Björk has always been ahead of her time and it was no different when she named her album ‘Biophilia’ – the love of nature – leaving me trailing behind flying my biophilic flag six years later as I join the Treeline project to head to Oslo.
A couple of things infiltrated my mind as I prepared to leave for the trip. So many people live in cities, it makes sense to integrate nature if we’re to attempt a move towards sustainable lifestyles. So, what everyday things am I doing that could easily be changed to have a positive outcome for the environment? Small actions done everyday by every person can have a marked impact globally.
I also have to admit to nervousness about the heightened global awareness of the prevalence of sexual harassment. Would I see traces of that, or evidence of toxic masculinity, in the art world in Oslo? How would I deal with it if I came across it? (Answer is: write a blog post.)
Immediately, I am thrown into another ethical dilemma. Does the damage my cheap flight is costing the earth outweigh the outcome of visiting Oslo? I mention it to Daniel Hopkins who I am flying over with. He, like myself, is a member of Black Hole Club at Vivid Projects. We don’t really come to a conclusion.
As we get the train from Oslo airport to the city I’m suddenly reminded of my former Scandinavian lifestyle having once lived in Sweden for a year. We’ve unintentionally become the loud tourists on the train – it is remarkably quiet and extremely clean. The video monitors display the news and advertise a film festival going on while we’re there. Everything seems so relaxed, quiet, and cultured. Dan’s suitcase flies across the carriage from the luggage racks as it’s on wheels and the train is travelling a bit smooth for it’s liking. The carriage gasps and a man runs up after Dan to make sure his own case won’t take on a life of it’s own.
Later, as I picked the incorrect suggested address on Google Maps, we end up towards the top of the city and have to walk back down in the moonlight passing some allotments along the way to find our townhouse. Growing things in a capital city.
We meet Christian the next day, the newly appointed director of Notam, the Norwegian center for technology in the arts and music. For me, the main take away of the meeting – in addition to partnering with Notam on our project – is something Christian says as a side note. In the summer everyone climbs through the windows to swim in the river running alongside the building. As a child, Christian said the river was not clean enough to swim in. Change is possible in our lifetime.
Gyrid from pnek arts is at Notam working on a sound installation. Another interesting side note, she mentions some work done by a colleague where they found that underground mining was so loud that is was killing fish. What else will I learn on this visit?
Well, there is a phrase that I know Jaime Jackson has already mentioned. It is something Professor of Geography Karen O’Brian mentioned to us and means ‘fire soul’, ildsjel. This term is used to describe people who are driving forces to action, for example MPs rallying in Parliament, or people who enthusiastically do everything they can in the community. We need more fire souls to get action taken about the climate change and the environment especially within the city space. Karen also talks about the need to help people ‘activate’ their power as individuals to influence government on climate change and restricting damage to the planet.
Why use heaters when you can wrap yourself in a sheepskin? Every little helps.
Now moving on to discuss patriarchy. During my visit to Oslo I had one meeting where I felt my contribution to the conversation was not being heard. Another person repeated pretty much what I had already said and then it was responded to. This happened a couple of times during that meeting. What does a woman need to do to get heard? I left that meeting not pleased at all with the outcome. The majority of the meeting was had by men. I deal with this fairly regularly but I had let my guard down and forgotten to actively address the situation. In this case I would have simply asked if there was anything wrong with the way I was expressing myself as I wasn’t sure it was getting through.
On a related note, on another occasion we attended a music event whereby the host had told the audience to ‘do what they needed to do’ during a break where an important piece of music was played. I was then told to be quiet by the host, that people might be annoyed by the distraction. He leaned into me when he said this and was gesticulating with his hands. I noticed other people seemed to be talking but was too embarrassed/undermined to say anything. Later, they sent me a private message to say I wasn’t even being disruptive but that they wanted to curb any disruption before it happened. This was totally outside of the theme for the event, of political revolution and challenging the status quo.
Later, I thought a lot about how women are often silenced or intimidated. A small action can have such a deterring impact, especially when it happens often. I was feeling it on this trip, having to call out racism in one conversation when someone said that we’re all made up of colour and no one is any less the target of racism. This was said by a white male. (I pointed out their privilege and that power structures function in different ways.) Intersectionality is incredibly important for me as a British-Indian female and this is something I take with me wherever I go whether I want to or not and Oslo is no exception. We need to persistently call out these issues if we’re to really bring about change. That goes for the environment, too. Abuse of power comes as no surprise. #notsurprised
There is so much more I could write but I should start drawing to a close. I would like to mention one last thing. The lady working in the vintage interiors store nearby the townhouse was interesting to talk to. She used to work as an art consultant on cruise ships, then as a set designer in film/TV. Here she is in her store Inventarium:
This made me think about the economy of furniture. The beautiful art pieces in the store are old and have had previous owners yet the value maintains on these items and they have avoided being thrown away or discarded. That economy is helping the environment. (It helps that older items seemed to have been built to last.) The trip to Oslo was really making me think, even the vintage store suddenly had environmental significance.
All in all I had a really engaging and productive visit to Oslo. As an audio-visual artist I witnessed two brilliant pieces that inspired me to push the content of my work further. I will soon be preparing my artist response to this project for a February show at Vivid Projects.
I have much food for thought including this suggestion below for further reading for anyone interested. This is reconnected me to my background in philosophy and aesthetics so I now have more strings to my bow in continuing to work on this project and in this newly formed network with Oslo.
