July 6, 2026
In April, Gosia Trajkowska and I were invited to Norway to make an art piece about birds. The invitation came from Tonehimmel, a music festival based in Volda, on Norway's rugged west coast. Henrik Koppen, one of the curators, had seen our work in Iceland, specifically the soundwalks in Hamraborg (in a dusty underground parking lot) and Vesturbær (between fancy embassies), and was curious what we could put together in a three week site-specific piece in Volda about our feathered friends. While I was representing myself on this project, and not strictly East of Moon, I was still curious what it would feel like to be both a temporary community member and a "maker-of-stuff-happening," and how that would influence my decisions, a question I've talked through with my coworkers more than once. How long does someone need to be in a place before they feel part of it? Spring brings migratory birds to and past Volda, and we were glad to notice we were part of a larger movement toward the same place.
Leading up to the visit, Gosia and I talked a lot about birds, and even more about what we think about birds, and what shapes those thoughts. As a lifelong birder, I often overlook the patterns birds have quietly stitched through my own life, and how expertise can be as exclusive as it can be inclusive. Generally, I’ve missed an infrastructure that is broad enough to encompass and distribute conversations about birds from larger social clusters than those consisting of experts. Because of this, an early premise for the soundwalk was to attempt to create a conversational space where community members in Volda could share their immediate thoughts, unanswered questions, sharp memories, and opinions about birds and birdlife, no matter what level of expertise they identified with.
We needed to talk to people, but we also needed to live. And to live is to talk to people, it turns out. We rode the ferry, joined the local gym, and sat mornings in the library, but not because we'd decided good undercover agents study the locals up close. We did those things because we needed to get somewhere, move our bodies, eat, think. We rode the public ferry multiple times a day because that's how you get between the towns, and we needed to find tofu. We found shortcuts, drank beer at the end of long days, walked along the river to clear our heads, and lay down on grass that was properly green, feeling a spring that slightly more “springy” than the one in Iceland. We spent time at the university, followed animal tracks, and settled in next to the House Sparrow colony nesting in the bushes by the church, because those were good places to be. We were living in Volda, the way anyone does when they land somewhere new for three weeks, and it was inside that ordinary living, not despite it, that the spaces for conversations turned up. With notebooks, a small recorder, and the confidence that comes from having set ourselves a deadline, we talked to commuters, neighbours, farmers, people on the street, mostly because we happened to be standing next to them. "What is your relationship to birds?" Some people found us a little odd for asking. They weren't bird experts. Why the hell would they know anything about anything? But storytelling became a good way to connect, and it worked because we weren't purely outsiders collecting stories. We were two more people trying to figure out where we'd landed.
The process became a soundwalk called Fuglar og Oss, Birds and Us, and drew enough people to fill the entire ferry waiting room in Volda(!). Wearing headphones, all tuned to the same audio score, we boarded the local ferry across the fjord to Folkestad. For 49 minutes we were a travelling flock, listening. Is listening to each other talk about birds also a way of listening to birds?
The local newspaper picked it up, along with the local radio. As their review put it, the project showed how art can turn an everyday situation into something worth pausing over, and might get us to listen a little more closely, both to birds and to each other.
What we learned:
- Everyone has a story about a bird, but not everyone is asked to share it.
- The ferry is a seriously underrated nightlife scene.
- The gym membership in Volda doesn't conclude when it says it does. Expect bills down the road. Call them on +47 57 00 30 00 if you have issues cancelling the subscription.
This is also, in a small way, a goodbye. My time as an intern at East of the Moon is at an end, and this project turned out to be a fitting note to leave on: a question about what it takes to feel part of somewhere, asked while literally getting ready to move on myself. I'm grateful to my coworkers for the conversations that shaped how I thought about Volda before I ever got there, and to the communities they've helped me connect with along the way. Consider this my own small migration. I hope, like the birds passing through Volda and Reykjavík this year, I'll be back in recognisable seasons.
