Statement

Invisibledrum is an international and transdisciplinary research platform investigating animism and spiritual technologies within the field of arts and social-ecological systems. The platform welcomes artists and researchers from transdisciplinary fields of knowledge, exploring liminal spaces where sound & performance art meet ecology, ethnobotany, herbalism, technology, embodied knowledge, healing practices, psychology, anthropology, and speculative design, amongst other disciplines.

Drawing on ethnobotany, ecofeminism, deep ecology, quantic/gentle activism, mysticism and animistic perspectives we question how art can explore the nature-culture continuum. We invite musing, dialogue, and knowledge transmission in the matter of spiritual technologies, relational practices, and decolonial methodologies, as alternatives to mechanistic worldviews, anthropocentrism, neoliberalism, imperialism and dichotomous thinking. Invisibledrum seeks to hold space for the healing potential to be found in art, performance and ritual

Invisibledrum aims for opening pathways where knowledge transmission in contemporary art questions postcolonial traditions, unpacking epistemologies that lie outside the influence of positivist and rationalist thinking. Invisibledrum supports and creates dialogues and encounters based on fieldwork methods exploring bodies, technologies, (in)visible architecture, sites and landscape as interrelational, interconnected and in constant becoming. The aim of the collective is to invite the use of magical thinking and ritual-making in contemporary art and beyond. Questioning the agency of contemporary art Invisibledrum facilitates happenings, symposiums, performances, poetic gestures and gatherings that explore regenerative tools and methodologies. In so doing we commit to sustain and nourish paradigm shifts in ecology, medical praxis and society by reclaiming imagination, sensory perception, somatic knowledge and a language of respect and reciprocity. Invisibledrum aspires to generate horizontal learning within non-hierarchical collaboration and co-creation contexts.

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An important area of our interest and research investigates technology within ancient holistic thinking. We ask: What was the role of technology in ancient ritual practice? How technology was implied in shamanism and animistic practices, such as healing and practices of incubation? And, how can we access these technologies today? What is the role of speculative fiction, performative practice, embodiment and somatic research in reclaiming these technologies in our highly digitalized society?

Invisibledrum as a living organism is open and receptive to growth,  transformation and regeneration. The platform is a place to develop work, projects, topics, and discussions that are aligned with our core values. Speculative methodologies, randomness, imagination, intuition and creativity are celebrated and recombined with scientific methods, frameworks and tools to reclaim the role of arts to generate alternative worldviews to the dominant one.  We believe that discussing the current environmental, ecological and social emergencies within artistic frameworks is necessary to generate planetary strategies that resist the systemic violence perpetuated towards our ecosystems and life. Invisibledrum builds networks of partnerships, spirit alliances, and collaborations to unravel ways of coexisting that honour our interconnectedness with all forms of life and the cosmos. By sharing knowledge and practices with our communities, we wish to collectively envision an alternative future of reciprocity with our Mother Earth and beyond.

Established in 2018 in the city of Trondheim, Norway. 

Founders, Art direction  & curatorial

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Nazaré Soares is co-founder of Invisibledrum, she is also a board member and the art curator for Tribute Earth, an NGO that provides access to ancestral wisdom and regenerative biocultural projects. She is an interdisciplinary artist mainly working with new animism & spiritual technologies within contexts of contemporary art & deep ecologies. She works around notions of neo-pharmacopoeias, invisibility, imperceptibility, and magic engineering. Her practice interweaves, psychoacoustic and cinematic spaces, speculative design and performance arts, producing spaces for ritual, and incubation means. Recently she is deepening her work in the magic of the water through quantic activism, the world of hydrotherapy & aquatic bodywork practices, integrating them into artistic expression Her work has been exhibited at numerous art venues and festivals worldwide. She is granted a MAF from NTNU in 2017. She graduated from Brighton University in Moving Image Arts in 2014.

