Bianca Hisse & Christian Danielewitz
Rivers End
2nd Floor Galleries
16.04.—16.05.2026

Rivers End is an exhibition by Bianca Hisse and Christian Danielewitz that connects two distant waterscapes: the Zambezi River at the Kariba Dam and the Longyear River in Svalbard.

The project emerges from the artists’ ongoing research, which investigates rivers as sites where energy infrastructures, political histories, and socio-environmental transformations converge. Deve­loped through sonic fieldwork in both loca­tions, the exhibition brings together geophonic and hydroacoustic recordings that capture under­water currents, sediments, glacial meltwater, and the subtle vibrations of riverbeds and built structures. As part of a residency in Zambia, Hisse and Danielewitz collaborated with performers from the Likombwa Royal Dance Academy, who inter­preted their field recordings from Svalbard and the Zambezi through percussion and voice.

The two sites reflect how both regions have histo­rically been drawn into and shaped by European colonial projects of exploration, con­quest, and resource extraction. At Kariba Dam, one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world, the Zambezi River was radically transformed during its construction in the late 1950s. Built under colonial rule, the dam reconfigured the river into a vast reservoir and power-generating system designed to supply electricity to mining economies in southern Africa. Tens of thousands of Tonga people were displaced in the process, permanently reshaping social and ecological relations along the river. The massive dam wall continues to regulate the river’s flow, producing an acoustic environment shaped by turbines, water pressure, and the low hum of the concrete structure itself.

In contrast to the monumental scale of Kariba, the recordings from the Longyear River trace a fragile Arctic hydrology. Longyearbyen, through which the Longyear River flows, was developed in the early twentieth century as a coal-mining settlement. For more than a century, coal defined both the town’s economy and infrastructure. Although mining has largely ceased, traces of this fossil energy regime remain embedded in the surrounding terrain. Flowing through the valley of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, the river is fed by increasing glacial melt and seasonal thaw. Here the sonic landscape reveals subtle processes – cracking ice, sediment transport, shifting currents – within a region under­going rapid warming.

The installation consists of concrete elements evoking the monumental forms of dams, rubber crumb – an aggregate material used in hydropower construction – plant fossils from the Longyear Glacier (suspended in the process of becoming coal), and five ceramic vessels. The sediment-like surfaces of the ceramics recall riverbanks and geo­logical deposits, while their shapes evoke musical instruments, hydraulic pipes, and the material cultures of riverine societies. Positioned between vessel, ruin, and resonant chamber, the clay sculptures function as acoustic bodies through which hydrophone and geophone recordings from both the Zambezi and Longyear rivers circulate. In this way, they hold and transmit the sonic traces of rivers shaped by extraction and energy production.

Rivers End approaches fluvial ecosystems as dynamic acoustic environments where listening becomes a method for sensing infrastructures and ecological transformations that often remain beyond perception. By bringing together these two sites, the exhibition is a sonic attunement to rivers as planetary systems transformed by tech­nological inter­vention and socio-environ­mental disruption.

Bianca Hisse (b. 1994, São Paulo) is a visual artist and choreographer based in Oslo. She holds a BA from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (2016) and an MA from Tromsø Academy of Arts in UiT The Arctic University of Norway (2019). Her artistic practice examines how power structures choreo­graph society, employing movement and collective performance as tools of refusal and resistance. She has exhibited at SACO Biennial of Contemporary Art, Chile, (2025), Barents Spektakel in Kirkenes (2024), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany, 2023), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland, (2023), BienalSUR – International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America, MAR Museo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2021), Mediterranea Biennale in San Marino (2021), and Høstutstillingen, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2020). In 2025, her public commission Solnedgang Sol­opp­gang (Leaning on you as you lean on me) was inaugurated in Tromsø.

Christian Danielewitz (b. 1978, Denmark) is a visual artist, researcher and writer based in Oslo. He holds an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2009) and a PhD in practice-based artistic research from the University of Copenhagen (2022). His work spans sound, text, video, photo, sculpture, and installation, and engages with issues of resource extraction, energy production, and the uneven global distribution of toxic waste and pollution. He has exhibited at SACO Biennial of Contemporary Art, Chile (2025), Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre, Zambia (2024), MMCA Changdong, South Korea (2023), He Art Museum, China (2020), SAVVY Contemporary, Germany (2019), and RAW Material Company, Senegal (2019). His work is held in the collections of HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, the Danish Arts Foundation, and Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre.

Credits

Sound composition: Tom Monteiro
Voice and percussion: Likombwa Royal Dance Academy: Patricia Mwanza, Mtonga Joshua, Maliba Mtonga, Moody Mwiya, Mwansa Lwimba
Ceramics: Mingxuan Tan
Technical assistance: Andreas Olavssønn Rongen and Mikkel Syversen

Acknowledgements

Isaac M. K. Kalumba
James Welburn
Artica Svalbard
Livingstone Office for Contemporary Art (LoCA)

Supported by

Danish Arts Foundation
Arts Council Norway
Norwegian Visual Artists Fund (BKV)