Jakob Kudsk Steensen presents an immersive installation about the botanical afterlife deep beneath the city of Oulu, Finland

About Jakob Kudsk Steensen: merging art, ecology and technology

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987, Denmark) is an artist working with virtual world-building, video game technologies, and spatial sound to produce large-scale installations. 

His practice draws on fieldwork that uses photogrammetry and other forms of recording to digitally archive vanishing and emerging ecologies. Developed in close collaboration with environmental scientists, composers, and philosophers, this process gives rise to speculative worlds in which technology, psyche, and body converge as new forms of environmental storytelling. 

Notable collaborators include environmental philosopher Melanie Challenger; musician Arca; performer and vocalist Lyra Pramuk; experimental cellist Okkyung Lee; composer and Musical Director of the Philip Glass Ensemble Michael Riesman; ornithologist and author Dr. Douglas H. Pratt; the South Korean pop band BTS; the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; TBA21 Academy; Google Arts & Culture; the Teyelers Museum and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, among others.

Forthcoming exhibitions include the solo presentation of The Song Trapper 2025 for Fondation Louis Vuitton that travels to Mudam Museum of Modern art in 2027, and Otherworlds, Steensen’s first solo survey show at PHI Centre in Montreal Canada from 23 April to 13 September 2026 among others.

Seeds as souls: from archive to immortality

For Oulu2026, Jakob Kudsk Steensen invites audiences deep beneath the city of Oulu to experience virtual worlds, songs, and stories created using cutting-edge video game technology. Set in a virtual replica of Oulu Botanical Garden at −21°C, the work imagines a living archive where extinct and endangered plants persist beyond extinction inside a seed vault ecosystem. Steensen combines this technology with extensive ecological fieldwork in Northern Finland, including research at the University of Oulu’s Botanical Garden and its extensive seed collections. The subarctic region where Oulu is located is among the fastest-changing environments in the world, and the Botanical Garden has been responding to these challenges for many decades.

The artwork explores how changes in the physical world affect psychological themes such as memory, perception, and our ongoing emotional connection to disappearing ecologies. Scientific preservation practices, such as seed banking, have formed an important part of Steensen’s ongoing collaboration through his visits to meet and observe the Botanical Garden’s caretakers at work.

“In Oulu there is a strong technological identity, but also a deep connection to nature. I am interested in working with both at the same time,” Steensen says. “What excites me about Oulu2026 is not only creating my own work here, but seeing the entire city transform.”

“As part of the collaboration, we have given the artist access to the collections of the University of Oulu Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum, as well as the opportunity to familiarise himself with our work behind the scenes,” says Anna Ruotsalainen, Curator at the University of Oulu Botanical Garden.

A site-specific transformation beneath the city 

The installation will be presented in Kivisydän, a cavernous underground space beneath Oulu’s city centre, normally used as a car park and sealed behind massive blast doors. Instead of concealing the site, Steensen engages directly with its subterranean architecture, allowing concrete structures, depth and darkness to become part of the work’s narrative. 

Its hallways will be transformed through a mixture of immersive physical scenography, singing virtual worlds projected throughout, and hyper spatialised soundscapes that Steensen is renowned for; previously transformed sites include the likes of Copenhagen’s subterranean water reservoir Cisternerne in 2025, Berlin’s iconic Berghain nightclub in 2021, and London’s Hyde Park Kensington Gardens in 2020. 

Responding to this unique subterranean site, the artwork establishes a conceptual link between Kivisydän and the seed vault beneath the University of Oulu Botanical Garden — two protective underground structures designed to safeguard different forms of life and futures, human and botanical alike. 

“Kivisydän is no longer just a car park — it is becoming a unique art space where everyday life meets culture. This project turns parking into an experience and strengthens Oulu’s appeal as part of the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture year,” says Jouko Väänänen, CEO of Oulun Pysäköinti. 

Underground Clash (working title) is a production of Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture, programmed and produced by Claudia Woolgar (NL).

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