INTER, Jurmo

Jurmo, outer Turku archipelago · 16 June – September 2026 · John Nurminen Foundation, Meren puolella · Suomeksi

INTER, Jurmo is a spatial listening architecture on the island of Jurmo in the outer Turku archipelago. The place is listened to before anything is brought into it.

Its Finnish subtitle, Meri kuuntelee meissä, The Sea Listens in Us, names the central movement of the work. The sea is not approached as a distant landscape or as a subject to be represented, but as a condition that has shaped perception, memory, work, language, breath and belonging.

From a bench near the chapel and cemetery, the listener sits inside a field already full of voices, wind, weather, silence and distance. The recordings were made with inhabitants and people whose lives, families or memories are closely connected to Jurmo. They move between Finnish and Swedish, as the island itself does. English opens the work to those arriving from further away.

Listening before defining

In INTER, Jurmo, listening begins before definition. The sea is not humanised, symbolised or turned into a distant image. It is approached through relations that already exist: work, weather, fear, care, memory, distance and return.

The recorded voices speak from ordinary life. Some belong to people who live on the island. Some belong to those whose families return here. Some speak from work, some from childhood, some from loss, some from daily attention. They are not asked to represent the sea or explain the island. They return to the place that has shaped them.

From the bench between the chapel, the cemetery and the sea, the listener does not enter silence. Closing the eyes does not remove the place. It changes how the place is met. The sea remains low behind everything, not as a view to be contemplated, but as a condition already moving through speech, memory and attention.

The listener may feel outside the island, outside the community, outside what is being heard. That distance is not treated as a failure. It becomes part of the listening.

Recording field

The recordings took place over nine days in spring 2026. Thirty people and thirty microphones formed one shared recording field. The conversations moved through ordinary life in Finnish and Swedish: boats, children, smoke, fish, work, weather, animals, relatives, phone signal, stone shores and things that should not disappear.

At a certain point, one question changed the rhythm of the room:

What is the sound or phenomenon without which Jurmo would no longer be Jurmo?

This question became the conceptual foundation of the work. The answers did not define the island. They opened a field of memory, use, care, fear, distance and belonging, where the sea appeared through the ordinary things people spoke about.

Process and material

The work was developed through recordings, conversations, listening sessions, material tests and on-site adjustments. The process was not separate from the final form. It was the way the work learned the conditions of the island.

The outdoor speakers were built for Jurmo’s weather and distance. Their form is drawn from ships’ ventilation flues and marine cowl vents: channels that connect spaces rather than point in a single direction. The speaker bodies are hand-cast concrete made from cement, fine sand, peat, soot and local surface material, so that they could recede into the ground, stones and weather of the island. Over time, they may gather moss and other traces close to the stones of Jurmo.

Jurmo chapel’s pump organ was recorded note by note. From these tones, a low, foghorn-like sound was composed. It moves between the recorded voices and helps bind the listening field together.

The material was not cleaned into purity. Speech was allowed to remain speech. Wind was allowed to remain wind.

Public listening

INTER, Jurmo opened on 16 June 2026. The opening brought together island residents, summer visitors, collaborators and people connected to the recording process. Around the chapel and cemetery, sound, conversation, listening and live performance met the weather and the open sea.

After the opening, the installation remained on the island as a public listening environment throughout the summer. The work did not ask for a separate art space. It stayed where the island was already being crossed, visited, remembered and lived with.

Artist book

Visiting Jurmo

Jurmo can be reached by the m/s Utö commuter ferry from Pärnäs harbour in Nagu. The crossing takes approximately three hours, moving gradually from the inner archipelago toward the open sea. The journey is part of the work’s threshold: the island begins before arrival.

Travel on the ferry is free of charge, but advance booking is required through the Finferries booking system. Please check the current timetable before travelling.