Listen Up: Northern Soundscapes

On view April 2 - Oct. 3, 2021

The Arctic has its own distinct rhythms. Up here, the sounds of natural forces, animals, and humans come together to create their own kind of music— soundscapes that murmur and boom, throb and hum, crack and cry, rustle and sing. Listening closely to the sounds and silences of the North opens up an intimate and resonant understanding of place.

The central experience of Listen Up is delivered through five sound “cubes” broadcasting recordings of natural and environmental sounds emanating from five locations around Alaska. Visitors can listen to these soundscapes along with new works of sound art created by artists in response to them.

Participating artists live in or are connected to Alaska and other parts of the US, Russia, Canada, and Scandinavia, and range from hip-hop beat makers to throat singers to composers. They include: Marja Ahti, Leah Beeferman, Aqqalu Berthelsen, Davyd Betchkal, Matthew Burtner, Foresteppe, Nicholas Galanin, Shawn Greenlee, Merritt Johnson, John Luther Adams, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Pamyua, Silla and Rise, Alex Somers, and Jana Winderen. Ranging from acoustic and classical to hip-hop, ambient and electronica, these artist recordings will also be available in an upcoming limited-edition release by the museum’s Unbound Records.

Ten new commissions will be debuted by internationally recognized sound artists and musicians. These sound pieces are derived from sound data gathered from across Alaska. The exhibition also highlights Anchorage Museum collection objects along with recordings of their sounds. Additional programming, performances, and temporary installations throughout the run of the exhibition present new works and ways of hearing the Northern landscape.

Ranging from acoustic and classical to hip-hop, ambient and electronica, these recordings will also be available in a limited-edition release by the Museum’s Unbound Records.

Image Credit: Finnbogi Peturss

Ten sound artists and musicians from around the Circumpolar North received a one-minute sound clip from one of five sites throughout the state, including Anchorage, Nenana, Nuiqsut, Soldotna, and Sitka, where the Anchorage Museum continuously records sound data as a part of a soundscape ecology research project.

Each soundscape recording tells a short, sonic story of a place on a specific day, time, and season. The excerpts were recorded at 9 a.m. each day January through May 2019. Each artist took a distinct approach to responding to the sound clip provided. Some incorporated an excerpt; others drew inspiration from specific sounds and rhythms for their new compositions.

Click to enlarge and listen to audio recordings

Sitka

Photo credit: Sitka, Alaska, c. 1930. Photograph by Elbridge W. Merrill. Anchorage Museum collection, B2005.32.90.

Foresteppe

Photo credit: Sofia Klochikhina
Location: Berdsk, Siberia, Russia
Coordinates: 54.7751° N, 83.0800° E
Track: Darkest, 2020

Foresteppe is the musical project by Egor Klochikhin, an artist and history teacher. Foresteppe experiments with the sounds of tape cassettes, acoustic instruments, field recordings, and electronics and explores history and memory, nostalgia and trauma.

Haa Kaax Kei Anatan (The Clouds Are Lifting)

Photo credit: Nicholas Galanin
Location: Sitka, Alaska, United States
Coordinates: 57.0531° N, 135.3300° W
Track: Sheet Ka Kwan Ltd., 2020
Recorded at the Native American Space Agency, Sitka, Alaska
Mixed by: Erik Blood

Nicholas Galanin’s work engages contemporary culture rooted in connection to land. Of Tlingit/Unangax heritage and living in Sitka, Alaska, Galanin employs materials and processes that expand dialogue related to Indigenous artistic production and how culture can be carried.

Click to enlarge and listen to audio recordings

Soldotna, Alaska

Photo credit: Soldotna, Alaska, September 1980. Photograph by Steve McCutcheon. Anchorage Museum collection, B1990.14.4.tv.177.20949.

Jeneen Frei Njootli

Photo credit: NGC

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Coordinates: 49.2827° N, 123.1207° W

Track: A continual fracture necessary for thrivance: never say you are good at it but that you practice, 2020

Jeneen Frei Njootli is a Vuntut Gwitchin, Czech and Dutch artist whose work challenges the permanence of capitalist, consumer-driven systems and honors Indigenous women’s labor and cultural knowledge. Njootli’s interdisciplinary practice engages across performance, sound, textiles, collaboration, workshops, and scholarship. Frei Njootli has been living and working as an uninvited guest on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Sto:lo and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Silla and Rise

Photo credit: Rise Ashen

Location: Ottawa, Canada

Coordinates: 45.4215° N, 75.6972° W

Track: Soldotna Nikosi, 2020

Silla and Rise blend Inuit throat-singing and futuristic dancefloor beats. Silla are Cynthia Pitsiulak (Kimmirut, NU) and Charlotte Qamaniq (Iglulik, NU. Their name comes from the Inuktitut word "Sila," meaning weather. Sila is what surrounds us; it is what connects us to our land, to the moon, sun and stars, the ocean and the air we breathe. Rise is Ottawa’s Rise Ashen, a producer, DJ and dancer who pursues the intersection of traditional and futuristic music.

