Kristin Wichstrøm and Chris Fohringer
In residence: September - October 2026
Kristin Wichstrøm (she/her) is a Norwegian artist and lighting designer whose practice unfolds at the intersection of installation, light, sound and computational image-making. She investigates systems that connect these mediums, creating visually driven works informed by choreographic and performative structures.
Working primarily through collaborative processes, Wichstrøm brings together different artistic perspectives and methodologies, developing shared aesthetic and visual languages through experimentation and dialogue. Her projects have involved collaborations with musicians, performers, researchers and visual artists, and have been presented across Norway, Denmark and internationally in theatres, concert venues, galleries and cross-disciplinary platforms. Working with and through technology, she is particularly interested in posthumanism and ideas of utopia.
Chris Fohringer (they/them) is a wildlife biologist and MSCA postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark. Growing up in the Austrian Alps, Fohringer developed an early relationship with mountain landscapes and human-nature entanglements that continues to inform both their scientific and artistic practice.
Their research focuses on the ecophysiology of Arctic herbivores, including reindeer, muskox and moose, investigating how these species physiologically and behaviourally adapt to extreme and rapidly changing environments. Combining ecological fieldwork with social-ecological inquiry, their interdisciplinary approach brings together biological processes, climate change and human dimensions.
Alongside their scientific research, Fohringer has developed a practice in music curation and performance, with a particular interest in bringing scientific research into dialogue with creative methodologies. Their work explores audiovisual approaches to perception, embodiment and multispecies relations, increasingly considering these intersections through a queer lens.
Together, Wichstrøm and Fohringer co-organise ASSMR, a Copenhagen-based queer collective and platform exploring the intersection of sound and performance art. Through original works, collaborations and events, ASSMR creates spaces for experimentation, audiovisual performance and queer artistic exchange.
During their residency at Artica Svalbard, Wichstrøm and Fohringer will bring their artistic and scientific practices together to explore how environmental change can be perceived through sound and translated into audiovisual forms. They will experiment with methods for recording and amplifying environmental sounds in Svalbard, including those of wildlife, and investigate how these soundscapes respond to changing environmental conditions.
Combining field recordings with data captured through environmental sensors, they will explore ways of transforming sonic material and scientific datasets into digital visual representations. Through this process, the project seeks to communicate narratives of adaptation within the context of a rapidly warming Arctic, considering how environmental data can be experienced not only scientifically, but sensorially.
The research is intended to develop towards a multimedia installation, with the possibility of also creating an online archive where environmental recordings, data and visualisation come together to create an accessible public narrative of environmental change.
Read more about the Tarandus project here.