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download floor plan 27+28/02 exhibition work-in-progress SÍM Reykjavik

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ART – EARTH / JÖKLAMINNI​​
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Art / Earth — Jöklaminni is a transdisciplinary art-science project initiated by Stray Light that brings artists, scientists, and audiences together to explore how we relate to a planet in motion. Taking glaciers as its point of departure, the project connects scientific data and research to lived, sensory experiences of landscapes that are visibly changing and disappearing. Glaciers make planetary transformation tangible: local movements of ice and water are inseparably connected to global processes such as rising sea levels, altered river systems, and the vulnerability of low-lying regions, including Belgium. Within this layered interconnectedness, time itself becomes perceptible: unfolding slowly, while accelerating irreversibly.

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In early 2026, the project unfolds through a residency exchange between Iceland and Belgium, hosted by SÍM Residency in Reykjavík and C-TAKT in Pelt. From late January to early March, the Belgian artists—saxophonist and sound artist Mattias De Craene, sound artist and field recordist Stijn Demeulenaere, and transdisciplinary visual artist Kevin Trappeniers—will be in residence in Iceland at SÍM. From early March to early April, the Iceland-based artists—multidisciplinary visual artist Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia, visual artist Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir, and visual artist, director, and opera maker Sigrún Gyða Sveinsdóttir—will be in residence in Belgium at C-TAKT. While each artist develops an individual body of work during the residencies, the programme is shaped by ongoing conversations among the artists and with scientists, creating a shared research context across sound, performance, visual art, and moving image.

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The programme is guided by curators Nicolas Baeyens and Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir, and developed in close collaboration with scientific partners De Jonge Academie (Belgium), the University of Iceland, the European research project ICELINK and EOS Science Magazine. Artistic partners SÍM, C-TAKT, BAC ART LAB and SOAP (Space-oriented Artistic Practice) provide the artistic framework supporting the residencies and public moments.

Through fieldwork, observation, and encounters with landscapes under pressure, the artists develop new work in dialogue with scientists. Public work-in-progress moments in Iceland and Belgium, as well as a joint presentation in Leuven, invite audiences into this evolving research process. Art / Earth — Jöklaminni thus functions as an open art–science research platform in which encounter and exchange remain central to thinking, sensing, and making in times of planetary change.​

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CREDITS

artists: Mattias De Craene, Stijn Demeulenaere, Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia, Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir, Sigrún Gyða Sveinsdóttir, Kevin Trappeniers

curators: Nicolas Baeyens, Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir

production: Stray Light vzw

production manager: Ilka De Wilde

partners: Samband íslenskra Myndlistarmanna (SIM), Jonge Academie Belgium, C-TAKT Transdisciplinary Platform, University Of Iceland, Space-oriented Artistic Practice (SOAP), Werkplaats Walter, ICELINK (Advancing Knowledge of North Atlantic Land Ice Linking Observations and Models), BAC ART LAB, EOS Science Magazine

with the support of: the Flemish Government​, the city of Leuven

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