Who is Ice-9

Ice-9 is a group of artists, writers, storytellers, filmmakers, programmers and researchers.

Our work is to build experimental spaces for productive play with research and stories.

Productive story-play means serious fun. Serious because we tackle scary real-world scenarios, and fun because we learn to collectively channel fears, doubts, even rage, into stories.

You will find our experimental spaces online, on the street, in classrooms and museums. Our strategy is collaborative and embedded in a new communication culture and technology. Our process creates positive feedback loops between science, art, and education. Supporting a transition towards a knowledge-based circular economy in an inclusive, just, and democratic global society.

How it started

Ice-9 was founded in 2014 by artists Christine Cynn & Valentin Manz. Christine is a film director/producer and conceptual artist who has been playing with documentary/fiction hybrids since 1996 (including co-direction of The Act of Killing). Valentin Manz has been creating interactive environments, sculptures, and visual art since 1990. He specialises in process-based art, created within communities in dialogue with local stories and landscapes. Ice-9 is based in Tromsø, Northern Norway.

The Team

Creative director / Project Manager

Christine Cynn has been developing new ways to catalyse and document the human imagination since 1996. Her goal is to illuminate and thereby transform the hidden (and often surreal) conflicts of desire, fear, and hope that shape our lives and our world. She is co-director and co-producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing (2012). Christine Cynn holds a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University

Visual/Sculptural interactive leader

Valentin Manz creates work that engages viewers visually and physically in a sculptural theatre made from glass, metal, clay, and found materials such as cardboard and furniture. Manz has been a fellow at Urban Glass in Brooklyn (2005) and the Creative Glass Center of America (2007 & 2013), and shown his work in London, Munich, and New York. He studied stage design at the Slade and Central St. Martin’s College of Art in London, and graduated from Goldsmiths as an art psychotherapist. Christine and Valentin have collaborated on numerous interactive installations incorporating audience participation, large-scale sculptural environments and multichannel video installations (earthNOWbeing 2011; Bread Head with Campbell Works 2011).

Marketing and communication manager

Marina Borovaya has a Master’s in Business Creation and Entrepreneurship. She holds a BA in Journalism from University of Wroclaw (Poland) and a BA in Technology from Moscow Power Engineering institute (Russia). Currently she is interested in commercial viability of artistic practices.

Education and podcast producer/coordinator

Anneli Stiberg graduated from Visual Cultural Studies (visual anthropology), UIT, in 2012. She has since then worked on various film and art projects and workshops with schools, youth clubs and film production companies, before joining Ice-9 in 2014. Her current interests are the use of local flora and fauna in cooking and food traditions in Northern Norway.

IT expert

Jegor Sushko has mastered the digital world through deep studies of low to high programming languages, as well as the nature of 3D motion graphics in combination with engineering knowledge of mathematics and physics . He has got many years of experience working internationally with projects ranging from administrating a web server to creating 3D models and animations. Apart from solving problems efficiently, Jegor loves nature and hiking in the mountains.

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