Margrethe Pettersen
b. 1977

How can we make knowledge more intimate - so the complex connections are easier to understand? For a long time I have been preoccupied by the concepts of underworlds and natural processes we do not see. Through my artistic research of plants and their narratives and behaviours I have become aware of other structures and relations to place - both in time and space.

I have made soundwalks in urban and rural landscapes - framed and activated our senses in different ways, and experimented with the protagonist - in a more than human thematic. Conversations and collaborations with academics, other artists and scientists have given me new knowledge and changed my perspectives.

Further, after reading indigenous methodologies it has made me ask questions differently. What can landscapes tell us or teach us about collective consciousness, reciprocity and mediation of knowledge? Of the creatures and critters on this planet, essential to life.

There are things we can not observe, or see, and as a consequence we believe there is no activity. This is why, entering into PolArt and looking closer at what the researchers in the ARCTOS network are working on, their recent findings in the arctic ocean caught my attention. They have started to map the activities in the polar night. The activity is enormous until the lights are switched on, then the plankton and other life venture further down into the depths - and into the darkness. During the dark period, around full moon, they extend day and night and change behaviour.


The darkness has its own power and contact with something else or something bigger - this we to seldom think about in our enlightened time. We are blinded by light and the preconception that we need to feel coherence, that is what I would like to examine further, listen to and experience.

Margrethe Pettersen (b. 1977, Tromsø, lives and works in Oslo) is a florist and contemporary artist and holds a BA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. She is currently an MA student at the program Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Pettersen has a social, political and environmentally aware art practice. She wants to encourage thought-processes around definition of power, memory, the identity of places, ecology and city development. She brings her sami roots and storytelling traditions from the north, with oral dissemination of knowledge, into her work.

Havnivå - soundsculpture/installation - Kurant Nabolag, Tromsø, 2016

When the tide is in ebb other spaces emerge and the listening to new landscapes is possible. I wanted to give the audience an opportunity to walk in the ebb, to get in contact with the sea by listening and smelling. A raft was secured under one of the oldest piers in Tromsø, covered with driftwood, and situated by the last accessible ebb in the city centre.



The schedule for the tide was available by the shore, listing the time for when you could walk out, sit down and listen to the soundsculpture. During the opening event the audience was brought out to the raft, and to other piers in the area in a rowboat. During the exhibition period which was all summer, visitors could borrow the boat.

Living Land - Under as Above, soundwalk,
Dark Ecology, Kirkenes 2015

Soundwalk on the frozen lake, Postmestervannet, on the outskirts of Kirkenes. The work was made for Dark Ecology - curated by Hilde Mehti and Sonic Acts. The audience were transported by bus and given scooter overalls and ipods upon arrival. They had to follow the lights and the duration of the walk was 20 min. At the end there was set up a lavvo where peolpe where invited to get warm and share their experience.

The soundscape is a combination of old stories about the surrounding landscape in both sami and english, where the snow and waterplant in hibernation are protagonists. The compsition in the soundscape was done in collaboration with Christian Hollingsæter.


You can listen to Living Land - Under as Above here.