To know the Arctic rather than believe in the Arctic requires an ontological politics that makes space for the land, the climatic and hydrological processes taking place on that land, and the beings who choose to inhabit it. Through the Arctic Auditories project, we have worked to open up new conceptual spaces for the sounds of the land, these processes and these beings. Over the coming months we are making exciting plans to work with the city of Tromsø, to audibly transform urban space so that it may be known in a new way. Is there a map that could express that transformation? And if so, what would it look like?
See what I did there? I assumed that a map must look like something. Maps show us a representation of something, and even if that something is ideas or concepts (e.g. concept mapping), the one thing all maps have in common is that they are visual. As a geographer with training in cartography and GIS (geospatial information systems and science), I have always known that maps are tangible and material items. My additional training in critical cartography taught me to question maps in terms of what they represent, who they are for, and how they are used for political aims, which is to say I can tell you all about how maps are biopolitical tools that make landscapes and places governable and controllable. I never questioned this idea of what maps are in the ways I have done since joining Arctic Auditories, but now I will. For, in thinking about the nature of sound and its co-constitutive relationship to place, I would like to suggest that we proceed very carefully with soundmaps; that we need a critical cartography of soundmapping to make us aware of, attentive to, even provoked by, the biopolitical nature of the soundmap.
Arctic Auditories began with the foundational premise that the Arctic soundscape has value through the presence and in relationship with humans and Earth kin; that the soundscape itself is co-constituted and given meaning through the co-creation of relational value with other beings. In this articulation, sounds of wind blowing through towns, the churn of electric cable cars, the hum of electric wires, all convey meaning and presence. This premise is in contrast with the mainstream normative understanding of the Arctic soundscape as one that has traditionally aligned with a European understanding of Pristine Nature, one in which the Arctic is either quiet and silent, or filled with the deafening sounds of nature itself – wind blowing snow, ice cracking and squeaking, birds crying. As natural sounds, birds, wind, and even silence remain representation of a Pristine soundscape.
What continues to draw so many people to the Arctic is the attraction of both pristine nature and its assumed companion, the pristine soundscape. Yet, when seen through a biopolitical lens we can interpret sound as an expression of bodies alive and otherwise, of sensibilities, of preferences and tastes. And like (sense of) place, sound is somehow both ephemeral and constant. We know we are in a place, but what are the boundaries of that place? How are these boundaries determined, accepted and socially reproduced? For if a place has no boundaries, how can it be defined, and if it cannot be defined, how can it be known? Like the horizon, argued Casey, place is always there but somehow can never be fixed. Sound is always there, even in its absence. “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” goes the old saying. Of course it does, and the idea that if no humans are there to hear it then a sound does not exist disallows all the bodies that are there, their sensibilities, preferences and tastes.
Here is the crux of the soundscape, and in association, the soundmap. To fix the soundscape onto paper in the form of the soundmap is to create boundaries around something that is fluid and ephemeral, to determine that sounds increase in value (or become at all) by making them visible to humans. Like landscape mapping was a way to know the land in order to govern it, soundmapping can be understood as a biopolitical act meant to elevate, standardize and normalize the human senses, creating a pathway to govern them.
Maps are an important biopolitical tool because of their ability to fix and make material/visible what can otherwise only be experienced. Visual representations of space, maps of landscapes are contested for what they include or exclude, yet they are recognized nevertheless most often as snapshots which accurately, if at varying levels of precision, inform action because they are interpretable. Following Sterne’s definition of the audiovisual litany, maps are objective representations of a spatial (visual) reality. A landscape map can show roadways and neighborhoods, powerlines and business zones. It can convey elevation and slope, land cover, wind direction, vegetation and soil types. The biopolitical dimension of these maps is that they enable governancebecause these things are understood as relatively static until a new map is created. Decisions are made based on what these maps show, which may or may not accurately reflect what exists in the world at a given time. While they are useful and interesting for lots of reasons, it is critical to remember that they are representations of a set of situated knowledges collected for a specific purpose. A side effect of that set of choices is that the map fixes place to become a place, at a point in time. Through this process a place becomes a location, which is to say the richness of place is lost.
Sound and soundscapes, by their very nature are constantly changing at a rate at which the idea of mapping them, at the very least requires serious consideration as to the epistemological value of such a tool, and at most could be considered as a form of ontological violence to the relational value otherwise created through experience. The ephemerality of sound means that like place-making, sound could in fact better be understood as sound-making, an epistemology of sound in which it is always becoming as an expression of a dialogue between a place and all of its abiotic and biotic inhabitants.
