Sound Pals: Inter-Nordic Collaboration at a Distance involved members from networks within the Nordic region as well as from Quebec, Canada. These networks included SKLASH+ (DK), Damkapellet (DK), Young Nordic Music (UNM) Iceland, Sweden and Finland, F*EM (Fem en Musique)/CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community) through Myriam Boucher (QC) and Konstmusiksystrar.
The collaboration was built on a practice-based exchange between the project’s participants, during August 2020 and August 2021. Due to the Covid-19 situation, the project was shaped as a digital exchange through correspondence over a period of time where the participants shared fragments of their day to day lives with each other. The project started by ‘taking the temperature’ of the different artists and networks, asking how the pandemic changed their artistic practices. The artists collected and exchanged sounding material and composed in pairs, throughout the period, which made them so-called “sound pals”. The material collected was used to form a soundscape—a diary that tied together our affective and artistic experiences at a distance.
The soundscape and a presentation of the project was performed at the festival Sound of Stockholm 2021. Insights from the project took part in two publications related to the main Global Musics Network: Discussing Diversity project.
During the year, Konstmusiksystrar organised a series of workshops that focused on exploring practices for digital creative work, as well as reflection on the ‘sound pal’ processes. These workshops provided a digital forum to reflect upon our situation as performing artists in the midst of a pandemic, and how it affected our practices and our support networks.
Pairs
Hildur Elísa Jónsdóttir (UNM Iceland) & Kari Sundet (Balansekunst)
Rachel C Walker (Konstmusiksystrar) & Johanna Sulalampis (UNM Finland)
Kirstine Lindemann (SKLASH+) & Jaime Belmonte (UNM Finland)
The project was funded by the Nordic Culture Fund.
