NOBA – Norwegian BioArt Arena, Vitenparken´s art department, is an artistic partner in the long term research project Anthropogenic Soils. Through the project we seek to explore the kinds of lively encounters and caring interactions that can take place among artists, scientists, soils and audiences. NOBA´s part in the project is work package five: Experiential Soils.
– How do we know, experience, and imagine soils in the Anthropocene?
– How can practices of soil care help us better understand and value the life beneath our feet?
– How do people across the planet recover unsustainable human-soil relationships?
People involved in the work package:
Project leader for WP5: Nora S. Vaage, professor, Oslo Metropolitan University and Nord University, former lead researcher at NOBA
Invited artists in residence: Annike Flo and Cecilia Jonsson
Coordinator: Elise Matilde Malik, Senior Adviser, Exhibitions and Public Engagement at NOBA/Vitenparken, elise@vitenparken.no
Marketing and communications: Elina Gobeti, elina@vitenparken.no
Exhibition co-curatorial collective: Ursula Münster, associate professor environmental humanities, UiO and project lead Anthropogenic Soils
Susanne Bauer, professor, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, UiO
Hilde Methi, independent curator, Kirkenes
Exhibition participating artists: Annike Flo, Karoline Hjorth, Riitta Ikonen, Cecilia Jonsson, Jomy Joseph, Lexie Owen, Aigerim Seitenova, Suma TR, Soil Shroud commons artists led by Patricia Watts and Alex Toland – with contributions from the Anthropogenic Soils team
Anthropogenic Soils team: Davina Kaur Patel, Tokhir Pallaev, Charlotte Ulvang Larsen, Jomy Joseph, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, Marianne Lien, Ursula Münster, Susanne Bauer, Nora S. Vaage
The Anthropogenic Soils project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council, Large scale Interdisciplinary Researcher Project as a Fellesløft project co-funded by the University of Oslo. Project number 325635.
Anthropogenic Soils: Recuperating Human-Soil Relationships on a Troubled Planet (2022-2028) is a six-year, multidisciplinary research project led by associate professor Ursula Koy (former director, Oslo School of Environmental Humanities, UiO) studying how people have invented, practiced, and imagined ways of recuperating contaminated, toxic, and depleted soils in different parts of the globe – from India and Kazakhstan to Norway and the Arctic. The project asks how artistic and trans-media practices offer alternative modes of relating to soils. How might we build possible futures of earthly survival?
Norwegian BioArt Arena´s part in the project (WP5 Experiential Soils) consists in investigating the material aesthetics and concept of soil through visceral means. We explore how art can work with and provide understanding of soil as multispecies worlds. Through the SOILS art exhibition Jordskapninger – Soils are co-created at Vitenparken Campus Ås (opening April 2027) and the SOILS festival at various locations in Oslo and surrounding area (2028) we bring together perspectives both within and beyond the project, emphasizing how soils and their various living critters can be visited with and reflected upon through sensorial, explorative, situated experiences.
Artists are invited to engage with, and draw inspiration from, the project’s research through participation in workshops, fieldwork and discussions. NOBA facilitates:
A: Artists in residence
Annike Flo (NO) was the first SOILS artist in residence at NOBA, in May-September 2023, and continues to work with the SOILS team in Oslo and at the fieldwork site in the Pasvik Valley in Finnmark, Northern Norway. During her first fieldwork visits Annike was fascinated by the account from researchers at the Svanhovd research station of a puzzling scarcity of nematodes in their local soil samples. Are the microscopic worms affected by the rapid climate changes in the arctic, heavy metal contamination from the nickel smelter right across the border to Russia…or have they never been there in the first place? Starting from this question, Annike developed the project Jærtegn focused on the presence/absence of the nematode. In August 2027 Jærtegn haunted Pasvik and nearby areas in Sør-Varanger, in a nine-day performance curated by local curator Hilde Methi. A continuation of this work will appear at the Anthropogenic Soils exhibition Jordskapninger in April 2027,
Cecilia Jonsson (SE) was artist in residence at NOBA in September-November 2024.
For her residency, Jonsson collaborated with local scientists and researchers on campus, developing her artistic research project «The Toxins Color System» that explores the environmental consequences of historical mining at the Litlabø sulphur pyrite mines in southwestern Norway. The research project builds upon a series of previous works highlighting iron´s integral role in matter, fluids, life, and meaning. An early installment of the work was presented at the Piksel Festival in Bergen in November 2025, co-produced by Nora S. Vaage and Anthropogenic Soils. This work will also be featured at the SOILS art exhibition Jordskapninger.
B: The SOILS art exhibition Jordskapninger/Soils are co-created
This exhibition, hosted by NOBA at Vitenparken Ås in spring-summer 2027, activates the kitchen garden “Vitenenga”, park and forest of Campus Ås as well as the Vitenparken exhibition venue. NOBA’s bioart approach will facilitate interactive engagement with audiences, through workshops in which the public is invited to work materially with soils.
This exhibition is curated by Experiential Soils PI Nora S. Vaage and NOBA’s Elise Matilde Malik with the co-curatorial collective Ursula Münster, Susanne Bauer, and Hilde Methi and reflecting research in the Anthropogenic Soils team as well as ongoing artistic conversations.
C: The SOILS festival
The Anthropogenic Soils Festival celebrates the lively worlds of soils in our gardens, cities, fields, and forests. Everyone who cares for soils is invited to participate.
Like mushrooms popping up from their mycelial network underground, the Anthropogenic Soils Festival will emerge in different places in and around Oslo, creating practical, sensory, exploratory, and immersive encounters with the earthy matter that all terrestrial life depends on. Spaces where we can learn, sense, and better understand soils together.
Soil workers and lovers, join us: If you are a gardener, soil-care worker, farmer, scientist, artist, or just curious about this mysterious, wonderful, creepy-crawly matter, please participate. If you know how to compost your kitchen and garden waste, raise worms for vermicomposting, make biochar, bring the taste of the soil into a food experience, understand decomposition or other aspects of the belowground, listen to nematodes, paint with clay, make pottery, come and share your soil knowledge with us!
See events in the Anthropogenic Soils Festival here.
Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate, contribute, or host a soil encounter.
Contact persons
Nora Sørensen Vaage (nora.vaage@oslomet.no) and Ursula Koy (ursula.koy@ikos.uio.no).
The material aesthetics of soil
Experiential Soils PI Nora S. Vaage, team NOBA and the artists in residence study the material aesthetics of soil and connect insights from this artistic work to the insights of stakeholders in other parts of the SOILS project, aiming for further understanding of the multispecies material-aesthetic interactions soil can engender. The practices of the enlisted arts will be integrated into the SOILS festival and actively used in communicating the project’s results. NOBA, Vitenparken Ås´ participation in the Anthropogenic Soils project inspired our long term soil theme (2022-26) which so far has resulted in two symposia (2022 and 2023) and the Jordsans / Sense of Soil exhibition (2024), as well as our upcoming program.
Methods
NOBA’s part of this project enlists artists in hands-on, soil-based projects, and produces philosophical reflections on the material aesthetics of soil as well as a number of other outcomes. Bringing earthly matters “up close and personal”, we seek to generate knowledge in material and experiential forms likely to engage the public. We develop a dissemination program of multisensory, immersive experiences in connection with the SOILS exhibition and festival that encourages publics to think through their relationships with soil and form new ones.