Nothing Will Be Livestreamed – Be Present in the Green

The noise from Lilleøre – the ferry between Aarhus and Samsø – has a strange calm to it. A monotonous, metallic humming that rocks you out of the city and into another rhythm. Samsø wakes slowly. The rain lies like a thin veil over the fields. A chef makes noise in the kitchen of the Samsø Badehotel. He is from New York. He has worked at ElBulli.

Even the royal couple has been here – on Thursday, for a concert with Poul Krebs at Brundby Hotel

The vegetable stalls stand like small islands along the roads, and on the signs, both Polynesian massage and wine from Château Alstrup are promised.

Even the royal couple has been here – on Thursday, for a concert with Poul Krebs at Brundby Hotel, the legendary rock hotel. In front of the hotel stands a white artificial cow with musical notes on its body, as if the music has stuck to its skin.

»GRØN MUSIK [GREEN MUSIC] is a four-day manifestation on Samsø of sound art and music that has a close collaborative relationship with nature!« proclaimed the invitation from the festival’s initiators, the association Terraform.

On the ferry to Samsø, I sat with a light-brown book in my hands – Jordborger [Earth citizen]. A book about Knud Viktor. Viktor (1924–2013) left Denmark and settled in the southern French region of Luberon. On the mountain slopes he found his own plot of sonic earth. In the small hut, the floor grew into a landscape of reels, cables, and homemade mixing consoles. Technology meant nothing to him; everything was merely tools to hear the earth sing. He sat for days and listened – to the wind, to crickets, to a single tone.

Before he went to Provence, it was on Samsø that he first listened to the breath of the world. I close the book where Knud Viktor lowers two microphones into a Eurasian eagle-owl’s nest – and later also a camera – and ends up with 40 hours of recordings of the nocturnal life of the French eagle owls. He spends so much time with them that they eventually give him a name in their language.

A German car gives the wheels a push, but the sound of the sheep bell he swings with an authoritative hand drowns everything else

Sheep in the fluxus castle

The rain has eased. It is Friday afternoon in the courtyard of Agerupgård. Wearing a Groovie Records T-shirt, visual artist and archivist Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen moves across the crunching gravel; he has come to Samsø from another island, Møn. Festival guests begin to show up. A German car gives the wheels a push, but the sound of the sheep bell he swings with an authoritative hand drowns everything else.

»Turn off your mobile phones. No dogs. The sheep must not be stressed. Ideally, we don’t speak over there. We listen.« Reuter Christiansen gathers us, a crowd more than ordinarily interested in sound, and leads us further into the garden. Here stands a house of straw. A reconstruction of one of his father Henning Christiansen’s famous »straw-bale castles«, which functioned as concert venues for his works.

»Henning was not interested in classical music. Instead of violins: sheep.« The instruction forms the basis for the Fluxus work Sheep Instead of Violins, where Spælsau sheep take the role of musicians. The straw-bale castle is recreated by Reuter Christiansen in collaboration with scenographer Rachel Dagnall. The work was first presented at Ars Electronica in 1988.

It is possibly the most immersive experience of all Samsø

Reuter Christiansen rattles a bucket of feed, almost sounding like congas. The sheep bleat and enter into a sonic dialogue with recordings of their French fellow species, which Henning Christiansen once captured on tape, and which now fill the straw-bale castle’s space. It is possibly the most immersive experience of all Samsø.

The sheep bell rings, and the procession continues toward the horse stable, where an exhibition with Henning Christiansen’s original sketches and documentation from earlier performances has been installed.

On a table lie various objects for free exploration. A boy grabs an enormous sheep bell, swings it, and listens curiously to the resonant sounds. Next to it lies a pipe – Christiansen always carried the smoke with him. A grown man lifts a toy hammer and strikes a green plastic frog, while Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen remarks: »It’s about finding new sounds. Inventing new instruments. Just ask Knud Viktor.« One suddenly finds oneself in the middle of a large and playful sound family.

The tour ends in Agerupgård’s green library/shop with flowering wallpaper and shelves filled with vinyls, books, T-shirts, and posters. Here you can buy both a portrait of Henning Christiansen with green ears and Uglepladen, the result of Knud Viktor’s patient following of an owl family for three months.

Suddenly the Aboriginal songlines in Western Australia are connected with the Inuit frame drums in Kalaallit Nunaat

Sound and climate in the same breath

In a room of the main house preparations are underway for a performance talk. A woman takes off her shoes and glides in stocking feet toward a chair – in accordance with Christiansen’s and Viktor’s idea that one listens with the whole body.

Sound researcher Ania Mauruschat, who recently moved to Samsø after stays in both Sydney and Nuuk, presents her project Sounding Crisis about sound and energy in the age of climate change. She talks about song as a bearer of stories, about people who sing their way through the landscape, about Greenland where sound is attributed healing powers, and about the climate as something you can hear. Suddenly the Aboriginal songlines in Western Australia are connected with the Inuit frame drums in Kalaallit Nunaat. In the corner lies a pair of headphones where the audience can listen to her work The Heartbeat of the Drum.

