BEK invited Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Mark Fell and Rian Treanor to a two-week research trip to Longyearbyen and Pyramiden on Svalbard.

During the residency, the artists collected and analysed material around the settlements, industries and scientific stations, placed midst in the hostile Arctic landscape, as well as in the center of various geopolitical and geostrategic blueprints.

One of the central questions behind the theoretical and practical research conducted by BEK is how we relate to surrounding environments and contexts through practice, and how methodologies and tools that we are using shape these relations. In June 2024, BEK, together with the invited artists, was zooming onto this question during a 2 week research trip to Longyearbyen and Pyramiden on Svalbard, while exploring the settlements, abandoned industries and advanced scientific stations, placed midst in the hostile Arctic landscape, as well as in the center of various geopolitical and geostrategic blueprints.

During the residency, the artists were collecting and analysing materials through field recording, filming, and conversations with local residents and organizations: from Artica Svalbard and Svalbard Museum to Longyearbyen lokalstyre and LPO Architects Svalbard; from power station Fossil to EISCAT Svalbard radar; and from mountain tops around Longyearbyen to glaciers and valleys of Billefjord.

CM von Hausswolff was focusing on field recording in abandoned mine shafts and buildings, using various types of microphones, in order to analyze the recordings for EVP (electronic voice phenomena) results. He was also, through a series of interviews, looking into the political system and history on Svalbard, in order to develop a new iteration of his conceptual art project Elgaland-Vargaland, analyzing and criticizing the ideas and mechanisms behind the concept of a nation-state.

Mark Fell and Rian Treanor are in particular interested in bringing together perspectives from psycho-geography, land art, sound based practices, procedural performance, and contemporary philosophy. During the residency they were approaching the local context with a specific focus on the following considerations: the relationship between time, sound and landscape; the patterns of being that exist between ourselves and the landscape; the implications of consequences of these patterns of being in terms of environmental care, sustainability and responsibility.