Detail: Remains of the Old Dam
THE RIVER SPEAKS (FLUVIAL DEPOSITS)
work in progress
20226 © Stine Gonsholt
Improvisation/voice by Anne Lise Sydnes
Sound by Halvor Nordal Strand/LYDFORTELLINGER
Kverndalen I nytt lys: Public Soundwalk
Kulturbyrået Mesén // Rom for kunst // Skien Municipality
Supported by KORO and Vestfold and Telemark County
THE RIVER SPEAKS is an improvisation-based collaboration between Anne Lise Sydnes and Halvor Nordal Strand, developed from FLUVIAL DEPOSITS (2021–26). The work is commissioned as a site-specific sound walk/podcast situated in the Kverndalen district of Skien. The project investigates the significance of a river course as an archive and how a place's status can change over time. The work pays particular attention to how the meaning of landscape is continuously negotiated, and how our understanding of place is bound to the temporal perspectives we inhabit.
During urban development in the 1970s, the river Lortebekk was placed in pipes, under construction debris and infrastructure.
Until then, the stream played an important role for settlements, the establishment of industry and for all life found in the valley.
Until then, the stream played an important role for settlements, the establishment of industry and for all life found in the valley.
In the project, this river is used to investigate the connection of the local landscape to processes of change, how the status of the place changes and global connections emerge in such processes. Through geology, archeology and a potentially existing species diversity in the river, its history is told. The material it leaves behind on its journey through the landscape, in the past, present and future, is also our history.
Gonsholt investigate how these processes affect the site’s status and the relationship between material and immaterial qualities. The moving images and its soundscape leave the landscape as the protagonist.
Detail: Remains of the Old Dam.
From Kverndalen
Detail: Remains of the Old Dam
Detail: Remains of the Old Dam