Choreographer and visual artist Helle Siljeholm and geologist Øyvind Paasche invited the audience for a guided walk around Nesttun pond. Situated at the foot of a mountain in a suburban landscape, the pond is continuously affected by flood. Participants will explore and contemplate the pond’s geological archive, over 6000 years of materials that rests below the water surface, through a sense based journey at its edge.

Drawing upon Siljeholm’s long-term interdisciplinary project The Mountain Body, and Paasche’s research around Nesttun pond, they invite us to examine visible traces of shifting landscapes and to explore the interdependence between site, mountain, and body. The title of the walk refers to “The Living Mountain” – a seminal mountain memoir by the Scottish Modernist writer and poet Nan Shepherd, based on experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms in Scotland. The Mountain Body is an art project by Helle Siljeholm who, in collaboration with artists, climbers and academics, investigates how the mountain visibly and invisibly affects, and is affected, by the surrounding community in the light of geological time. The mountain is the starting point for various explorations concerning our perspective on nature, as well as the relationship between nature and culture.

The guided walk was a commission by BEK (Bergen Elektroniske Centre) for their symposium series THE ONLY LASTING TRUTH IS CHANGE, 2022 edition