Sanselig samhørighet & Láibmat is presented in collaboration with the Borealis festival

and Birgon Sáamid searvi /Bergen Sámi association

and are sound works by Sámi artist and florist Margrethe Pettersen.

Short biog:

The works of Margrethe Iren Pettersen from Romssa/Tromsø on the Norwegian side of Sápmi, materialise as installations, sculptures, sound walks and public growing projects as well as prints, drawings and photographs. In her process-based practice she often works site-specifically by investigating the ecosystems and their complexities. By drawing attention to the characteristics and coexisting life of plants and organisms of different places, she aims to challenge the modern perception that divides culture and nature. Lately, her Sámi roots and the oral tradition of knowledge production in the north, are themes she has brought into her work and research. Margrethe is also a florist, has a BA from the Academy of Art in Tromsø and a MFA from the Art and Public Space programme at KHiO – Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Dolla (Ild/Fire),  32.25 min (2021)

In the Northern summer, it’s not dark. It´s light at night and the birds are singing.

The damp night air covers everything with a thin layer of dew, including my audio recorder lying on a patch of moss with the microphones facing the flames of the fire.

I am lying on the old sleeping pad in my mother’s hiking jacket from the early 2000s. My fire is not big. My hands are forming a dome above the flames and I let the smoke gather in it.

Then, – I let it out.

Fire is a strange thing. When I lit it,  it already exists.  Fire is there like a potential within all things, just waiting for me to put the elements in the right order for it.

At first, there is only birch bark and the smell of bog between my fingers, before the flaming tongues of fire suddenly appear out of every inch of the flammable matter.

They move back and forth, taking over and then letting go. The flames eat up, disappear, change, and become anew.

A sneeze from the ocean, from the ashes, from mythology, spreads across the wood and covers it with its entire being.

(Dolla was originally a commission for Seyðisfjörður Community Radio on Iceland)

Jaskes šukŋa /Undersang, 47 min, 2021

When I was trying to come up with a title for this work, I came to think of the book Underland by Robert Macfarlane. The word undersong is only mentioned once. He is sitting below ground level in what used to be a holy place or a  temple.

He writes:

«…I rest companionably in the cool, listening to the landscapes undersong: clack of the train track, road-hum below it, buzz-saw of grasshoppers from the scrub»

I used to get scared of the stories my aunts and uncles would tell us around the fire, at home in the valley. The gnomes were there, right behind our backs, and could pretend to be one of us at any time. The breath was drawn down into the lungs, and pushed out through the larynx, becoming tones…melody. The oral cavity transformed the sounds into meaning, words. They came out, floating around in the air. The sound waves entered my ear, reaching the tiny hairs of the inner ear which began swaying in the liquid so I could read the information, and understand it.

Undersang/Jaske’s shukŋa was originally created as a sound installation binding together fragments of my family history, weaving them together with mythologies from the underworld. The sound work is a collaboration with my aunt, the author Gerd Mikalsen, whose own voice tells her own stories.

The media player contains 2 files:

1. The original introduction to the radio premiere of Goase dušše by Gunilla Bresky (SE)

2. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää: Goase dušše (Loddesinfoniija/The Bird Symphony)

“The bird symphony we are about to hear is a composition consisting of nature’s own sounds. From the first snowflake that melts in March until the final song of the whooper swan in the autumn before it makes its way back south. It follows the reindeer herding Sami’s sonic world, from the spring in the mountains down to the summers by the sea, and back up again to the mountains in the autumn. It is a journey undertaken with the sun, in the world of birds, from March to October. All recorded by Áilu and completed in his house by the waterfall, with the wind, snow, and reindeer outside the door.” (Gunilla Bresky)

Nils-Aslak Valkepää, also known as Áillohaš, composed Goase dušše on commission from the Music Drama Group/Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. It premiered on Swedish radio on the 22nd of October 1992, and the following year it won the prestigious Prix Italy radio award for “the imagination, poetry and technical excellence of the program”. Goase dušše – the bird symphony is a rich soundscape composition ahead of its time, moving through sonic landscapes of his Sápmi. At one point Áillohaš “juoiggas” (yoiking) can be heard subtly within a soundscape of a reindeer herd.

