Elin Már Øyen Vister
Along the currents — an ocean of voices, a choral of beings, 2025

Elin Már Øyen Vister with Linnea Axelsson, Mihret Kebede Alwabie, Rana BatrawiLeander Djønne, Harald Gaski, Ola Gjerde, Peter Helland-Hansen, Shahram Khosravi, Blocknotes and prison inmates in The Netherlands, Maaza Mengiste, Shamirza and Reza Moradi Ngartia, Nasser Abu-Srour, Daiyen Jone Castro/Knut Jonas Sellevold/Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Synnøve Persen, Maria Pilegård, Lisbona Rahman, Ata Ratu, Aleksander Aga Røysland, Shareef Sarhan, T. Philippova, Layli Long Soldier, Muhammad al-Zaqzouq, Jana Winderen, and others.

For the duration of across, with, nearby, Elin Már Øyen Vister offers an intimate listening lounge aboard the Literature Boat Epos, where you can listen to a sound work created over the past year along the west coast of Norway and beyond. It offers situated knowledge, and sound and music as a vessel for cultural memory.

Drawing on the thematic framework that shapes the Epos programme, ‘Water as a Linker and Separator’, Along the currents listens and responds to the local coastline and fjord, weaving together a multitude of stories and voices. These come from lands that the North Atlantic Current has passed by, as this powerful warm boundary extends the Gulf Stream north-eastward. Along its route, it has swept up entangled histories of belonging, connection, land protection, and resistance.

Øyen Vister began listening to and recording the Røst archipelago in Lofoten/Lofuohta in 2010, listening and documenting the changing soundscapes of the local bird mountains, which have been in steep decline since the 1960s as a result of climate change, bycatch, and overfishing, amongst other factors. This mirrors the alarming global decline in biodiversity.

Extending this site-specific practice, Øyen Vister’s weaves together interviews, oral histories, field recordings, and musical improvisations from the Hardangerfjord with other global contributions offered by poets, artists, musicians, storytellers, and researchers. The Bergen Assembly 2025 programme has been convened by Adania Shibli, or formulated across encounters with Øyen Vister during the artist’s travels along the fjord. Within this collective group, the North Atlantic becomes a mediator that carries sounds and voices in different languages, those from Gaza, the Zagros Mountains, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, and the fjords of Western Norway.

Contributors during Øyen Vister’s journeys alongside the Hardanger fjord as well as along the route of Epos include: local boat builder Peter Helland-Hansen (Fartøyvernmuséet, Nordheimsund); author and artist Leander Djønne (Grimo); Hardanger fiddle builder and accordion player Ola Gjerde (Strandebarm); artist Jana Winderen (Ottestad) and her past and present listening to/recordings of the Hardanger fjord; local teacher and fisherman Kåre (Aga); Bergen-based musicians Dayen Jone Castro (CU), Knut Jonas Sellevold, and Morten Norbye Halvorsen; Maria Pilegård (Epos/Strandebarm); Hardanger fiddle player and composer Aleksander Aga Røysland (Granvin); and the local land, fjord, and beings of Hardanger.

Elin Már Øyen Vister (b. 1976, Oslo) is an artist, composer, and land/water defender living in the Røst archipelago, in the south westernmost part of Lofoten/Lofuohta islands in the north of Norway/Sábme. Their research-based practice is careful, curious, and site-specific, and is inspired by Deep Listening, Indigenous and postcolonial methodologies, and intersectional ecofeminist and grassroot resistance movements around the world. Working across a wide range of artistic practices including experimental composition, field recordings, collective social processes, and sensory walks, and media such as installation, performance, poetry, and text, Øyen Vister is occupied with the complex entanglements and relations of all living beings and land/water bodies, past, present, and future. They founded Røst AiR, a residency at Skomvær Lighthouse, and Røst in 2012, which they have co-run ever since. They have been listening to, recording, and learning from the seabird mountains and the beings of Røst since 2010.

www.elinmar.com

‘Heartfelt thanks to Adania Shibli and her son, Sena, as well as to Hannah, Ingrid, Tor Espen, and the entire Bergen Assembly team. Thanks to BEK and Morten Norbye Halvorsen and to my colleagues and peers who agreed to contribute to this work. Your resistance and writing inspire me to be more. And thanks to everyone in Hardanger who welcomed me and has given of their time, including people in Herand, Strandebarm, Granvin, Nordheimsund, Grimo, Lofthus, Hereiane, and the Folgefonna glacier itself. #freepalestine.’