To go one step further, and in alignment with the ethical positionality of Arctic Auditories, through a critical cartography of soundmapping we introduce here the idea that audio recordings could be understood as counter-soundmaps. Angus Carlyle’s recent LP Powerlines, a recording of sounds in and around Tromsø/Romsa, could then be considered a counter-soundmap of the Arctic soundscape. While the cd still represents a series of snapshots in time, it rejects the idea that the sounds captured in the cd are elevated in meaning only once they are spatialized onto a visual map. This logic would suggest that to know the sound of a waterfall as a moment in time when water is liquid, falling, crashing, gurgling, spraying and playing is as much an expression of an objective reality in its own right, without the need to “place it in space”. It still informs us about climate, environment and the like. To hear other layers of sound – children playing, electric lines humming, cars honking – allows us to build a relational understanding and value for the waterfall where sound becomes a dialogic expression of a place and its sustainability (Barron and Losleben 2025).
In the last blog post Angus Carlyle introduced the concept of the audiovisual litany, and he reflected on how the sensory and intimate personal experiences of the soundwalks, a core part of our project, were transformed into more objective, statistical operations through the creation of the soundmap he later generated. We did this work intentionally and thoughtfully and we stand by it. At the same time, the feminist epistemological stance at the core of our project encourages us to question our own motivations and the outcomes of our work. In this post I have reflected on the nature of sound and its relationship with human ideals of pristine Nature and place, and how soundmaps can be interpreted as biopolitical artifacts which in fact deconstruct and transform sound into something else in ways that, upon further reflection, we may not actually want or agree with. I have suggested that soundmaps do to sound what landscape maps do to place, they are transformative in making the complex and experiential more simplistic and fixed. For better and worse, maps make sound and place knowable, shareable, governable. As a team of interdisciplinary academics, we want to know more about sounds and places, and we want to share that knowledge. As feminists, we know that that knowledge is powerful and always partial. As a geographer, I know that maps are the same, and as a person I want to use that partial, powerful knowledge for good.
Elizabeth Barron, 2025
Further reading:
Barron, E.S. and K. Losleben. 2025. “Emplacing watery encounters: Listening, care, and embodied knowledge in places of climate change.” Progress in Environmental Geography 4(2): 190-207. DOI: 10.1177/27539687251342262
Sterne, J. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Duke University Press.
A group of twenty people. Different backgrounds, a shared interest in sound, water and creative experimentation. Three days of discovering, trying things out and creating together.
Curiosity.
Water flows, both independently and influenced by external factors. Where does water come from? Where does it go? Where do we encounter water? It is a give and take, a constant exchange.
Equipped with hydrophones, contact microphones and electromagnetic microphones we search for sounds within this cycle. From the freshwater water source to the sewage plant. From snowfields to kelp forests. We are amazed, intrigued, disgusted, surprised. We fluctuate between discomfort and fascination. We attempt to share our auditory experience and put it into words. It is movement that we perceive. We feel vibrations with our bodies. We try to make connections, to recognize relationships. An in-between. Rhythmic beats. Invisible humming. If we cannot see, hear of feel it without the aid of technical devices, does it exist?
We think about space. How do sounds spread? Where are we in this space? Exploring perspectives. Seemingly clear boundaries between spaces. What sounds can be heard underwater and how do they travel through water? What does the transition between different aggregate states of water sound like?
We collect ideas, thoughts, sound recordings, photos and videos. These are collaged into a one-hour collective audio work, a polyphonic assemblage[1].
A collection of experiences,
a space to dive into.
[1] Tsing, A. L. (2017). The mushroom at the end of the world : on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Photos by Anders Eriksen
During these three days, we listened closely to the waters that flow in and out of Tromsø/Romsa, responding to the streams that enable our daily existence and infrastructure. The programme included soundwalks, a sound meditation, a guided tour of local wastewater treatment facilities, a reading group and an editing session.
The resulting collectively improvised audio zine was streamed live on the last day of the workshop. It will additionally be broadcast on Resonance FM’s Clear Spot and published in partnership with Radio Arctic.
Resonance FM https://www.resonancefm.com/ – broadcast on Monday 16th June 8-9pm, repeating the next morning 10-11am
Flowing, flushing, freezing, streaming: Listening at the intersection of human interference.