Áillohaš spent years gathering field recordings, as early as from the 70 ́s onwards. First with a Nagra analog tape recorder and later with a DAT recorder. Goase dušše was mixed in Áillohaš’s little cottage in Beattet (Pättikkä), Northern Sápmi, together with the Swedish sound engineer Mikal Brodin. The radio commission was produced by Gunilla Gustafsson (later Bresky) and Sven Åke Landström for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, Luleå/Julevu. A few years later Goase dušše was released as a CD album on DAT Records.

Goase dušše is listening to the circular soundscapes that Áillohaš and his ancestors were born into, lived their lives surrounded by, and were an integral part of. Soundscapes that gave vital information of the coming and going of seasons. Falling asleep listening to the dawn chorus of a spring-summer night in June and hearing the world through the thin walls of a lávvu or a goahti, will never be the same as sleeping within an insulated house. In ancient Sámi architecture you are listening within; being part of the whole.

Goase dušše can also be felt as a sonic love letter to his winged friends; the ptarmigan, the willow ptarmigan, the European golden plover, the Eurasian dotterel, the wren, the grey-headed chickadees, the bluethroat, the rough-legged buzzard, the whimbrel, the common snipe, the great snipe, the black-throated loon, the long-tailed duck, the black grouse, the common gull, the European herring gull, the black-backed gull, the kittiwake, the gannet, the razorbill, the Eurasian eagle-owl, the arctic terns and their soundings. Áillohaš, who named himself ‘lottiid mánná’, the bird child, often wondered why he was not born with wings himself.

Aillohaš was painstakingly aware of, and mourning the existential threat of the increasing loss of biodiversity on earth when he composed Goase dušše in 1992:

“Regarding this program… I am so often there that I almost know, hour by hour, the ongoings in nature. I know when certain birds are singing. I know where to find them. And I can take this technique with me… Sadly, this is no longer right. You know, the last five years… the world is changing… It was completely different only four years ago… Today you do not know where to find the birds. For example, 20th March or 20th October, what you will find…? The world has changed so severely, and I almost think… there is no way back… I am not sure if nature still exists. I mean, the birds are dying, they will become extinct, I mean nature will die… Very, very ready to die too, yes, because I do not want to live in a nature that is not a nature…. I have done something like a final grouping. If you listen, you will help. Not me, but nature.”

With Goase dušše, Áillohaš wanted to give us the joy of listening to a symphony of the natural world, but at the same time, he is sending us a severe warning. 30 years later, we know that our Earth has entered its sixth extinction event with more than 1.5-degree warming. What the future will sound like is more uncertain than ever.

BIO

NILS ASLAK VALKEAPÄÄ (1943 – 2001)

The multidisciplinary artist/dajddar Nils Aslak Valkeapää aka Áillohaš is a Northern Sámi cultural icon, nation builder, innovator of luohti (Sami joik), a visual art, as well as a Nordic pioneer in poetry, artist books, music publishing (DAT) and sound art and soundscape composition. His work is still of great relevance today, both within the field of art and as an early advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples around the world.

Nils-Aslak Valkeapää / Áillohaš was born in 1943. Throughout Áillohaš’ works one can always find a deep ecological or shall we call it a Sámi methodology: the utmost respect for nature and all its beings. Áillohaš was born into a reindeer-herding family. His mother Ellen Susanna was from Ulisuolu (Uløya) in Northern Romssa/Troms county (Sápmi / Norway) whilst his father Johannes came from the Gárasavvon/Karesuando, Northern Sápmi (Finland) As Áillohaš did not have it in him to kill animals, he became a teacher in order to connect with literature, visual art and music. After graduating in 1966 Áillohaš dedicated himself to forefront Sámi traditions and rights. He was central in the establishment of publishers, unions, and an indigenous festival (The forerunner to Riddu Riddu) with the aim to strengthen Sami culture as he fought for the rights of indigenous people on a global scale. In addition, he left behind a remarkable artistic legacy of his interdisciplinary artistry. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää aka Áillohaš passed in 2001 and his work is still of the greatest importance, inspiration and relevance.

