Seismic Event, 2017 (Revised 2020)
Multi-channel sound installation and performance

Stone, fields, soil, land and mountains have long been the materials Hanna Ljungh uses to explore the relationship between matter and people. Seismic Event is a poetic observation and an analogy of human and geological time. The transience of a human life stands in contrast to what we consider to be the near-eternal state of a mountain. The title alludes to the earthquakes caused by human intervention in the mountain during ore mining, to the unforeseen or spontaneous quakes that happen when the mountain is hollowed.

In the work, Ljungh reads aloud reports on seismic events in Malmberget. These are brief descriptions of what took place and where, both above and below ground. Ljungh recites the reports one at a time, before, in collaboration with Mattias Hållsten, she transposes the pitch to create an acoustic image consisting of slow vibrations and rumble. While she reads, the seismic events are filtered through her own body to once again take the shape of the earthquakes they describe.

These seismic events have their own poetics and a singular shimmer. They are a conglomerate of the practical vagueness of everyday life and accurately measured numbers. These numbers denote changes in the mountain’s matter, which has laid untouched for perhaps a billion years, now recorded in our present calendars as an incident a Tuesday in January just before three. In the sound piece the artists move between addresses and places in Malmberget, of which some still exists and others are history. In this movement a circular reasoning takes place, about holes, time, shakings and voids; about the phantom pains of the mountain and the materiality of vacuity.

Thanks to Masha Taavoniku and Johan Airijoki for their participation.

Luleåbiennalen Radio:

-SEISMIC EVENT

-HANNA LJUNGH IN CONVERSATION WITH KARINBÄHLER LAVÉR