The dress code is simple: green

The scent of herbs and the sound of moonlight

In the evening the artist duo Juliane Schreiber and Hannah Giese invite us to a communal dinner at a long table in a barn. The herbs are freshly harvested and smell of late summer – the green sets the tone. Conversation flows. Knud Viktor, Samsø’s own pioneer of the music of nature, appears again and again in the talks. Viktor’s archives have come to Denmark and are kept at Sound Art Lab in Struer. Is Knud Viktor the next forgotten Danish artist to gain cult status? The man who stuck a microphone into an apple to record the sound of worms. Also people from Art Music Denmark have come from Copenhagen to hear what is sprouting here on the island – and perhaps become part of it.

Is Knud Viktor the next forgotten Danish artist to gain cult status?

The earth citizen with the ascetic mind lived in the middle of nature, in the middle of sound, where art and life became one. His music, his philosophy, and his presence clearly continue to inspire, and here, among locals and traveling festival guests, his spirit remains alive. Viktor began as a painter – van Gogh’s disciple – but soon discovered that the brush could not contain the rhythms of cicadas, the marches of ants, or the silent breath of stone. He exchanged the canvas for the tape recorder and painted in sound. It is La Symphonie de Luberon – a four-channel sound painting composed of eagle owls, insects, and wind, which is to be performed this weekend in the forest at Bisgaard Forte.

Later he sits on a straw bale in the straw castle, while his father’s recordings of French sheep resound across the fields

At the long table, some speak enthusiastically about the event Birdsong and Bats. For bats are beautiful singers, they say – and with a bat detector one can catch their secret serenades when darkness falls. That same evening, at Knulp, Tobi, Genepi, Iku Sakan and Knex release energies for Green Dance. The dress code is simple: green.

A businessman from Berlin – who lives from something as down-to-earth as chocolate – had no idea he would be sharing dinner with sound people in a barn. American hip-hop pumps from the speakers. Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen gets up and disappears into the darkness to look at the full moon; the sheep behave differently when it shines in full glory. Later he sits on a straw bale in the straw castle, while his father’s recordings of French sheep resound across the fields.

Mauruschat chose Samsø because the island mirrors the themes she examines: sound, nature, and art in interconnected circuits

From Samsø’s silence to the Earth’s voice

Early the next morning people gather onions in the field opposite Agerupgård. The wind picks up – it always does on Samsø.

In the village of Pillemark stands a double bass whose body is built from a satellite dish. Behind the windows one can sense a room packed with instruments. Here resides Rustfelt – »a digital music distribution outlet for an expanding roster of artists.«

In a low-ceilinged half-timbered house in Stauns lives the sound researcher Ania Mauruschat, who the day before shared her work. A computer on a desk is surrounded by research articles and books. When friends from New York and Berlin visit, they always have to go into the garden and marvel that plums, apples, and figs grow side by side.

Mauruschat chose Samsø because the island mirrors the themes she examines: sound, nature, and art in interconnected circuits. She appreciates that GRØN MUSIK is not just a festival, but a framework for a listening practice where the senses are sharpened. And on Samsø there are many who understand the philosophy Knud Viktor lived by: Nature is not just decoration for humanity. It sings along.

Samsø has long been known as the island of renewable energy – but here there is also another form of sustainability: that of sound. Even the owner of Hotel Brundby might want to join next time; who doesn’t need green ears?

Suddenly – after a couple of days in the company of modern earth citizens with big ears – it feels completely natural to park the bike and bend down over some potatoes scattered at a roadside. They lie there quietly in the wind. But if you lower your head towards the root vegetables… maybe they are whispering something after all.

Farewell to the island that still sings

Once again Lilleøre, the ferry with the fairy-tale name, glides out of the harbor and sets course for Aarhus. Behind, the echo of GRØN MUSIK disappears in the summer sun, while a music archaeologist and a musician surely still somewhere on the island awaken prehistoric instruments of hazelnut, seashell, and an hymn to life – a quiet reminder that sound and nature were once one and the same being.

Soon people will gather by the village pond in Pillemark, where Knud Viktor’s Allo La Terre is opened: a telephone linked to the Earth, and if you lift the receiver you can hear the planet’s breath. One last green sigh before silence takes over again. Nothing here – none of these events – will be livestreamed. One must show up – be present in the green.

Nothing here will be livestreamed. One must show up – be present in the green

The light-brown book about the earth citizen from Samsø reaches its end. The mainland rises on the horizon as Lilleøre cuts through the waves. You can read a lot about the art of listening, about how sound binds us to the world, about concert castles out in the countryside. But sometimes you must go yourself. Out into the landscape. Out on an island. To hear, with your own green ears, that the world still breathes.

GRØN MUSIK on Samsø – a festival for sound art and music, 4–7 September 2025. This year’s edition was the first and took place in several locations on Samsø, including Agerupgård, Bisgaard and Pillemark. The festival was organized by TERRAFORM and presented a four-day program with sound art and music in close interaction with nature. Jesper Tang’s book »Jordborger. En bog om Knud Viktor« is published by Multivers (2024).

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek. Proofreading: Seb Doubinsky