26/05/2024
Eliza Bożek and Nanna Elvin Hansen - "Watery Bodies by Giemas" !
Eliza and Nanna released their newly pressed album Watery Bodies by Giemas yesterday at the Nordsø Stage ! A beautiful soundscape of field recordings way up north and for once, yours sincerely will make the press release talk do the talking :
"Sonic research into the extractive landscape of the quartzite quarry at the Giemaš mountain. The compositions are based on field recordings made in and around this quarry which is one of
the world’s largest quartzite mines, extracting around 850,000 tons annually. It is situated in the formerly Danish-controlled area of Sápmi in northernmost Norway, by the small village Austertana, close to the Russian and Finnish borders.
SIDE A: Watery Bodies by Giemaš.
From the 13th-14th of March 2023, Eliza Bożek and Nanna Elvin Hansen set up a radio livestream where listeners could attune to sounds of watery movements by the shore of Lávvonjárga, a tiny Sami settlement on the strait marking the entrance to the fjord where the quartzite quarry is located. The broadcast offered a slow listening space and was an invitation to listen to soundscapes of the watery movements of difference and repetition. Using microphones above and under water, we tuned into connected waters in Arctic areas of Sapmí in Norway that face change and are sites of political contestation. The water by Lávvonjárga is a channel that hosts the movements of birds and seals, as well as those of tankers loaded with minerals extracted from the quartzite mining. As part of an application to expand the mining site sixfold, the Chinese-owned mining company Elkem has requested to dredge the channel, which is part of a nature reserve, in order to make space for bigger and more profitable tankers. From Lávvonjárga, the water at the bay of Reakčavuotna can also be heard. In the adjacent landscape of the bay, marks left by migrating reindeer can be seen. If the mine is expanded, it would disrupt the migration routes of the reindeers. As visitors in the landscape, we wanted to position ourselves as listeners and carefully attune to the soundscape under and above the surface of the water. By sharing the sounds of aquatic movements at Lávvonjárga, we want to bring attention to connectivity through water between specific contexts and locations as well as between different types of bodies. Lending our ear to the sea and engaging in slow listening, we speculate on the possibilities of fostering kinship through water as it flows through different spaces, through human and non-human bodies.
SIDE B: Groundings.
The composition follows the mineral quartzite as it is transformed through industrial processes, from the top of the vertical quarry where quartzite compose the folded layers in Giemaš, to the
blasting site where the mineral is excavated from the body of the mountain, on to where rocks are crushed and subsequently divided into piles at the shore according to size and the purity of
the mineral. From there, the stones are loaded onto tankers and shipped out from the bay for further processing. Navigating the landscape, we used different types of microphones to guide and position our listening perspectives. From the cold ambiences of metal structures of industrial machines, through the unraveling tactility of rocks being excavated from the landscape to the quartzite unloading rhythms traveling across the water, the recordings testify to how the workings of the mine exert a constant sonic presence in the nearby village of Austertana, and becomes
interwoven into the fabric of the local sound habitat. In the recording process we were kindly invited for a boat trip from Lávvonjárga around Giemaš with Yngve Johanson and Joachim Henriksen who are local to the area. The pieces of conversations in the composition about implications of the extractive site for the landscape and its inhabitants are from these trips.
Credits:
Sound recording and editing: moltamole (Eliza Bożek) and Nanna Elvin Hansen
Graphic Design: Anders Gerning
Animation: Halfdan Mouritzen
Voices: Yngve Johanson, Joachim Henriksen and Nanna Elvin Hansen
Thanks to: Yngve Johanson, Joachim Henriksen, Wivian Johnsen, Øystein Hauge, Kate
Johanne Utsi, Tom Ivar Utsi, Roger Holm, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Neal Cahoon, Stephen
McEvoy, Pikene på Broen, Overgaden - Institut for Samtidskunst and The Lake Radio."
