Three New Residents Arrive for the Tarandus Project this Autumn
Jess Mountfield, Kristin Wichstrøm and Chris Fohringer are heading out from Longyearbyen today for the next chapter of the Tarandus Field-Based Residency.
Developed in collaboration with the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Tarandus places residents alongside ongoing research on Svalbard reindeer. The three residents will spend time at the remote Tarandus field cabin, approximately 40 km south of Longyearbyen, exploring the landscape through animation, sound, visual art and ecological research.
Jess Mountfield is an animation director, illustrator and lecturer at the University of the Arts London. Her work brings together documentary storytelling, visual anthropology and collaborative practice.
At Tarandus, Jess will continue her research into different ways of experiencing time. Drawing on two previous summers in Svalbard, she will explore rhythms that range from geological deep time to the cycles of reindeer, lichen, weather, light, migratory birds and microbes. Through fieldwork, drawing, writing and mapping, she will gather material for her current writing on time and an experimental animated film.
Kristin Wichstrøm is a Norwegian artist and lighting designer working across installation, light, sound and computational image-making. Chris Fohringer is a wildlife biologist and postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University whose research examines how Arctic herbivores adapt to changing environments. Together, they co-organise ASSMR, a Copenhagen-based queer platform for sound and performance art.
During their residency, Kristin and Chris will bring their artistic and scientific practices together to ask how environmental change might be heard and seen. They will experiment with field recordings, environmental sensors and digital visualisation, exploring ways to translate sounds and scientific data into an audiovisual account of adaptation in a warming Arctic. Their research will contribute to the development of a multimedia installation and a possible online archive.