Beneath the forest floor, the roots of the trees are linked to fungal spores in a large underground system through which these two species nourish each other and communicate. Inspired by this interspecies symbiosis, artist Felia Gram-Hanssen and composer Jaleh Negari has created the project Fungal Network. With metal reliefs, a video work, textile, sound works, and drawings hanging in the columned space of O—Overgaden, they translate sound to images in order to test the potentials of mutual artistic exchange and inter-aesthetic collaboration.

In the video work Among Mountains, a violinist, a dancer, and Felia Gram-Hanssen on percussion interpret a blackbird and the snow and mountains from the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. Subsequently, Gram-Hanssen has translated the video’s real sound to a visual score on a ten-meter-long piece of textile and three hovering metal reliefs. Along these reliefs hangs the series Multiplicité consisting of abstract, coal-drawn notations that Negari has translated from field recordings made in Indonesia, Iran, and Denmark. Subsequently, she has interpreted the notations into atmospheric and evocative electronic compositions, which are played from small speakers placed below each of the seven scores and which mix in with the original field recordings and Gram-Hanssen’s video work into a comprehensive soundscape.

By letting their works coalesce and open up towards a root system of new interpretations, Negari and Gram-Hanssen’s project is a collective alternative to the Western world’s idolizing of the individual genius. Inspired by band culture, Fungal Network points to how no one, in fact, makes anything up alone.