The Screaming Stones of Stokkøya

So we were thinking a lot about Rocks - we even saw them on the beaches as wanderers from a far, having come a long way being moved by waves, tides and glaciers for millennia.  But also the rich, idyllic landscape of Stokkoya got us looking up at the sky and thinking about migratory birds. We started researching, and became interested in the Common Swift, which you might call the Tårnseiler.

These birds are special as the worlds most aerial bird - spending up to 10 months of the year in flight, so they’re hard to catch. They’re here for the breeding based in Norway and Northern Europe from May - August and then travel to sub saharan Africa for the winter.

When a group 10-20 Swifts gather and sing together it’s what we call  ‘a scream’. During the breeding season, it’s encouraged by The Swift Conservation Society to make this sound  to encourage them to explore potential nesting sites. So our project we present to you ‘The Screaming Stones of Stokkoya’, is a series of breath activated sculptures, made by drilling into rocks and each one uniquely housing an embedded life whistle which we’ve adapted to mimic the call of the swift. 

As artists we really value being resourceful and giving materials a second life - we sourced whistles from disused lifejackets, there's a poeticness in the way that the whistles are given another life as much as they save life themselves.  You will see these sculptures in the coffee room at Coop, a space which people gather together. They sit on bespoke shelfs, here you will also find a calendar that notifies you of swifts whereabouts throughout the year. In the spring you can take the stones and use them outside to attract the swifts down to the four bird boxes we installed on the roof. Which incorporate local reclaimed wood - a celebration of making an uninhabitable place habitable again as somewhere these birds can return to annually and welcome new life.

What we also love about this work is the many aspects; the sculptures, the bird boxes, we also have this rehearsal, and everyone gathered here today and hopefully another event in spring when the Swifts visit. All of this holistically makes the artwork and hopefully what we can see here is how things rely on each other to work, and this is a really nice link to Stokkoya and what you can create when you all pull together - this artwork therefore is a story and resilience and harmony, and connection.

We’d like to thank everyone for coming today, and we would like to reiterate what we’ve all been saying about the kindness of the people of Stokkoya. We have felt so welcomed here and people have given their time so generously. We’re presenting this project today because of all of you! So thank you - we couldn’t have done it without you. So from the beginning of our journey: Thank you Terje, for driving us here - and for being such an excellent mouse/moose spotter. Big bucket list tick before we even arrived.

Thank you Jurgen for the vegetables.

Ingrid, Nicola and Genny have supplied us with delicious bread and pastries and have kindly made the Italian biscuits we’ve been enjoying at the opening at COOP. Thank you to Peder for the mackerel, to Sissel for sharing her secret mushroom spot, Luca for the tuna, Sturla for the halibut. xLive and Sturla thank you for your love of English culture, Christmas pudding and razor clams. Thank you for the friendship. There’s lots of thanks about food here, because we have been fed so ridiculously well - thank you.

So here’s to friends new and old,

Let’s go scream together ..