Have you ever wondered what once existed under the streets where we stand? Many modern cities were built on top of wetlands. If we look close enough, traces of those lost ecosystems remain.

In Berl-Berl, Jakob Kudsk Steensen reimagines Berlin’s forgotten wetlands as a singing, digital swamp. Part of an ongoing body of work, the work takes its title from the Slavic word for “swamp,” the origin of Berlin’s name. It combines ecological research and local folklore and songs—once used as a way of mapping this terrain and documenting its stories—to bring forth a new kind of landscape.

Berl-Berl emerged through collaborations with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the musician Arca, rooted in months of fieldwork in Berlin’s remaining wetlands, archival research into Sorbian and Slavic mythology, and studying linguistic history. Steensen introduced a collection of specimens of local rocks, flora, and fauna into the work’s visual and acoustic worlds, while transforming field recordings of swamps into rhythm and song.

Translating a living environment into the digital realm, Kudsk Steensen invites visitors to imagine new forms of encounter between human and more-than-human spheres. The work draws on memory, feeling, and imagination to reshape how we relate to the natural world. As the artist has said, “Technology for me, in the sense of being a medium, is a connector.” Built using macro photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and game engine technology, the work unfolds as an ever-changing landscape—an archive of a vanishing world and a speculation about the one still to come.

Creator and artist: Jakob Kudsk Steensen; co-producer: Elizabeth Kircher; sound composer: Matt McCorkle; vocalization: Arca; 3D development and technology design: Erratic Animist Studio; technical manager: Wouter Weynants; tech consultant: Todd Bryant; installation producer: Andrea Familari; spatial sound design: Lugh O’Neill

Organized by Juyeon Song, Hyundai Card Exchange Visitor, and Lydia Mullin, Manager of Collection Galleries, Department of Curatorial Affairs.