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Amalia Fonfara is co-founder of Invisibledrum. she works as a visual artist and shamanic practitioner based in Trondheim. She has several years of training and education in fine art, therapeutic healing, and shamanic healing work. . Based on performance and new media her artistic work embarks on an ontological investigation of the crossings of inner and outer landscapes through introspection of animism and contemplative healing practices, where the essences of soul and materiality are entangled in a holistic comprehension of life. Her work is often socially engaged in local environments focusing on body, memory, architecture, and landscape.

Project Managers & Assistant Curators 

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Francesca Castagnetti is the project manager and assistant curator at Invisibledrum, an ethnobotanist and apprentice herbalist, with an academic background in the study of religious traditions and Indigenous methodologies (the University of Edinburgh and the University of Tromsø), Francesca traces and retraces personal migratory routes between the Italian Alps, the UK, South Asia and the Norwegian Arctic/Sápmi.  Her work is centred around multi-species reciprocity, land-based knowledge, and the importance of spiritual wisdom to food and health custodianship/sovereignty. Her practice combines research, ethnography, apprenticing and multimedia outputs by weaving together the threads of botany, sound ecology, herbalism, herding, spiritual traditions, agroecology, and fibre, dye and dairy making.

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Francis Sosta is the project manager and assistant curator at Invisibledrum, a multimedia artist and inter-dependent curator based in Berlin. She works with sound, performance and audiovisual installation. Her artistic research reclaims spaces for critical reflection, alternative knowledge-sharing and healing in society. She creates and tenderly holds non-hierarchical environments for communal learning. Through Cultural studies, Media, Gender and Post-Colonial theories, Francis investigates the entanglements and interconnectedness of art-making, social life and ecology through embodiment, listening practice and intergenerational work.
She continues her studies in spiritual techniques such as Evolutionary Astrology and Akashic Records. She’s currently a trainee of a holistic doula.
Francis has exhibited her works internationally.
She holds a BA in Art History, and a MA in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at UdK, Berlin.

Artists at Nordic Witch Trails Project: 

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Marita Isobel Solberg is affiliated with the Witch Trails Project by Invisibledrum, a chanter, a musician, a performing and visual artist with sámi and kven heritage from Manndalen in North-Troms, Norway. She has a base in Tromsø, but lives a nomadic life on the Norwegian and international art and music scene. Over the years, she has performed and done projects around the world -alone, in various collaborations or with her earlier project Mara and the Inner Strangeness, she is currently working with her solo projects, the collaboration Sol&Sten with Trond Ansten and with her ensemble MARAS. The common denominator for all her projects is the intention to challenge the audience – and herself, to try reaching into and beyond the basic feelings of man and create vibrations that have repercussions

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Jessica Ullevålseter is affiliated with the Witch Trails Project by Invisibledrum, she received her education from the University of Barcelona and UNAM, Mexico- as well as the art tank La Colmena. She was influenced by situationism and performative art. Her art is to create a platform. She believes that we should, in our common meetings, be bold and make new ways for the future. It is our personal and our eco chambers´ duty and responsibility to dig into history and family heritage to actively heal the past. Her work is often inspired by shamanism or alchemical questions, perennial philosophy and symbolical studies. She sees herself as an activist as well as an artist and tries to actively question the artist’s
Photo: Maiken Hauksdatter role, protagonism and concerning authentic voice and message. Jessica Ullevålseter is presented as part of the We Are Europe

Researcher at Iberian Witch Trails Project

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Johana Ciro is affiliated with the Iberian Witch Trails Project, she is a medicine woman and a storyteller by vocation, a graduate in ADE, Master in Management and Promotion of Local Development and recently graduated as an International Doctor obtaining the cum laude in “Development Local and Territorial Innovation ”by the University of Alicante, nominated for extraordinary research awards. She recognizes herself as indigenous and proposes to the world a methodology of differential empowerment inspired by the knowledge of native women, who seeks to reconnect with our true selves and contribute to the healing of Mother Earth. She is currently ADL in the City Council of Carcaixent, Honorary Researcher of the University Institute of Social Studies of Latin America, and visiting professor at several universities and institutions in Spain and Colombia; However, one of the tasks that excite her the most is to actively collaborate with the Nasa de Cali indigenous council in the axis of women’s empowerment and get involved in empowerment processes with migrants and refugees.