Click to enlarge and listen to audio recordings

Nenana, Alaska

Photo credit: Nenana, Alaska, c. 1900-1920. Photograph by Edward Coke Hill. Anchorage Museum collection, B1974.5.56.

Click to enlarge and listen to audio recordings

Nuiqsut, Alaska

Image credit: Nuiqsut, Alaska, March 1981. Photograph by Martha Quimby. Anchorage Museum collection, B2001.36.1094.

Matthew Burtner

Photo credit: ©MB

Location: Anchorage, Alaska

Coordinates: 61.2181° N, 149.9003° W

Track: Nuiqsut Bell, 2020

Matthew Burtner is an Alaska composer, eco-acoustician and sound artist whose work explores embodiment, ecology, time, and noise. His work is intertwined with the sciences, particularly environmental science and engineering, using technologies and interactions with the natural world to inform his compositions. In his childhood, Burtner spent several years in Nuiqsut; he now lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Uyarakq

Photo credit: Bolt Lamar

Location: Inari, Finland

Coordinates: 68.9062° N, 27.0278° E

Track: Kuitse, 2020

Aqqalu Berthelsen, also known as Uyarakq, was born in Nuuk, Greenland, and now lives in Inari, Northern Finland/Sápmi. He is a self-taught music producer/composer and DJ, with a background in metal music. Growing up between Uummannaq, Northern Greenland, and Nuuk influenced his sound, connecting styles, sounds, and rhythms from the hyper-local to global. His current projects reach across continents, connecting the North American Arctic to the European Arctic through Indigenous hip hop and rap.

Click to enlarge and listen to audio recordings

Anchorage, Alaska

Image credit: Anchorage, Alaska, January 1991. Photograph by Michael Barron. Anchorage Museum collection, B2017.1.105.

Alex Somers

Photo credit: Bella Howard

Location: Los Angeles, California, United States

Coordinates: 34.0522° N, 118.2437° W

Track: Melts, 2020

Alex Somers is an American composer and producer currently residing in Los Angeles. Somers spent most of the last decade living in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he studied visual art at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. He works collaboratively with partner Jónsi of Sigur Rós and composes and scores film and television soundtracks.

Pamyua

Photo credit: Kerry Tasker

Location: Anchorage, Alaska, United States

Coordinates: 61.2181° N, 149.9003° W

Track: Untitled, 2020

Phillip Blanchett, Pamyua, Arctic Voice Music

The musical group Pamyua brings Inuit music to the world. Their music showcases drum songs from the Inuit cultures of Greenland and Alaska. PAMYUA /bum yo-ah/ is an Inuit word meaning to request an encore of a drum song or dance or the tail of an animal, object, or idea.

Rarely do we have the opportunity to hear objects in museums, most often we see them in casework and in frames. Played gently by Anchorage Museum Collection staff, a selection of rattles from the collection have been sonified to allow for listening. Listen to the sounds of these different rattles, recorded for this exhibition by Anchorage Museum staff.

James Schoppert rattles

These wooden mussel- and clam-shaped rattles, created by artist James Schoppert, resound with higher, sharper pitch tones when shaken. Though records do not indicate what is inside, local Indigenous scholar and musician Heidi Senungetuk suggests the contents of these rattles may be metal BBs.

Click to Enlarge

Rattle, 1990

James Schoppert

Wood, paint, and unknown material

Anchorage Museum Collection

1993.15.1

Rattle, 1992

James Schoppert

Wood, paint, and unknown material

Anchorage Museum Collection

1992.80.1

These grass rattles, made by Yup’ik artists (names unknown) in the mid-20th century, create soft, low tones when shaken. The contents of these rattles may be small stones or beads. Likely designed for sale as souvenirs, the rattles are made of coiled grass, a material and process used for thousands of years by Yup’ik peoples for items such as socks and functional baskets.

Click to Enlarge

Rattle Basketry, c.1980

Grass, dye

Gift of Caye Cloe 1992.106.16

Rattle Basketry, mid 20th Century

Grass, dye, unknown hard material

Gift of the Huffmon Family 2002.22.99

Presented with support from:

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
JL Foundation
Gregory M. Carr
The Carr Foundation