Oulu Art Museum · 24 August – 26 November 2023 · 20-channel sound installation · 56 singers · Suomeksi
OWLA was made with three choirs from Northern Ostrobothnia and 56 singers. Their speech and singing formed a changing field across twenty loudspeakers in the darkened Tasku space of Oulu Art Museum.
Around 240 hours of recordings supplied the work. A generative system recombined fragments so that each visit sounded different. A shallow water basin anchored the room, and visitors could change position to hear voices from different distances.
“I felt suspended, held afloat, in a space that granted me permission to be present.”
Sara Oussaiden, You Can Touch the Water, 2025, p. 6
A TURN IN THE PRACTICE
OWLA marked a change in how I worked with collective voice. The recordings were still made with communities, but the voices became the structure of the room. Listening to one person or to the larger body depended on where a visitor stayed.
WRITING ON OWLA
Artist and writer Sara Oussaiden encountered OWLA at Oulu Art Museum in August 2023. The experience became a central starting point for her 2025 Art and Philosophy BA (Hons) dissertation at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
Through a close account of sound, light, touch and the invitation to linger, Oussaiden examines how the visitor becomes an active participant in the work. She develops her concept of Submersive Art in dialogue with Astrida Neimanis’s hydrofeminism and Donna Haraway’s thinking, later bringing OWLA into relation with Cooking Sections’ CLIMAVORE project.
DOCUMENTATION
VISITOR RESPONSE
I experienced Owla, Jaakko’s work, at Oulu Art Museum.
I stayed for quite a long time, perhaps an hour, until the museum closed. It felt good to be there. At first I felt like crying, and I even considered falling asleep or drifting into sleep while lying on the platform at the back of the space. It was a good moment. In general, it was pleasant to be in the space, even when others arrived.
It was interesting to share the space. Sometimes I was very aware of others, greeting people as I passed them, which felt a little strange and human, and sometimes I forgot about it altogether. The work itself is somehow similar; it moves between the presence of other people and everyday experience, and a feeling of immersion or floating in water.
I also wanted to sing, to become part of that created flood for as far as it would carry me. I thought a lot about the healing power of sound.
It was also nice to hear and recognise Jaakko’s voice. It brought a sense of familiarity to the moment at a time when there was so much change around me.
I also felt a desire to create, although at that moment I did not know what, and afterwards I was tired too.
For me, this was a deep experience, right here and now. My hands in the water merged beautifully with the sound.
Thank you.
Message from an exhibition visitor, 15 September 2023. Translated from Finnish.
CREDITS
Sound artist and convener: Jaakko Autio
Composition: Anna Voutilainen
Voices: Cassiopeia, Cantio Laudis and Tuiran Chamber Choir
Supported by Taike and the Regional Fund of Northern Ostrobothnia
