In a culture so strongly bound up with the visual, it is easy to forget just how powerful sound can be. Compared to visual impressions, sound is much harder to block out – we can shut our eyes, but not our ears – and even those who are deaf can feel the vibrations of loud noise through their bodies. Some of us even live with different forms of tinnitus, internal soundscapes that can’t be switched off. Sound has a direct line to our emotions – an immediacy that’s harnessed not only in music and the arts, but also in therapy and, at the other end of the spectrum, in torture. A current example of the latter is Israel’s widespread use of drones in Gaza. These are deployed not just for surveillance and attacks, but also emit a relentless blaring noise, day and night, making it nearly impossible for the population, already deeply traumatised, to sleep.
Sound is transgressive, for better and for worse. The 13th edition of the Momentum Biennial in Moss, Between/Worlds: Resonant Ecologies, is a rare large-scale presentation of sound art. Here, the boundary-crossing nature of sound is cast in a positive light, with sound art presented as a space for experimentation and new forms of communication. Notably absent is the harsher noise-based and confrontational side of sound art. There’s no need for earplugs. Instead, visitors are encouraged to tune in and listen closely.
In line with the biennial’s ecological theme, many of the artworks seek to engage with nature and the non-human. Much of the exhibition unfolds outdoors, inviting visitors to follow a trail that loops from Galleri F15, through the woods, along the shoreline, and back again. On a beautiful summer’s day, the walk itself is a pleasure, moving among trees and sea views, the scent of salt water in the air and the warmth of the forest floor underfoot, and the sounds of waves, birdsong, and wind all around. The natural soundscape merges with that of the artworks, and it’s often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The ambient sounds become part of the pieces, and the art, in turn, becomes part of the experience of the place – especially for unsuspecting walkers.
Among the more curious sounds in the forest is HC Gilje’s The Alby Critters (2025), made up of various sound-producing devices and resonance boxes installed in the trees. One of the noises I managed to identify was a clicking sound emitted from a cluster of small black devices mounted in a way that mimics a type of fungus growing on the same tree. The resonance boxes, meanwhile, could easily be mistaken for nesting boxes. Both visually and acoustically, the piece blends seamlessly into its surroundings and is easy to miss. But for those who pay attention, the technological presence soon reveals itself, pointing more broadly to the blurred boundaries between nature and technology that shape both contemporary life and the biennial as a whole.
Presented as a tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris, Jacob Kirkegaard’s The Grey Zone (NeverWhere) (2025) cuts into the forest soundscape with eerie recordings from a radioactive swimming pool. The pool lies within the “exclusion zone” surrounding the decommissioned Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, in present-day Ukraine. The audio – a mix of mechanical hissing and dripping water – takes on a ghostly, almost hallucinatory quality in the bright summer daylight. The work serves as a stark reminder not only of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but also of the destructive potential that nuclear technology still holds.
The alienating effect that occurs when we suddenly become aware of a sound we wouldn’t expect to hear in a particular setting is, of course, a well-known artistic device. While the pieces that employ this strategy succeed in making the familiar surroundings of Alby Forest feel estranged, I find the installations that invite lingering to be more rewarding. Among these is Natasha Barrett’s Talking Trees: A Nature-Responsive Grove (2025), where visitors sit on a bench beneath what looks like a large bell suspended between four trees and covered in leaves and feathers. The structure captures and amplifies sounds from the forest while emitting a constantly shifting composition. In Maia Urstad’s In the Unlikely Event of… (2021/2025), visitors can step into a small shed overlooking a freshly cut field that slopes down towards the sea and listen to a range of travel-related sounds – more specifically, various safety announcements. The pastoral landscape lends these announcements an absurd quality while also stirring personal travel memories and reflections on how futile safety measures can feel in the face of real catastrophe.
Cosmic rays – particles from outer space – are given audible form in Christian Skjødt Hasselstrøm’s μ (2022/2025). The lawn outside Galleri F15 is dotted with 120 brass hemispheres that emit metallic popping sounds – or “popcorn sounds,” as one of the biennial staff put it – as if something inside were trying to burst its way out. Fragments of the universe trapped beneath brass bowls? The piece serves as a reminder that reality is made up of far more than our senses can perceive.
The most captivating outdoor piece is Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller’s FOREST (for a thousand years…), first shown at Documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012. This episodic sound work, unfolding in a clearing in the woods, conjures an almost cinematic experience, even though the only images are those imagined by the listeners. The piece builds to a crescendo of war sounds – the rumble of bombs and gunfire – followed by a choral composition, which I later learned is Arvo Pärt’s Nunc dimittis from 2001, a setting of the biblical Song of Simeon. The final word of the text, taken from Luke 2:29–32, is “Israel” – and it is also the only word I caught as I sat listening on a tree stump. I assume that the associations the word evokes for me were not originally intended by either the artists or the composer. However, I also assume that both the curator and the artists are aware that the ongoing genocide in Palestine affects the way the work is perceived today. I cannot help but feel that this should have been addressed in some way by the biennial.
Indoors at Galleri F15, a number of works are on display that cannot be defined as pure sound art: video pieces and other installations where sound is just one of several elements at play. Among the more interesting of these is Misterios (2017) by Christian Boltanski, a three-channel video documenting a project from the coast of Patagonia, Argentina. Flanked by images of a seascape and a whale-like skeleton on a beach, the central screen shows three custom-built wind trumpets that mimic the sound of whale song. The work is a mournful tribute to the majestic animal.
The deep human desire for communication across various boundaries is explored with particular lucidity in a number of works that use telephony as a motif. Douglas Gordon’s Instruction (it doesn’t matter who I am, I just want to talk to you) (1992) features the phrase from the title spoken in multiple languages through a vintage telephone; Christian Marclay’s video Telephones (1995) cross-cuts telephone scenes from a range of classic films; Kalle Aldis Laar’s Calling the Glacier (2007) offers a direct phone line to the melting Vernagtferner glacier in Austria; and in Razz Ring (Hertzian Herd Healing) (2025), Mogens Jacobsen monitors visitors’ mobile phones and uses the intercepted signals to activate a series of therapeutic singing bowls.
Momentum 13 is the first edition of the biennial since Lise Pennington took over as director. While the biennial under her predecessor, Dag Sveinar, typically involved multiple curators – most recently in 2023, when a curatorial collective from the artist-run Oslo gallery Tenthaus led the programme – Pennington has opted for a single curator: Morten Søndergaard (not to be confused with the poet of the same name). Søndergaard, who is also a professor of sound and media at Aalborg University in Denmark, was seemingly enabled to pursue his particular interest in sound art, resulting in an exhibition that feels both coherent and focused. Whether this approach will be continued in future editions remains to be seen, but it appears to have paid off.
Momentum continues to market itself as a Nordic biennial, in contrast to other biennials in the region; the Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), the Gothenburg Biennial (GIBCA), the Luleå Biennial, and the Helsinki Biennial all emphasise their international scope. What it actually means for Momentum 13 to be “Nordic,” however, remains somewhat unclear. In this year’s edition, the biennial is distinctly North Atlantic in character, with an emphasis on artists from Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the UK – albeit with a few contributions from non-NATO countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Japan. At a time of renewed interest in Nordic cooperation – driven by geopolitical developments and focused on militarisation and emergency preparedness – it seems a missed opportunity to more actively explore what “Nordic” might mean in today’s art world.