How do we attune to our surroundings and care for the lives in it? How do we negotiate with beings that communicate in other languages?
Through exercises in improvisation, relational listening and sounding, the 3-day workshop invites participants to develop experimental sonic assemblages through listening closely to the waters that flow in and out of Tromsø/Romsa and responding to the streams that enable our daily existence and infrastructure.
What is the memory of the water that gushes into our sinks, warms pathways, drains through tubes and gutters, shifts from icy lakes to artificial snow? How have the currents witnessed the change in life around them, the waters always already listening? And what does it take to sustain a city like Tromsø in a warming sub-arctic environment?
Thinking through the prism of water, the workshop will engage with the concept of ‘listening at the bundling of trajectories’ through intersectional methodologies and the writings of Dylan Robinson, Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Anna Tsing, Pauline Oliveros, and Susan Schuppli.
Participants will work individually and in groups with a recording device, various microphones, a vibrotactile feedback setup, and a computer with audio editing and effects processing software. Please bring your preferred headphones (with wire) as we have only a few sets available. You’ll decide whether your focus for the audio zine will be on sound collage or writing and reciting in your language(s) of choice. We’ll conduct soundwalks and visit local heating and wastewater handling facilities. The resulting sound works will be shared as a live collective broadcast on the last day at Tromsø Kunstforening.
*There are no stipends available for travel and accommodation, unfortunately. However, participation in the workshop is for free for all.
About us
In our collaborative practice creating storytelling experiences from transdisciplinary assemblages, sound artist Andreas Kühne and artist, filmmaker Polina Medvedeva engage ways of listening-with landscapes and its agents to produce a feedback of the patchwork of historical, geopolitical and socio-economic layers.
Arctic Auditories
This workshop is part of Arctic Auditories, a collaborative project engaging scholarship and methods from feminism, sound arts, human geography and applied ethnomusicology to develop strategies for understanding environmental change through sound. Focusing on water environments, the ultimate aim of the project is to deliver innovative inter-disciplinary, empowering, and democratic listening strategies to help individuals and society cultivate radical imaginations of futures beyond environmental anxiety.
Our programme includes internationally recognised artists and new, emerging artists, giving special attention to projects that are rooted in the region. We strive to collaborate with, support and give space to other local independent arts initiatives.
I first encountered live online sound streams around the same time I started to explore the many forms of online soundmaps (that are discussed in the previous blog).
In 2006, I hung a microphone out of the window of what was then the offices of Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) on the 13th floor of a 1960s tower block in the area of London called Elephant & Castle. I remember dialling into that online stream from my home in Brighton at the same time as Jérôme Joy, a researcher at Locus Sonus who was living in Aix-en-Provence and who had helped me get the stream up and running (technical matters, especially those involving cables and mixers, never being my forte). As we both heard the window frame rattle, rain spatter the glass, rolling rumbles of thunder and a sky torn by lightning, we exchanged emails about our experiences of this strange triangulation of a listening between the microphone in London, headphones in Aix and loudspeakers in Brighton. In 2020, two months into the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown, as part of the launch of Night Blooms, a poetry and photography collection published by Makina Books, I ran through the woods that were the book’s inspiration live streaming my breath, the swish of my feet through grass, bird calls, traffic on Ditchling Road. In 2022, as part of our sonic explorations of the Port of Shoreham near our homes, Simon James and I live streamed the sound of the dawn tide rising over a bank of shingle.
The 2006 stream was broadcast on the Locus Sonus map; in 2020 and 2023, the streams were part of the annual Reveil event created by Soundcamp to celebrate the dawn chorus, with streams from all over the world being mixed live over a period of 24 hours. Although there are other sound streaming platforms, protocols and practices, Locus Sonus and Soundcamp were my introduction to the process. Each organisation additionally amplified a space of exploration where such strange almost-simultaneous encounters with audio transmission as Joy and I experienced could be thought about and thought with. Locus Sonus hosted a number of symposia dedicated to the form; Soundcamp published the book Sounds Remote about the stream experience and commissioned a number of essays of which Ella Finer’s is exemplary.
For this year’s Reveil, Arctic Auditories established a live microphone on the roof of the Polarmuseet. In March at the Soundcamp HQ, Katrin and I had an induction to the technology: learning a little more about how the streambox – the system through which the microphone connects to a mini-computer that connects to a nearby data network and routes the audio signal to a transmission server where Joy or I or anyone else can listen in.
