Jana Winderen
Meet the Locals: Underwater, 2025

Jana Winderen works with sounds from environments that are not easily audible to the human ear, often in frequency ranges beyond our hearing. She gives attention to points of connection between species and ecosystems to raise awareness, knowledge, and curiosity about biodiversity in places that often go unseen and unheard.

For across, with nearby, Winderen brings her studio outside to encompass the waterfront and nearby coastal communities. Building on the Cross Course ‘Hold Your Breath and Listen’ that Winderen held last year at Bergen School of Architecture, and which included a live hydrophone transmission, Meet the Locals: Underwater is an eight-channel sound performance and installation that also has live input from three hydrophones amplifying the local underwater environment.

The work builds on Winderen’s installation +4°C — from Folgefonna to The North Sea (2007), where she found and recorded a lively sound environment by Bømlo, which has high biodiversity. This summer, almost 18 years later, she travelled to the same sites and recorded new sounds from around the Hardangerfjord — at Herand, by Folgefonna, Norheimsund, Valevåg, Mosterhamn, Lerivik and Rosendal. Winderen encountered local fish, crustacea, people, spaces, and weather conditions.

The oldest cold-water corals in Norway are 9000 years old, and there are large areas of cold-water reefs and coral forests in the Hardangerfjord, which are like underwater rainforests. These are home to a multitude of species, yet on her recent trip Winderen saw countless fish farms, and heard the concern among the locals about decreasing numbers of wild fish.

Approximately one quarter of deep-water corals are located in Norway. These grow slowly, by only a few millimeters a year. In June 2019, the Norwegian Environment Agency advised the government to establish the Ytre Hardangerfjorden Marine Protected Area (MPA), including the areas that Winderen has recorded repeatedly. Nonetheless, these areas remain unprotected today.

Through a series of site-specific performances in public spaces, Meet the Locals: Underwater combines recordings from 2007 and 2025 with live input. It offers visitors the opportunity to hear and engage with hidden environments that are usually beyond reach, making the unheard sounds of marine life present, and opening space for reflection on our relationship with, and impact on, marine ecosystems.

Jana Winderen (b. 1965, Bodø) is concerned with listening. With a background in mathematics, chemistry, and fish ecology, she now works primarily with installation and performance. Her practice pays attention to audio environments and creatures that we cannot access, whether it be physically or aurally because they live deep underwater, inside ice, or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. She records with different hydrophones, B-format microphones, and microphones that reach into the ultrasound range. Winderen has exhibited her work internationally, performing at Sónar festival, Barcelona (2023); 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale (2018); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012). Her large-scale sound installations have been shown at institutions including the Natural History Museum, London (2024); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2024); Thailand Biennale (2018); TBA21, Augarten, Vienna (2017); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013).


The project is supported by Kulturdirektoratet (Arts and Culture Norway) and Tono.

https://www.janawinderen.com/

For listening:
https://janawinderen.bandcamp.com/