Welcome to the festival’s most unique listening space, high up on the mountains surrounding the city of Bergen – Jiennagoahti (Lyttegammen)! An artwork dedicated to listening, Jiennagoahti is a unique space for listening to Sami sound art, experimental music, poetry and literature. Initiated by artist Elin Már Øyen Vister in dialogue with Sami artist and architect Joar Nango, together with Lydgalleriet and Bergen Sámiid Searvi (Bergen Sami Association) the artists have realised the project from idea to completion.

Built from wood, and covered in turf, a goahti is a traditional Sámi home construction and the Jiennagoahti is a place for contemplation and being together where cultural expressions can be experienced in close proximity to nature, thanks to its unique solar powered sound system. Nature is inextricably linked to Sami culture, and the location in the Bergen mountains is a reminder of how nature’s intrinsic value is linked to cultural identity and history.

For our festival collaboration, Jiennagoahti will host a sound work by Sámi artist and florist Margrethe Pettersen. Through her multifaceted practice Margrethe seeks to challenge the modern perception that divides culture from nature, drawing on her Sami roots and the oral tradition of knowledge dissemination in the north. Her works often use a place, a plant or a river as the starting point. She methodically collects plants, sounds and other materials, and moves her body in the surroundings she looks into. In giving plants and their surroundings a voice, she is attempting to activate thought processes, both for herself and for others, in order to facilitate a more complex relationship and care for more than humans.