Given what I said earlier about technical matters, it was lucky for me that Katrin was the person responsible for getting the streambox running, as I gather this was far from a simple operation, albeit an ultimately successful one. These screenshots show the audio stream running during Reveil.
The streambox itself underwent something of an eccentric voyage from Soundcamp HQ in Loughborough Junction to the Polarmuseet in Tromsø / Romsa. The protectively-packed equipment flew with Katrin’s luggage to Oslo before being handed to our colleague Silje Gaupseth’s partner (who took the box to a meeting at the Norwegian Parliament). After the flight to Tromsø / Romsa, the wonderful Benn Gjøran Johansen wrapped the water-proofed microphones and computer in a fishing net and secured the device to the roof of the Polarmuseet, where it is now installed.
The travels of the electronic audio equipment that were distinguished by bubble-wrap, physical hand-overs and being enclosed in secure netting and Katrin’s technical ministrations to ensure that the system functioned well both speak to something Grant from Soundcamp told us about regular streamers: that they establish relations of care with their streams. At our meetings, Katrin, Paula, Britta and I have talked about another aspect of that care relation – a certain vigilance of ‘checking in’ that involves making monitoring the stream something we turn to again and again, as entertainment, as education, as a reassurance things are OK. We dial in to hear what is happening on that harbour roof top: rain falling on the sloping tiles, a party of school children walking past, the slush of melting snow, a noon high tide making waves lap audibly the shore, kittiwake cries, the weekday percussion of construction work (a chorus of hammers, drills, ratchets and truck reversing sirens all conducted by indistinct shouts), the occasional helicopter, boat engines and the very rare sound of a boat horn and the perennial drone of traffic crossing the bridge.
I often share our Arctic Auditories audio feed with friends. Many are shocked at the disparity between what they imagined a harbour so far into the Arctic Circle might sound like and how very “urban” the microphone and box and its rooftop perch make Tromsø / Romsa sound. This experiential contrast is one potential significance of the stream for our project, an affective tension that I think has often been explored by projects sponsored through Soundcamp, Reveil and Locus Sonus.
The prosthetic aurality of our streambox offers remote listeners the opportunity to speculate how the specific microphone, gain settings and placement might amplify or attenuate particular features of the sounded environment in the historic harbour of Tromsø / Romsa; to wonder about what is made here and what now, what is near and what far; to question what it means to hear world as a “live” unfolding and perhaps to question what kinds of latencies (technical as much as cultural) insert themselves between the original releases of mechanical energy that a museum passer-by might hear and the transmission that vibrates from speakers connected to a distant computer.
You can listen to the feed here and let us know what you think.
Me and soundmaps go back a long way. I’ve been avid – and frequently critical – consumer of these modalities of aural cartography for several decades. I have integrated exploration of soundmaps into my teaching, in recent years running workshops with the wonderful MA Sound Arts students at London College of Communication, whose approaches always offer inventive (and sometimes radical) responses to the conventions that have accreted around the form, conventions that became enshrined in a long-standing Wikipedia definition that proposed ‘digital geographical maps that put emphasis on the sonic representation of a specific location’. I commissioned an article about one example of such a digital online soundmaps from the collective New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, who discuss their multi-faceted NYSoundmap in my 2009 book Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice.
I’ve made unambiguous sound and mapping projects, too, such as “51° 32 ‘ 6.954” N / 0° 00 ‘ 47.0808” W,” my unforgivingly-titled contribution to the Sound Proof group show at the E:vent Gallery, London in 2008, which addressed the transformation of what had been a canal-side pocket of light industry and open green space for the 2012 Olympics. For 2012’s Viso Come Territorio (“Face as Territory”), another group show, I made a soundmap of the Italian commune San Cipriano Picentino in Campania.
Here are two responses to my sound-mapping activities, the first from Sound Proof’s curator Monica Biagioli, the second from Salome Voegelin’s Sonic Possible Worlds:
“Carlyle’s contribution to a sense of social and spatial orientation is asserted through finely noted observation of activity and ephemera encountered during his visits to the site. These seemingly inconsequential events and objects are plotted diagrammatically on his map as key markers of the site, giving prominence to the vernacular components of this site in transition. His approach echoes the notion that whoever maps the space gives that landscape and location its territorial characteristics”.
