Tanya Busse: Wind Sings to Wire

Entrée is pleased to present a new site-specific work by Tanya Busse. Wind Sings to Wire consists of dozens of lightbulbs connected to the architectural space of Entrée via industrial cables. The luminous canopy flickers softly in the semi-darkness of mid-winter, suggesting interference from another time and place. The flickering is in fact the result of a connection to a signal that transmits data from the future. Early in 2023, the Norwegian government approved a plan to connect the Hammerfest liquified natural gas plant to the power grid. The beat and the pulse of the installation is based on electricity forecasts, energy predictions and futurological mappings of that plan. In this immersive space the viewer is invited to experience both light and its absence—light as information, light as a message from beyond, light as an eminence of possibility from the future- a future in which we are only partially aware of what will come.

Often cited as the year climate change will become irreversible, 2030 is also significant regionally. It is the year that Melkøya, an island in the Barents Sea, will see its enormous processing facility for liquified fossil gas extracted from the Snøhvit oil and gas field entirely converted to run on electricity. However: a vast network of electric grids, powerlines, roads, wind turbine parks, and hydro dams will have to be built to support the massive power needs of the Melkøya facility. Obscured by the clamoring ecological self-congratulation and an emphasis on military power, the state proposal is in fact part of an ongoing process of colonization of the North of Norway and the expansion of state. The Arctic is one of the last areas in Europe home to large expanses of unexploited territory that has not been completely turned over to manufacturing or industrial purposes. The region is also key to global climate regulation, and a role that is made vulnerable by expansion of electric infrastructure. Reindeer migration routes and multi-species breeding and rearing areas both on land and sea are jeopardized by the current planning, which also comes at the expense of indigenous land rights.

Melkøya’s electrification is symbolic of a much broader shift towards electric power as part of Norway’s goal to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources—for which 2030 is a watershed moment—but like Busse’s flickering lights, this narrative depends on future projections. The price of electricity, the effect a thawing permafrost will have on water supply and ground infrastructure, the impact of climate migration and other invisible forces are some of the factors that remain unknowable today, standing inside gallery Entrée.

–Natasha Marie Llorens

The project is produced in collaboration with Aldea, and is kindly supported by Arts Council Norway, The art centers in Norway (KiN), Bergen Municipality, Troms and Finnmark county.

Tanya Busse (b.1982, Canada) is based in Tromsø. She studied at NSCAD University in Halifax (CA), Kunstschule Berlin Weissensee (DE), and holds a master’s degree from the Academy of Art in Tromsø (NO). Her practice spans moving-image, installation, and photography to explore the intersection between representations of nature and the presence of industrial or post-human traces. Her work addresses the notion of deep-time, invisible architectures in the present, and how power is produced and articulated through material relationships in space, both actual and historical. Her work has been shown at Gallery 44 Center for Photography in Toronto (CA), Mumbai Art Room (IN), Podium Gallery, Oslo (NO) and Vaga Center for Art and Knowledge, Sao Miguel, Azores (PT), amongst others. She is a co-director of the collaborative platforms New Mineral Collective and Mondo Books.