We Hear Through the Wind
Darya Dogaeva, Vadim Revin, Liza Ra, Yulia Nemova
Arctic Biennale, Barentsburg, Svalbard, 2026
Site-specific installation. Driftwood, wooden fragments, metal hardware
Wood reaches the Arctic only as a passenger. It does not grow here alive. It arrives as planks in the hulls of ships, as timber in cargo, as pieces of driftwood the current throws onto the shore.
The installation stands on the main transit route of Barentsburg, running from the embankment and the “Televizor” toward the House of Culture, the swimming pool, and “Beryozka.” It speaks to the wood that has dissolved into the island’s infrastructure, and to the people who have stopped noticing it.
For wood this is a beacon, a sign that even in the Arctic it is not alone. For a person it is the sound of small wooden boards, the return of a faintly familiar material to a space where it usually has no place. The vertical structure gathers scattered matter and restores its presence. Sound is born from the meeting of wood with its environment.
This is the voice of wood here, in these conditions. A voice that did not exist before and that now sounds with a new timbre and force.
Credits
Realised within the first art-and-science expedition of the Arctic Biennale, Barentsburg, Svalbard, 2026
Operator: Arctic Biennale, Centre for the Art of Free Elements, Alexander Ponomarev