(Biagioli 2018: 102)
“This geography is not that of San Cipriano Picentino and not of my living room either but that of their possibilities generated in my recentred listening, exploring the material that sounds there and bringing it back into the actuality of my present listening that is every thicker and pluralized for it. These sonic narratives do not share in the generality of the visual map, nor in the image we might have of an area […] I am not following the map but mapping my own while listening.”
(Voegelin 2014:34)
From my own perspective, a lot of my creative practice inhabits a space that is proximate to maps, map-making and the devices of cartography – and this applies not just to the more explicitly sound-related works, as might be visible above on the cover of my Makina Books poetry collection Night Blooms and an inside page from the self-published work Mirrors.
Alongside these creative projects, I’ve written a little on maps and map making. In 1999 I wrote “Below This Level There is None,” a chapter for City Levels that riffed on Virilio, Dostoyevsky and Ralph Ellison about the underground as an architectural space and how the vertical projection that is common (and pretty much ubiquitous in its adoption on online soundmaps) occludes what lies below. In 2022, I contributed an article to the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies which, to an extent, takes some of the thinking in the 1999 article and adapts it for the sonic realm.
I’ve put both these articles on my very sparse medium account for you to read.
The ideas of maps and layers of sound knowledge has been a recurrent idea in Arctic Auditories. You might remember that when it was Za Barron’s turn to post to our Instagram account, she talked about sound maps: “maps can take many forms and tell many truths, but some might argue (me, for example) that they have to be visual to be maps. I just can’t get my head around the idea that a sound is a map. This is not my ontology of maps, but this project is pushing on it…”
Alongside the recordings of our conductors telling us how they have designed their soundwalks, the recordings of the walks themselves and recordings of post-walk discussions, I have been looking at Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen’s and Britta Sweers’ analyses of the transcripts of soundwalks to guide me to make new recordings of the soundwalk locations that capture a balance between what the conductor intended and what the participants experienced. This is not at all an easy task, but the inspiration is to create an online soundmap that seeks to represent this process.
I’ve been using Udo Noll’s astonishing Radio Aporee as a platform to disseminate this developing soundmap. Radio Aporee has been running online since 2000, has been hosting its maps since 2006, backs its files to the Internet Archive, has many very useful resources and, at the moment I am writing, would take me 225 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes and 40 seconds to listen to all its content. Radio Aporee is a firm feature of my soundmap teaching, it appears in the Bloomsbury chapter and it is certainly a good example of one of those soundmaps I mentioned right at the start of this blog post: one that I respond to as a listener. Radio Aporee has its own rules, such as the injunction to avoid ‘composition’ by editing or layering recordings. I have imposed further restrictions, too, but I am slowly building this Arctic Auditories layer. The quality of existing Aporee contributions sets the bar dauntingly high.
The current distribution of my recordings for the Arctic Auditories map looks like this.
If we zoom in you can see that there is a cluster in Tromsdalen / Romssavággi, reflecting the three soundwalks that took place there, each with quite rich details.
One of these recordings seeks to capture the sounds of the water that two soundwalk conductors told us had special meaning for them in this area.
The best way to get a sense of what I am doing with this online map is to dial into Radio Aporee yourselves (something I highly recommend you do anyway). To navigate to our Arctic Auditories project map within Radio Aporee and explore, head to this link: https://aporee.org/maps/work/projects.php?project=arcticauditories.
My name is Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen, and I hold a postdoc position connected to Arctic Auditories situated at the Institute for Gender and Women’s Research at the University in Tromsø. I had the pleasure of attending the Borealis Festival in Birgon/Bergen, and I wanted to share my experience of the festival with you. The Borealis Festival celebrates experimental music from all over Norway and Sápmi, and this year it focused on Sámi experimental music, in collaboration with Sámi artist Elina Waage Mikalsen. From the Borealis homepage:
How does who you are affect how you listen?
Are you excited or tired, or both?
Are you with friends or alone?
Are you listening to something you know, or is it new to you?
What histories and structures are you assuming are “normal”?
These questions, I thought, resonated beautifully with what we’re investigating in Arctic Auditories. Over the course of three days and three panel conversations, we listened to artists, researchers, composers, and craftspeople talk about how they use their roots and traditions to connect with their art, histories, and culture. The journey began on Wednesday morning.
