Christine Ödlund works in a wide range of media: delicate watercolours depicting cycles, musical scores, plants and aquatic worlds; videos; sculptural installations where visitors encounter other living organisms; and sound pieces seeking to connect with different forms of life. In parallel with her installations featuring in the exhibition Suivre les ondes, where plants and sounds create a complete biotope, Christine Ödlund, along with members of her group, performs music originating from the richest ecosystem on the planet, namely marshland.
The composition Four Dimensions of a Swamp arose from the artist’s numerous visits to a swamp in Djurgården, Stockholm, where old lakes and ponds have been planted with trees and shrubs, forming flooded forests acting as sponges and giant reservoirs. Autoharp, shruti box, voice and synthesizer blend with recordings made in the air and water of the swamp, which Christine Ödlund sees as a perfect metaphor for art: “The fluid random chance and coincidence must stay in balance with solid matter and structure, while moving along the domains of history and myth. The flora and fauna teach the senses to stay attuned. The swamp is beautiful and eerie, otherworldly, and somehow connected to another dimension. A fourth dimension of both time and space, where the artist becomes the link between the wordless non-human intelligent life and the disconnected world of mankind.”
The group Malörtens Vänner (literally, “Friends of Wormwood”) was set up by Christine Ödlund with Marcus Matt and Andreas Kalliaridis. Accompanied by Fredrik Söderberg, they’ll be offering a meditative performance of Four Dimensions of a Swamp. After Tokyo, Oslo, Trondheim and Stockholm, the group will be making the world’s ecosystems resonate with one another in Le Marais (“The Swamp”).
Before the concert there will be a discussion on communication between plants, linguistic barriers between humans and plants, and the intersection between science and art. We will discuss how multi-disciplinary intellectual approaches can change our perception of nature.
With:
- Christine Ödlund
- Sara Arrhenius: director of the Institut suédois and co-curator of Suivre les ondes.
- Guillaume Logé: research fellow at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University; artistic advidor; PhD in aesthetics and the history of environmental arts and sciences. Author of Renaissance sauvage. L’art de l’Anthropocène (2019) and Le musée monde. L’art comme écologie (2022).
Useful information
- Admission free, no need to book in advance.
- The discussion is partly in French, partly in English.