Siri Ekker Svendsen’s All the Whisperings of the World is a photo book examining the visual connections between nature’s vulnerability and the effects of an allergic shock to the body. To accomplish this, the artist takes us on a journey to contemporary rainforest areas in South America. The locus of this process is the Brazil nut. The book weaves macro and micro perspectives with Svendsen’s classic black and white photographs, revealing the human body within a diverse ecosystem of complex interdependency. Images via microscope — body cells that have been destroyed due to allergic reactions — lead to images from scientific research on the body, flora, and fauna. A fragile connection is visualized, creating space to contemplate, fear, and grieve — All the Whisperings of the World is an elegiac yearning for the loss of diversity in nature, which we see is also our own habitat. Svendsen’s project raises essential questions for a species learning in real-time about its irrefutable interconnectedness with the planet. We ask questions that once appeared distinct from the human experience — how do different plants in nature stand in a mutual dependence with each other? — as we spiral to the heart of the project. Examining the impact of flora on the body, we inevitably ask: To what extent is the human body included in this ecology of interdependence?

Siri Ekker Svendsen is a visual artist living in Oslo who works with photography, and uses several approches in herwork: Analog, digital, mobile, binoculars, microscope, and electronic micro-scanning in collaboration with various scientific institutions. Ekker Svendsen regards these media as different pairs of eyes, where each one represents a piece of reality, but which together form a complementary whole.

Using various photographic techniques, Ekker Svendsen examines the relationship between nature, perception and consciousness, and the connection between human imagination, animism and recent research in biology.

Siri Ekker Svendsen has an MA from the Bergen Academy of the Arts, and has previously exhibited at Malmö Konsthall, Kunstgarasjen, Fotogalleriet, Grünerløkka Kunsthall, Gallery F15, Preus Fotomuseum, and various exhibitions and festivals nationally and internationally.

Marte Aas is a visual artist working with film and photography, based in Oslo. Aas’ main areas of interest is the intersection between contemporary image culture, technology and the politics of the landscape. Her work attempts to address underlying structures and gestures that form political and ideological narratives. She is educated from The School of Photography at The University of Gothenburg and her work has been presented and exhibited internationally including: Kunsthall Trondheim, Center of Photography, Copenhagen, Henie Onstad Art Center, EMAF European Media Art Festival, Seoul International New Media Festival, New York Independent film festival, Anthology Film Archive, Scandinavia House, New York, National Museum of Art, Oslo, Kiasma, Helsinki.

Sara Sølberg is a author born in 1983 in Trondheim. She debuted with the novel Seismiske smell (2016), for which she was nominated for Tarjei Vesaas' debut award. In 2017, she received NTNU's literature prize. In 2021 came the novel Sarabande.