LIMINAL LANDS

Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen will be presenting 'Liminal Lands' in a new multi-channel format across the world’s largest wrap-around screens for Outernet Arts on Tottenham Court Road. The installation will be free and accessible to the public, running every Sunday between 12:00 – 18:00 from 21 May to 16 July, 2023. 'Liminal Lands' evokes a transitional zone where fundamental energies of sun, salt, wind, water and bacteria collide in a hybrid reality. Gathered during over a year of fieldwork in the salt marshes of southern France, Steensen digitised and revived these real photographic elements into a synchronised 3D composition...

'Liminal Lands' evokes a transitional zone where fundamental energies of sun, salt, wind, water and bacteria collide in a hybrid reality. Gathered during over a year of fieldwork in the salt marshes of southern France, Steensen digitised and revived these real photographic elements into a synchronised 3D composition that highlights the otherwise unseen macro- and microscopic ecosystems of the wetlands.

'Liminal Lands' is a continuation of Steensen’s artistic practices of slow media and deep listening. The rhythm and attention to detail in the artwork reveals life-shaping transformations, invisible to the naked eye. The video begins slowly and rhythmically, leading the viewer away from the human realm into a plant, animal, and bacterial metamorphosis of life and technology. Scales are manipulated, stretched and expanded, showing each micro-landscape of the wetlands from a changed perspective. A spatial sound system reveals an artistic curation of natural recorded material from the local landscape.

Every sound, form and texture in 'Liminal Lands' has been digitised from the salt marshes of Salin de Giraud, in the Camargue region of the south of France. By recreating this very real, yet very remote setting in the context of the virtual, visitors can explore the evolution of the landscape’s biodiversity across human and geological time scales. The 3D reconstructive technology becomes a sensory tool for a new, ritualistic environmental experience.

"When I started embracing hyperlocal sensitivity, and what it meant to be present in the landscape, it shifted something inside of me, deeply and profoundly. Through this much more extreme engagement with nature, I found out that you have to spend enough time in a place to start seeing it, to realize that it looks and feels different than anything you can imagine." — Jakob Kudsk Steensen

'Liminal Lands' is one of a trilogy of Steensen’s immersive artworks focusing on wetlands and their forgotten natural histories. Wetlands cover 1% of the planet's surface, but they account for 10% of all biodiversity. They are at the cradle of human life, as wetlands function as filters creating sustainable sources of freshwater. 'Liminal Lands' brings a new, slow sensibility to these otherwise overlooked environments, encouraging visitors to re-examine their relationship to the ecosystems beneath their feet.

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Installation view of 'Liminal Lands'.
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Jakob Kudsk Steensen. Photo by Bastian Thiery.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (B. 1987, Denmark) is an artist working with environmental storytelling through 3d animation, sound and immersive installations. He creates poetic interpretations about overlooked natural phenomena through collaborations with field biologists, composers and writers. Pro...

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (B. 1987, Denmark) is an artist working with environmental storytelling through 3d animation, sound and immersive installations. He creates poetic interpretations about overlooked natural phenomena through collaborations with field biologists, composers and writers. Projects are based on extensive fieldwork. Key collaborators include Musician ARCA, Composer and Musical Director for the Philip Glass Ensemble Michael Riesman, Ornithologist and author Dr. Douglas H. Pratt, Architect Sir David Adjaye OBE RA, BTS, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Natural History Museum Berlin, among others.

Jakob has recently exhibited with his major solo exhibition 'Berl-Berl' in Berlin at Halle am Berghain, commissioned by LAS, and at Luma Arles with 'Liminal Lands' for the 'Prelude' exhibition. He was a finalist for the Future Generation Art Prize at the 2019 Venice Biennale. He received the Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in 2019 to create his work The Deep Listener with Google Arts and Culture. He is the recipient of the best VR graphics for RE-ANIMATED (2019) at the Cinequest Festival for Technology and Cinema, the Prix du Jury (2019) at Les Rencontres Arles, the Webby Award - People’s Choice VR (2018), and the Games for Change Award - Most Innovative (2018), among others.