The journey south felt very apropos, traveling from one cold, dry hydrosphere and arriving in a wet, extremely humid one in Birgon. Winter still held Romssa firmly in its grasp when I left early on Wednesday the 13th of March, and I had to switch my wool coat for my long raincoat and seek shelter from the onslaught of rain. I traveled with my friend Ellen Marie Bråthen Steen (@new_sami_music_phd), who’d been asked to be part of the panel on Sámi experimentalism on Thursday. The kind folks at Borealis picked us up, and they told us they had hoped that the fine weather they’d enjoyed up until now would continue, but alas. It is curious how much cities and its people are shaped by their weather conditions, and the excess or absence of water. Ellen and I had packed more wool than rainproof gear, as we were perhaps more optimistic about travelling to a more gentle climate. Our idea, as North-Norwegians, of spring is that brief interlude between the grey-black of lingering snow and the bright green of summer. This spring in Birgon, on the other hand, was wrapped in mist, clinging to the evening air, obscuring our vision, and augmenting the sounds of wet tires on wet asphalt; the rubbing of jacket cloth as you bundle up tight to keep the moisture out; the heavy flow of the rain running down slanted streets into the harbour.
At breakfast on Thursday morning, Ellen introduced me to her co-panelists Jakop Janssønn (@jakopjanssonn & @sami_ritmmat) and Ánndaris Rimpi , and later by artist Johan Sara Jr., and Jalvvi Niilas Holmberg. We told stories over coffee and talked about music, about joik in academia, acoustemology (how to interpret the world through sound) and what we dreamed of last night.
Do you know who called me 35 min ago? It was Björk. She wants to work with me. The only problem is – it was a dream.
Some decades ago, temperatures dropped to almost -50 in Guovdegaidno/Kautokeino. This news reached the Norwegian broadcasting network, who sent a journalist to interview the inhabitants. He arrived, and struck up a conversation with a local man at the supermarket.
– Wow, it’s really cold now! says the journalist.
-Oh? You think so? says the local man.
-Of course, it’s -50 degrees outside!
– Yes, outside, sure!
After breakfast, we headed out to the library early. We borrowed umbrellas from the hotel – every shop and restaurant in Bergen has “umbrella parking stations” – and arrived in the cellar auditorium of Bergen Public Library. Multicolored orbs were artistically placed around the sofa where Jakop Jansønn and Ánndaris joined Ellen. Jakop is a PhD and a drummer, Ánndaris hails from Oalloluokta in Jokkmokk and is a Lulesami composer and sound artist (and the voice of Olaf in Jikŋon/Frozen). The lights dimmed, and after a brief introduction and welcome from a representative from the Bergen Sámiid Searvi/ Bergen Sameforening, Jakop introduced himself and his co-panelists.
On the question of his relationship to Sámi experimentalism, Ánndaris replied that it depends on who perceives it as “experimental”, and from there the answer lies in listening, and what we perceive as sound and what is perceived as music. Jakop played a short recording that was made about a hundred years ago, of a man playing a fatnu, a Sámi flute-like instrument made from Angelica root. The recording was made on a wax-roll, which affects the recording’s tempo, pitch, and ‘quality’. Does this qualify as Sámi music? Ánndaris replied in the affirmative and delved further into the idea of leaving room for improvisation as part of project planning. He imagined, using the recording as a point of departure, that at it’s core improvisation was a key component of that recording. Finding the plant, adjusting it, discovering what sounds you could produce, and then playing with these different sounds, are not only the same elements as modern composing but of experimentalism. The ephemerality of the fatnu also becomes part of the Sámi musical tradition. While the sounds produced have a limited lifespan in it’s current form, the melodies, the stories and rituals live on in the people who listen to them. The people travel, and so do the sounds. A hundred years later, this recording has made it’s way to us, for us to make new connections.
Colourful orbsFrom the left: Ánndaris Rimpi, Ellen Marie Bråthen Steen and Jakop JanssønnBirástiddje beljustallam at Bergen Lydgalleri
Ellen is also writing her PhD (Music Conservatory at UiT) on Sámi music and the use of Sámi culture in new musical forms. Her project is very attuned to the question of what Sámi music is, and who determines its parameters. She talks about listening as a full-body activity, and how during the course of her project, experimental music has cemented this idea for her. The “experimental” nature her PhD-corpus has had a physical impact; she feels it in her body as much as she hears it. There is no Cartesian mind/body division. Sami music is mind/body inclusive, they’re one from the beginning built on the premise that we listen with our bodies.
