musical media art project of Bergen-based Gisle Martens Meyer. The concert also features Ugress's regular collaborator, Tromsø’s own Nasra Ali Omar, on drums and percussion. The collaboration between Ugress and Nasra began in Tromsø over 20 years ago at the very first Insomnia Festival.

From Tromsø's underground, the new hip-hop project ØM SLUDD rises from the shadows and into the warmth. With roots in the city's punk and alternative scene, the young rapper and producer has created a gritty and uncompromising musical landscape. Drawing inspiration from American underground hip-hop, Norwegian literature, and the realism of the dark season, he paints a reflective picture of modern morality with an industrial boom-bap sound behind him.

Juhani Oivo is from Oulu in Northern Finland. He organizes club nights, such as Elektorni, which also functions as a vinyl record label. His DJ journey, spanning more than twenty years, began with hip-hop music. Over time, this journey has led him through a wide range of genres, including dub, Italo, bass music, ambient, and the many variations of modern techno and house—and beyond. His repertoire of techniques ranges from raw, rugged quick-mixing to deep, extended blends. During the week, Oivo serves as the executive director of the Oulu Music Video Festival, the world's oldest music video festival. For the TIFF's closing party, Oivo will pack his record bag full of banging percussion, atmospheric house grooves, disco emotion, cinematic electro scorchers, and other meticulously curated musical nuggets. This marks Oivo's first time deejaying in Tromsø.

Otilia, another Oulu resident, will warm up the dancefloor with an assortment of top-class electronic music. Otilia is a key figure in the Oulu-based multi-disciplinary Cultish collective and a proponent of genre-fluid deejaying. Their quality-assured selection has taken Otilia to play actively from underground parties and key venues in Finland to gigs in cities like Berlin and Oslo. You might also remember Otilia from their well-received set at the Insomnia Festival in 2023. For 2025 Otilia has been booked to play some of the top electronic music festivals in Finland.

Dance party and nightclub in perfect harmony – Welcome to Folkemølje! Here, we build bridges between everyday life and history, explore the boundaries between tradition and modernity, and dance while emptying a few kegs along the way. Never tried folk dancing before? Don’t worry! We offer a highly informal dance class followed by spectacular performances of traditional music in every imaginable style – from jazz-infused folk tunes to traditional material with a metal spirit, folk songs in an electronic guise, and classic playing. Welcome one and all – hesitant newcomers, seasoned pros, stragglers, and night owls (early birds, please approach with caution)

Karaoke(ART) is classic karaoke songs with videos created by established video artists from around the world. The artists have been free to create any video they wish, as long as it clearly contains the karaoke music and lyrics so that people can sing along. Karaoke brings strangers together in a room where they watch each other become stars on stage. Karaoke(ART) invites artists to use their personal style to reflect on what it’s like to live in the world today, using the karaoke song of their choice as their medium. The goal is to blend contemporary art with a pop culture phenomenon to create something unexpected for both sides.

NB! Dersom du har behov for en ledsagerbillett, ta kontakt med info@tiff.no