EN / FI
Satula, Oulu Art Museum · 12–15 November 2026 · Dance Fri 13 Nov 17:00, Sat 14 and Sun 15 Nov 14:00
Voices of three Oulu choirs return to Oulu Art Museum, where they were heard in OWLA in 2023. Visitors can spend time in the listening room at their own pace. On three days, dancers also arrive in the room.
Jaakko Autio, Henna-Maria Hanhineva and working group
The listening room
The room is already sounding when a visitor enters. The voices of Cantio Laudis, Cassiopeia and Tuiran Kamarikuoro come from twenty loudspeakers around the space. Moving closer to one voice changes its relationship to the others.
Visitors can sit, move through the room or listen from its edges. A change of position, a breath or a moment of stillness can become part of listening.
Saapuminen grows from Autio’s OWLA, presented at Oulu Art Museum in 2023, in which the choirs sang Anna Voutilainen’s composition. Its recorded voices return in a new space, meeting people whose lives and bodies have continued to change.
Dance in the listening room
On three days, dance artists Heta Haapsamo and Vaatu Ravela enter the listening room. Developed with Henna-Maria Hanhineva, their movement looks for ways of encountering the sound, the space and one another. Visitors are welcome to join in.
The room remains a listening room throughout these encounters. Attention can move between a recorded voice, a dancer’s presence and the sensations of one’s own body. Movement and stillness both have a place.
How can listening become movement, and how might another person’s movement change what we hear?
On making a listening room
My work here begins with the whole room: where a voice is heard, how close someone can come, where they can sit and where they can keep their distance. I compose with these relationships as well as with sound.
I am interested in what becomes possible when we listen together, each from our own position.
– Jaakko Autio
Writing from the experience
Merja Männikkö takes part in the working process through embodied writing. Drawing on the group’s observations and her own experience, she gives language to what happens between sound, movement and listening.
Her text will be published on Oulu Art Museum’s blog.
Visit
Listening room
12–15 November 2026
Thu 9–18, Fri 11–19, Sat–Sun 11–18
Seating is available.
Location
Satula, Oulu Art Museum
Kasarmintie 9, Oulu
Tickets
Included in museum admission: adults €12; students, unemployed, pensioners and conscripts €9; under 18 free. Free with the Museum Card.
Opening hours and admission on the museum’s website
Dance times
Friday 13 November · 17:00
Saturday 14 November · 14:00
Sunday 15 November · 14:00
Duration under an hour.
Related events
Kuule listening session
Deep Listening: INTER – HARMONIUM
A Space for Resonance
Thursday 12 November 2026, 16:30–18:00
Satula, Oulu Art Museum
On the listening room’s opening day, Oulu Art Museum’s Kuule listening session gathers to listen to Autio’s three-part, 20-channel sound work INTER – HARMONIUM. Its source material comes from the old pedal harmonium in Jurmo chapel. Autio recorded each key individually and composed a work from these sounds.
Deep Listening is an approach to listening developed by composer Pauline Oliveros. In this session, we give time to sound and to our own perceptions. You can listen with your eyes open or closed, sitting still or moving through the space. Between the three parts, there is an opportunity to share observations, or simply to keep listening. No previous experience is needed.
Limited to 20 participants.
Also in Oulu in November
AVARA 2026: Beyond Listening – Sound, Technology and New Creative Economies
Thursday 19 November 2026, 12:30
Hotel Lasaretti, Aurora Hall, Kasarmintie 13b
Autio opens the AVARA 2026 panel discussion with a short shared listening moment, followed by a conversation on sound, experience and technology. The other panellists are Jacob Kreutzfeldt and Iannis Zannos. The discussion is moderated by Kati Nuora.
AVARA 2026 programme
Saapuminen, the Kuule listening session, Lumo Art & Tech Festival (from 13 November) and AVARA are separate events. Yet the same question is being explored at the same time on different levels: how space and technology change perception.
Working group
Jaakko Autio
Listening room, dramaturgy and production
Henna-Maria Hanhineva
Choreography, dramaturgy, production and advance photographs
Heta Haapsamo
Dance and text
Vaatu Ravela
Dance and text
Merja Männikkö
Embodied writing
Eerika Arposalo
Initiation of the process and background support
Choirs
Cantio Laudis, Cassiopeia and Tuiran Kamarikuoro
Original OWLA composition
Anna Voutilainen
Supported by Oulun Valistustalo and the Oulu2026 programme.
Produced in collaboration with Oulu Art Museum.
