Launching in September 2026 in Oulu, Finland – one of the world’s northernmost cities just below the Arctic Circle – Jakob Kudsk Steensen presents a new site-specific artwork beneath the city, where past sub-arctic ecosystems merge with future landscapes. As Oulu celebrates its year as European Capital of Culture in 2026, Steensen creates a unique living virtual world connected to Finnish ecology and history, exhibited in an underground car park.
Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen will transform the underground architecture of Kivisydän, Oulu’s central car park, into a digital installation as part of the Lumo Art & Tech Festival during the city’s European Capital of Culture year. This simulated virtual world will draw on vanishing sub-arctic ecosystems, Oulu’s historic tar heritage, and the de-extinction floral seed vault at the Oulu Botanical Garden.
Rooted in fieldwork across Northern Finland—from Oulu’s historic Tar Route to the Oulu Botanical Gardens and their seed vault—the installation explores the collision between ecological histories and our present. Visitors will encounter a dynamic virtual organism of sound, light, and 3D simulations, evolving and interacting in real time. Each visit to the installation promises to be unique, suspending audiences between the real and the virtual.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987, Denmark) is internationally recognised for immersive installations that reimagine overlooked natural phenomena. His collaborators include ARCA, BTS, leading museums, and biennales. For Oulu2026, he is crafting one of the first site-specific installations set within a car park. Steensen collaborates with local scientists and artists, and travels to environments to gather recordings, scans and images that become building blocks to make the virtual world.
For further information about Underground Clash (working title), click here.
The project is programmed and managed by international producer Claudia Woolgar.
The exhibition is produced by the Oulu Cultural Foundation, the organisation in charge of the Oulu2026 project.
Credit line: Underground Clash (working title) launches in September 2026 as part of Oulu2026, European Capital of Culture, www.oulu2026.eu.
