Stine Gonsholt - THE RIVER SPEAKS

Detail: Remains of the Old Dam

THE RIVER SPEAKS (FLUVIAL DEPOSITS)

work in progress

20226 © Stine Gonsholt

Improvisation, voice and soundscape by Anne Lise Sydnes

and Halvor Nordal Strand //LYDFORTELLINGER

Text and visuals y Stine Gonsholt

*Kverndalen I nytt lys: Public Soundwalk

Kulturbyrået Mesén // Rom for kunst // Skien Municipality

Supported by KORO and Telemark County

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.

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.

THE RIVER SPEAKS is an improvisation-based collaboration between Anne Lise Sydnes, Halvor Nordal Strand and Stine Gonsholt, based on the text and sound work *FLUVIAL DEPOSITS a site-specific sound walk soon to be realised 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.

Detail: Remains of the Old Dam.

From Kverndalen

Detail: Remains of the Old Dam