Explore Norway with us through the sounds of contemporary art. Featuring projects by artists Tori Wrånes, Jana Winderen, Ánde Somby, Marita Isobel Solberg, Charlotte Nilsen and Amund S. Sveen from sonic encounters in Oslo and Tromsø.

From Cathy’s notes:

Cathy Byrd writes of her experiences in Norway:

One of my strongest first impressions is a video representing the work of musician and performance artist Tori Wrånes. In her solo exhibition titled Hot Pockets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, she uses costumes, props, voice and movement to create suggestive and hypnotic pockets of time – secret spaces in her realm of magical thinking. We share a few minutes of the audio track from a three-hour live performance that Wrånes staged in 2014 with a cast of amazing characters.

On our last evening in Oslo, after two intense days of presentations and museum and gallery visits, we gather at SALT, a nomadic art project currently situated on the city’s shoreline, overlooking the famous Opera House. One of SALT’s pyramid structures is a sauna. While we’re inside absorbing the intense heat, we listen to a set of Polar Sound Tracks. The one by Norwegian artist Jana Winderen takes us beneath the surface of the frigid fjord outside the window.

In Tromsø, we encounter contemporary interpretations of Norway’s indigenous Sami culture. The Sami are people are perhaps best known as nomadic reindeer herders. Historically, their community has flowed across national borders in the far north. The sound experiences in this episode represent different readings of the Sami song form known as yoiking. Our first day above the Arctic Circle begins with Sami artist Marita Isobel Solberg’s performance inside the Trømso Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing. We also get to hear Sami historian Ánde Somby‘s traditional and contemporary yoiking.

While in the Far North, we visit artists studios in Kysten, the name given a building that used to be a hospital, now part of the Troms County Culture Center. In the atelier of Charlotte Nilsen, advocate of Slow Fashion, I learn how she merges traditional Sami style clothes with contemporary dresses, shirts and coats, and she teaches others how to make their own hybrid clothes. I capture one more sonic experience during the Transborder Café at a local theater where artist Amund S. Sveen presents a performance lecture that imagines the possibility of forging a United States of Barents from the territories at the edge of the Barents Sea.

We produced Sounds of Contemporary Art in Norway during an expansive field expedition from May through June 2017. Read more about Destination Fresh Art HERE.

Click on the player below to hear the radio show version of this program.

Contributed by Evelyne Zapata for Fresh Art International.

Related Episodes: Sound Art and Contemporary Culture with IKT in Norway, Curating Art in a Time of Global Change: IKT Norway, 

Related Links: Tori Wrånes, Jana Winderen, Ánde Somby, Marita Isobel Solberg, Charlotte Nilsen, Amund S. Sveen

Related Images: Fresh VUE: Contemporary Art Tromsø Norway 2017