Museum of Sound

Listening room, live concert, and talk: Friday–Saturday October 27–28, times announced on website.

Live performance event: Timo Kaukolampi, Alex Murray Leslie and Tuomas Toivonen / Talk: Maria Veie Sandvik, Rikke Lundgreen, Alex Murray Leslie, Timo Kaukolampi, Tuomas Toivonen and Thora Dolven Balke / Listening room: Tommi Grönlund, Thora Dolven Balke and Rikke Lundgreen.

Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation is situated between mountains and the ocean in Lofoten, an archipelago within the arctic circle in Northern Norway. This event will reflect and discuss what characterises listening and hearing, and how we can stimulate reflection on what constitutes meaningful sound and listening processes.

The Museum of Sound is nomadic and in flux and is rooted in the essence of sound and listening. Tommi Grönlund and Rikke Lundgreen created the initiative while preparing the exhibition Mika Vainio 50Hz at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, autumn 2020. The late Mika Vainio (1962–2017) had a habit of inviting friends to his home, to play them music recordings in silence, with full concentration. In the series of the listening rooms, the aim is to create a similar situation, an empty room full of sound.

How can music trigger an emotional response? Everyone has a relation to sound and it is often defined by subjective experience and memories. The listening room at Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation has the intention to get back to listening as a focused and prioritised activity. With no distractions other than the view to an open horizon, listeners can create a narrative from their own connotations, and just experience sound. 

For the live event there will be a session based on the drum machine Roland TR-808, an instrument that is an institution in itself. 

Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation (MJF) is non-profit foundation in the name of curator Maaretta Jaukkuri. Founded in 2014, it is made possible with donations from artists and generous support from Saastamoinen Foundation and Kone Foundation, Finland. MJFs programme is centred around the foundations building, which houses Maaretta Jaukkuris library, a sauna, simple work and living spaces in close proximity to nature. Here MJF houses an ongoing Fellows programme of visiting artists, curators and other practitioners across a range of fields, as well as a series of public events. 

Rikke Lundgreen is an artist and curator. Lundgreen works with a range of techniques such as sound, film, drawing and installation. A performative event is often a starting point for the installations. She also administers Mika Vainio’s studio, archive, and collections of records and books, remaining in Oslo, where he lived with Lundgreen.

Tommi Grönlund is an artist and runs the record label Sähkö Recordings, which he started with Mika Vainio in 1993. His artistic practice in collaboration with Petteri Nisunen uses a variety of materials and technologies, from objects to light and sound. Often using electric currents, or simple gravitational forces to create quietly evocative and formally striking works.

Read more about the other contributors on the MJF website.