The panelist also discussed sounds as signals or cues. Different sounds mean and signal different things depending on the context in which they are heard. For example, the sound of antlers rubbing together, for a reindeer herder signals the end of September. Ánndaris explained that he intentionally removes himself from Western mindsets that aver that humans are “masters of nature”. His understanding of the world, based on his Sámi upbringing, situates himself as part of nature, and that all humans are part of, rather than set apart from nature. Working with concrete sounds, he has often experimented with trying to capture individual sounds – “How do I record one mosquito?” – which constitutes huge technical challenges, but I find his practice inspiring. I can only imagine the attention and focus it takes to single out particular sounds in environments of collective species.
Sounds from nature are subjects, not objects of nature and of the earth.
Ánndaris
The consensus among the panelist was that sound has a unique ability to transport listeners in time and space, a concept which permeates Ánndaris’ sound installationBirástiddje beljustallam (translation: Sharpened Listening to Your Surroundings). We went to the installation later during the festival, and it was a fantastic experience. Bergen Lydgalleri is a big rectangular space – decorated for the occasion with soft pillows, reindeer fur, sheepskin rugs and pillows in a circle. Speakers formed the outer square, bathing us sounds of mosquitos, old refrigerator sounds, winds, lo-fi beats of about 66 bpm, – the emulation of a human heartbeat. Ánndaris asked us to close our eyes, take a nap, or journey as far or as short as we wanted. I have never experienced anything like it, and I highly recommend experiencing his installations, as they are beyond words. They need to be felt, not described.
The Borealis festival seems very occupied with developing and cultivating listening spaces, and all the panelists throughout the festival were happy to have and share spaces where they could celebrate and engage with their culture, heritage, and diverse backgrounds. Nevertheless, I made a conscious effort to be aware of my own situated body in all the gatherings. My attendance was rooted in my role as a researcher, but in some ways, I had to leave my academic mindset aside; this was not a space meant for the mind alone. The works and recordings shared by the panelists invoked feelings, memories and places felt too personal to include in any field note or report. This was a small revelation, but a deep-seated lesson I brought with me into the following days. Listening is deeply relational, and more often it reveals information about ourselves as much as our environs.
Friday – Sámi Listening with Elina Waage Mikalsen, Liisa-Rávná Finbog and Jalvvi Niilas Holmberg
Before the talk began, Niilas Holmberg hit play, and the sounds of lapping water surrounded us. A dark voice gently joins the quiet susurrus of the wind and we heard a boat being launched and gently splashing into the Deatnu river. The sharp twang of a fishing-line accompanies Holmberg’s joik, a warm and almost familiar lilt. It was an excerpt of a new project, Luođik with sound designer Pekka Aikio, where Holmberg rows on the river and joiks his ancestors and other relations from that area. Picking up the concept from the last talk about ephemeral sounds, like the ones made by a fatnu, Holmberg takes inspiration from two cruel cultural and environmental realities. His album captures two ephemeral Sámi soundscapes; joik as a mode of communication and connection (historically demonised and suppressed by religious forces) and fishing regulations on the waters of Sápmi (land rights).
With him were Borealis festival Artist in Residence Elina Waage Mikalsen, and duojár, author, and curator Liisa-Rávná Finbog. Picking up the thread from the last panel on Sámi Experimentalism, Finbog iterated that listening happens in your body, a practice she learned from her grandmother walking the land every summer. Key among her grandmother’s teachings was the idea that whenever you walk in nature, you are never alone. To listen to the wind, the birds, and the sounds of the ocean, is to immerse yourself among many voices and you need to listen – as in take in and act on, the information they provide. If you enter a copse of trees and all the sounds of birds or small animals are gone, then you know danger is near.
You feel with the gut, not the mind or the ears.
Sámi idiom
Finbog explained that this is the situation for indigenous people living in non-indigenous societies, where these kinds of knowledges are devalued and ignored. Knowledge-making, especially in Western, academia or other knowledge-making institutions, equates “objective rationale” with truth, and therefore, it is the only way of understanding the world around us.
Listening is an holistic practice in Sámi culture.
liisa-rávná finbog
However, the act of listening in a Norwegian context has been completely fragmented, says Finbog.
