What role does geology play in our daily lives? "How to Breathe Rock – Artistic Meditation through Matter" is a sound work created by Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir for the Energy Centre at the University of Stavanger.
About the sound work
The work explores the relationship between humans and the earth we stand on. The starting point is the new energy wells drilled several meters below the campus, where geothermal energy will reduce the university's energy consumption by over 60 percent. Join a meditation on the often hidden but fundamental connection we have to the geology around us.
The sound work invites you to put on your headphones and experience a perspective on our physical world that we often forget, and which the artist describes as easy to lose grip on. Hear a voice that, through facts, history, and poetry, directly relates to the infinitely long processes that underpin our ability to live as we do today.
When you enter the building that keeps you warm, you are entering a three dimensional space made out of materials that were once inside the Earth: the iron structure, the aluminum facade, the plaster, ceramic, clay and raw pigments in walls and flooring, the glass windows and the entire electrical grid.
Listen to How to Breathe Rock
The sound work is available at several locations on the university campus. Look for QR codes on the columns of the new energy building, by the cafeteria, and on the concrete blocks around the campus.
Put on your headphones and reflect on the energy wells located many meters beneath the ground you stand on, through facts, history, and poetry.
About the artist
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir (b. 1980, Iceland) has a broad artistic practice.
She works with kinetic sculptures, mixed media, sound, film, and sculptural performances that both support and undermine our usual perception of ourselves, time, and nature.
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir holds a master's degree from Concordia University, Canada (2014), and a bachelor's degree from the Iceland Academy of the Arts (2004).
Tryggvadóttir has had solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland (2024) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2020). In 2022, she participated in documenta fifteen in Kassel.
The art project is curated and produced by Ida Højgaard Thjømøe and Sofie B. Ringstad at KORO – Public Art Norway. Read more about the art at the new Energy Centre on koro.no (in Norwegian).
Colophon
Colophon for "How to Breathe Rock – Artistic Meditation through Matter"
By Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir (2024)
An audio reflection on human interdependence with geology.
Public artwork at the UiS Energy Center in Stavanger , produced by KORO – Public Art Norway
Accessible via QR code distributed on signs on location, the audio piece can be listened to whether standing still, walking, or sitting, moving about freely.
This artistic meditation focuses on our human corporeality and other corporeal bodies as our source of life and imagination. It explores the animacy of minerals, processes of interdependence, symbiosis, and variations of material relationships co-creating this moment in time with us.
Throughout the audio journey listeners are invited to access the depth of their own sensorial resources and attune themselves to more layers in the landscapes of the present.
Editor: Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch
Sound Design: Halldór Eldjárn
Graphic Design: Studio Studio
Curators: Ida Höjgaard Thjomoe & Sofia B. Ringstad
Project Leaders: Pernille Skar Norby & Trond Hugo Haugen, KORO – Public Art Norway
Copyright © 2024
Credits
Direct quotation, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
Nin, Anaïs (1961). Seduction of the Minotaur. Swallow Press.
The artist would like to thank:
Andreas Klovholt, Andri Snær Magnason, Ayumi Paul, Elín Hansdóttir, Fredrik Skaug Fadnes, Harald Jonsson, Hildegard Nortvedt, Linn Carin Dirdal, Lise Chantrier Aasen, Pål Thjømøe, Oyvind Hustoft.
The artist is represented by Gallery Gudmundsdottir, Berlin: www.gallerygudmundsdottir.com
The artist’s website: www.annaruntryggvadottir.net