An in-depth biography can be found on the Lásságámmi foundation website.

Programholder i leaibi

Isaksen bruker ofte sin bakgrunn i duodji i sitt håndverk. Program-ramma er laget av oldertre, et

hellig tre i samisk tro. Leabolmmái – oldertremannen – beskytter vandrerne, og fletten som

rammen henger på er av samme type som tradisjonelt brukes på guretgáma, vintersko med

snøring. Metallet, messing, gir vern.

For Jiennagoahti Máret Rávdna has created “Čohkkát-gáma”, an amazing duodji piece taking the form of an enlarged Sámi footwear. It becomes a unique “listening furniture”. 

Máret Rávdna has prepared the reindeer hides, sawn the gámas and filled it with reindeer hair, wool (from Røst), bladder-sedge (Carex vesicaria (rievdnelukti)  or  Carex aquatilis (gámasuoinlukti), traditionally used by Sámi peoples to keep feet warm and dried when prepared traditionally). The gámas is also filled with a particular type of moss the Sámi used in the Sámi cradle board; the Gietka. The gámas is representative of all Sámi peoples, even if there are local variants and different skin/hide used for different regions (seal-calf/reindeer hide), and was the last piece of clothing to be visible among the Sámi in the many hundred years of colonization and the final “Norwegification period”.

Máret Ravdna Buljo (b. 1977) is a Sámi chef, food- and cultural communicator and runs the reindeer farm Boazovázzi in Lødingen in Nordland with her husband. Buljo was the first Sámi recipient of the Ingrid Espelid Hovig Food Culture Prize in 2019 and is particularly focused on communicating Sámi knowledge about sustainability and ethics in regard to animal welfare and resource utilization.

Vi har en helt spesiell rákkas – et tradisjonelt, samisk sovetelt i Jiennagoahti, skapt av kunstner og

duojar Katarina Spik Skum. Skums kunstnerskap bygger på tradisjon, og henter inspirasjon i samisk

kultur og fra naturen. Fargene og mønstrene i det vakre soveteltet, er nøye utvalgt for måten de

speiler området rundt gammen. Tradisjonelt har soveteltet blitt brukt til å holde myggen ute og

varmen inne, og som en viktig romdeler. I Jiennagoahti har rákkasen fått en helt ny funksjon, i

tillegg til de andre; Her er den en ramme for lydverkene, et trygt rom for urolige sjeler og bråkete

sinn, som øver på evnen til å lytte.

Katarina Spik Skum (b. 1979) is a Sámi craftsperson and artist based in Jokkmokk, Sweden. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in duodji (Sámi fine arts) from the Sámi University College in Kautokeino. She is building her practice on Sami craft and artistic traditions, drawing inspiration from the Sápmi landscape and culture, with a main focus on reindeer skin. She has exhibited her work at the Sámi Duodji Foundation Sameslöjdstiftelsen, Jokkmokk; Ájtte; the Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum, Jokkmokk and the Sami Center for Contemporary Art, Karasjok.

Vår gjestebok er laget av Keviselie, Hans Ragnar Mathisen. Hans kart over Sápmi er vakre og viktige manifestasjoner mot fornorskninga og koloniseringa av det samiske landet. Noen av disse kartene har blitt ikoniske symboler på nettopp motstand

, noe som gjør det å bli ønsket velkommen i Jiennagoahti av nettopp Keviselies gjestebok, til en sterk opplevelse som klargjør gammens oppgave; å skape plass til samisk kultur på Vestlandet, gjennom å formidle vårt folks historie her.

Hans Ragnar Mathisen (b. 1946) is a Sami artist residing in Tromsø/Romssa, Northern Sápmi – Northern Norway. He has a degree from the National College of Arts and Craft, Oslo and the National Academy of Art, Oslo. Hans Ragnar Mathisen was a member of the Sami Art Group in Máze, and his productive artistic practice is primarily defined through his long standing advocacy for Sami rights to their own cultural expression, language, land and autonomy. Mathisen has exhibited his work at Dokumenta 14, Oslo Art Association, and Tromsø Art Association.