SOLAR SONIC COMMUNITIES is a series exploring participatory ways to listen-with the forest according to its own time and rhythm.
By following the forest's own body clock based on the sun's rays and movements, ways of listening-with the forest and more than human life may be explored.
In SOLAR SONIC COMMUNITIES, I once again return to the hidden and forgotten lurking in the insterstices, overlaps and gaps. New forms of live processes, chance, intuition and collectivity are examined to encounter alternate patterns, untrodden paths and hidden tracks.
UNDER
2021–22
UNDER is a site-specific solar powered sound installation and a community project involving hiking, cooking, listening and camping together that took place in the nature area of Florarna in Norra Uppland, during 2020-2022.
The work and project was created and exhibited over two years in collaboration with the nature guide, Stefan Skoglund, the biologist, Marie Kvarnström and Konstfrämjandet Uppland, within the interregional project Skogen Mellan Oss.
The work is based on the artist Jenny Sunesson’s personal survey of Florarna nature area and reserve, which is located near her own home in Örbyhus.
For almost a year, and during somewhat stressful conditions, Jenny explored the subterranean sound world of Florarna using contact microphones dependent on power from portable solar panels.
During this process, Sunesson challenges her own relation to the forest and her constant objectification of it while recording.
However, it soon becomes obvious that the strict, solar-powered work process might not be the solution to her urge to control the forest and its biology.
Instead, it is during the unsentimental struggle, the mosquito-filled sweaty, stinging process and the uneasy interactions that glimpses of consensus and reciprocity between forest, machine and human appear.
HYMN FOR A DE-HYDRATED SPRUCE
4-channel sound installation for water towers
2019
Hymn for a De-hydrated spruce is the first piece in the SOLAR SONIC COMMUNITIES SERIES. It is a live work that I started working on in 2019.
The work is a study of drought and the effects of drought on the spruce habitat. It is based on a specific spruce that stands on the edge of my forest plot.
The work began after the spruce's physical reaction to the dry summer of 2018; it began to produce a huge amount of pine cones.
The spruce simply believed that it would die of dehydration and gathered its last strength to reproduce. I began to study the trees' intricate communication systems to better understand how trees respond to drought. The sound work explores an inner journey inside a thirsty spruce. It is based on scientific recordings and my own field recordings and close examination of and listening to the textures and sonic capacities of the organic materials in the dry nature.
The process led on to the work with UNDER.
