MARI MATTSSON

Pamphlet with listening instructions

Installation view, Grå Materia, Stockholm, 2025.

Installation view, Fragments of Forests, 2023.

FORTUNE TELLER
2023
Sound installation (4 channels)
Pamphlet with listening instructions (digital print, 210 x 297 mm), Sound ( 31:28 min loop), 4 speakers (each placed in one of the cardinal directions)

Fortune Teller was conceived as a site-specific work for the exhibition Fragments of Forests situated in a forest in Stockholm. The work consists of a sound composition for four speakers hidden amongst the trees, and listening instructions in a pamphlet available in the forest and at the nearby kunsthalle Accelerator. The sound has also been presented in the exhibition Grå Materia in an industrial area in Stockholm. There the speakers were placed outside on a loading deck, in the entrance of a garage and inside hidden in the ceiling and a staircase.

The sound composition is made up of four different graphic scores for clay flutes based on breathing exercises designed to reduce anxiety and stress, interpreted and played in dialogue by Erika Rohlfs and the artist. The flutes used in the recordings, are called ’Lergök’ (Clay Cuckoo) and can only make two tones. In Swedish folklore, the calling of a cuckoo bird can foresee the future depending on its direction. Each recording was therefore arranged for a different cardinal direction and is played in a speaker either placed north, south, west, or east.

The listening instructions, which can be performed in the forest or in a different location, instruct the reader to move around in their surrounding by finding sounds to follow. By doing so, they compose their own listening experience.

EXHIBITION HISTORY
Grå Materia, Årstaberg, Stockholm 2025. Curators: Astrid Braide Eriksson, Evelina Jonsson, Karin Lindstén.
Fragments of Forests, Curating Art Stockholms Universitet & Accelerator, Stockholm, 2023. Curators: Linnéa Wästfelt & Jonas Van Kappel.