The Fjord Is a Mouth that Hums

Currents of thought, temperature, and emotion flow through the saltwater arteries of Bergen’s Byfjorden, from submarine fibreoptic cables to the circular pulsing of industrial salmon farms. During his residency at Volt in Bergen, Pacheco Bejarano has created a soundwalk that traces these rhythms along the city’s coastal and inland waters. The Fjord Is a Mouth that Hums (2025) encourages an act of listening which enables participants to sense the overlapping vibrations of the natural world and human infrastructure: glacial flows and digital beeps, the breathing of lakes and the humming of cables, the screaming of salmon and the booming reverberations of deep-sea mining.

How might we attune to these wired watery worlds? Can the fjord still be heard under the racket of extractive signals? Pacheco Bejarano’s soundwalk invites participants to partake in a moment of deep listening and imaginative interpretation with these resonant bodies of water.

Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano is a Colombian artist, writer and educator whose work explores the intersection between ecology, technology and spirituality. Having conducted expansive research into water ecologies, digital infrastructures, telepathy and fermentation, Pacheco Bejarano has developed audiovisual, edible, editorial and pedagogical projects that seek to amplify sensitive technologies using non-extractive processes.

He has worked with: Institute for Postnatural Studies, Madrid; Espacio Odeón, Bogotá; Plataforma Bogotá; and the collective project Garage School, initiated by Laagencia, Bogotá. He has held teaching positions at Pontifical Javeriana University and University of the Andes, Colombia; the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague; and Elisava, Madrid.

This year, Pacheco Bejarano is participating in the biennial Momentum 13 in Moss, Norway. In 2024, he collaborated with artist Mariana Murcia as part of the Dear Neighbour programme organized by Petra Rahm and Daniela Ramos at the Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen.

His work has been presented at venues including: Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid (2024); Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024); Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2023); La MaMa, New York, USA (2023); Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2022); International Symposium on Electronic Art, Barcelona (2022); Galería Santa Fe, Bogotá (2021); Carrillo Gil Art Museum, Mexico City (2020).