Birgon
A recurring aspect of the Borealis Festival was translation and fluency. Some panelists were fortunate enough to have grown up speaking one of the many Sámi languages, while others grew up speaking Norwegian for various reasons. Language is a carrier of tradition and connection, and many of the panelists spoke of the joy and pain of reconnecting with their languages that were stolen from them and generations past. One might ask if that seems counter-intuitive to the theme of this year’s Borealis festival to have English as the ‘common tongue’. I think it served as a rather poignant nod to the colonial systems behind the Norwegianisation of parts of Sápmi, and it was a constant presence in all the panels I attended. The panelist tried to articulate multifaceted concepts in a language so far removed from their own, back and forth, but there was a general understanding of that involuntary aphasia – it is not your fault that you have to formulate sentences in a language that does not understand the land and traditions that made you. Finbog shared her experience of the dissonance caused by speaking English in a group of indigenous people from different parts of the world, and struggling to find fitting words. Using a language shaped by the forces of capitalism for centuries is counter-productive. Borrowing the words of Linda Tuwahi Smith: colonization is not about land, but about changing what makes a people a people. Finbog circled back to the important connection between language, and land, as the respect for all living things is embedded in sámigiella [Sámi language], but not in Norwegian, Swedish, Russian or Finnish.
Davvisamigiella, for example, has several words to describe the different sounds water makes, Holmberg notes. In addition to his new album, he is thinking of collecting Sámi sound-words, and “different voices that water makes”. Waage Mikalsen also noted the richness and multiplicity of certain Sámi words, like “jietna” which means both ‘sound’ and ‘voice’.
They spoke about reciprocity of communication – the words for hunting/fishing also means “to ask permission”, meaning that action is enabled by mutual consent between agents. Similarily, as Finbog explores in her bookIt speaks to you: Making kin of people, duodji and stories in Sámi museums, working with sámi crafts and traditions is a constant collaboration and familiarity with different materials: the materials also determine how and what it wants to become. This also applies to technological equipment, adds Waage Mikalsen. If her instruments or equipment stop working or experiences difficulties, she will stop recording. The ability to listen to the materials is essential to build proper relations with your surroundings.
If we start to listen to our surroundings and sounds as if they were voices, then we have to relate to them in a non-hierarchical way.
Elina Waage Mikalsen
I felt very grateful and humbled by their discussion, and I highly recommend listening to the full conversation here.
Stáinnarbánit – Elina Waage Mikalsen, Márjá Karlsen and Jalvvi Niilas Holmberg
Stáinnarbánit
Vapours rise from the stage as Niilas Holmberg boils water and place the coffebeans in his handheld grinder. The lodestones of the rátnu gently clack together as Márja Karlsen guide the thick and soft wool wefts, gently patting in an upwards motion with the back of her hand. A thin wailing joins from a self-made instrument as Waage Mikalsen drags a bow across a wooden structure.
Stáinnarbánit [Wolfish teeth] is a soundwork was performed by Márja Karlsen weaving on a rátnu, Jalvvi Niilas Holmberg joiking and brewing coffee, and Elina Waage Mikalsen using different musical and electronic techniques to manipulate and interweave sound. It was astonishing and mesmerizing. The nature of the piece makes it so that it will never be performed the same way twice, and enfolds materiality and different cultural practices forming an entangled, and complete whole. The sounds of the loom and the coffee grinder dissolves dimensions of time. As Niilas Holmberg stated earlier, these sounds make me travel through time: I feel as if I’ve been here a thousand times before, “and it’s the same with the loom, telling the story of thousands of hands, working – it hasn’t changed, it’s the same sound” (Waage Mikalsen).
Repetition, circles and weaving characterise this new performance commission Stáinnarbánit – Wolffish teeth, from Borealis Artist in Residence, Elina Waage Mikalsen. Taking as its starting point the very short and possibly endless form of the luohti (joik) Elina combines electronics, vocal performance and weaving to allow small repetitions to tell bigger stories, including that of the rátnu. A weaving tradition once practised all over Sápmi, today rátnu is a living tradition surviving only in the sea-Sámi village Olmmáivággi of Elina’s mother. Stáinnarbánit, reffering to the name of one of the patterns used in the weaving tradition, will be a performance about soft and repetitive work and how all objects speak, if we just listen closely. (From the Borealis website)
Sámi Listening with Jalvvi Niilas Holmberg (left), Lisa-Rávná Finbog, and Elina Waage Mikalsen.Stáinnarbánit with Peter, Niilas, Marja and ElinaReinventing Joik with Johan Sara Jr (left) and Viktor Bomstad.
