Open Space #17 Jakob Kudsk Steensen "The Song Trapper"
Jakob Kudsk Steensen, The Song Trapper, 2025, image en mouvement, performance virtuelle et son spatialisé. Image tirée de la vidéo. Courtesy de l’artiste.
- Place
- Gallery 8
Jakob Kudsk Steensen (1987, Denmark) is the new guest of Open Space, the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s contemporary art program.
On the occasion of this solo exhibition—his first in a Paris institution—the Danish artist presents The Song Trapper (2025), a new immersive installation including moving image, virtual performance, and spatial sound supported by the Fondation.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen is a multidisciplinary artist exploring ecological and psychological themes whilst challenging our relationship with technology. For more than a decade, he has experimented with game engines, generative systems, photogrammetry, and has combined this with environmental fieldwork to construct new virtual worlds. He is particularly interested in unknown, rare, or threatened ecosystems—from desert lakes to submarine volcanoes, from wetlands to glaciers. Each time the artist does so, he seeks to evoke different memories, stories and philosophies, drawing attention to how changes to our outer worlds impact our inner mental realms.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen, The Song Trapper, 2025.
Moving Image, virtual performance and spatialized sound. Courtesy the artist.
On the occasion of Open Space, Jakob Kudsk Steensen presents The Song Trapper (2025), displayed on multiple LED screens that have been arranged to respond to the spatial qualities of the Fondation’s Gallery 8. The video features the artist’s world-first character—The Song Trapper—the first in a series currently in development as part of an operatic project and video game, Evoker.
Originating from hand-drawn images by the artist using ink and watercolor, this character was transformed into 3D models, and then animated inside virtual worlds created by Steensen. Incapable of speech, the Song Trapper navigates these worlds by collecting sounds that they gather, remix, and play back using musical devices attached to their body—canisters, flutes, etc. The Song Trapper’s journey unfolds across deserts, marshlands, and saline landscapes in search of relics connected to voice and song. As in video games, these environments shift in response to the protagonist’s gestures, and vice versa; movement, sound, and landscape fall into rhythm. Steering the narrative, a free-verse poem by Steensen—appearing as subtitles in the video—reveals the inner workings and philosophies of The Song Trapper’s travels.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen, The Song Trapper, 2025.
Moving Image, virtual performance and spatialized sound. Courtesy the artist.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen, The Song Trapper, 2025.
Moving Image, virtual performance and spatialized sound. Courtesy the artist.
True to his approach, Jakob Kudsk Steensen has worked with a range of collaborators: Danish motion-capture specialists; actor Iris Thomsen for choreography; and Matt McCorkle together with vocalist Lyra Pramuk for the soundscape and environmental sounds. To preserve the performative, spontaneous dimension of the creative process, he invited them to respond directly to the text and images. Extending the atmosphere of the video, Steensen has bathed Gallery 8 in a greenish hue, where a fragrance—specially created with perfumer Yann Vasnier—floats in the air, blending aquatic and amphibian notes.
Curators
Claudia Buizza and Ludovic Delalande (Fondation Louis Vuitton).
The exhibition Jakob Kudsk Steensen The Song Trapper is presented in partnership with Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, which will host a solo exhibition by the artist in spring 2027.
OPEN SPACE PROGRAMME
Open Space is a program dedicated to contemporary art, offering the possibility of a solo exhibition and the production of a new work.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Jakob Kudsk Steensen (1987, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s most recent commissions include Boreal Dreams at Fondation Beyeler, and Psychosphere at Cisternerne this year. Prior to this Steensen recently exhibited The Ephemeral Lake at Tokyo’s Mori Museum in February 2025, which followed its premiere at Hamburg’s Hamburger Kunsthalle in April 2024. Later in 2024 Steensen presented Berl-Berl at Korea’s 2024 Gwangju Biennale.
Other notable solo exhibitions include the premiere of Berl-Berl commissioned by LAS for Halle am Berghain in Berlin 2021, and Catharsis at London’s Serpentine Galleries in 2020. His work Liminal Lands was commissioned by the Luma Foundation for the Prelude exhibition at Luma Arles 2021, and Catharsis shown at Serpentine Galleries 2020 as part of Connect BTS. He also received the Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in 2019 to create The Deep Listener with Google Arts and Culture.
He is the recipient of the best VR graphics at the 2019 Cinequest Festival for Technology and Cinema, the Prix du Jury (2019) at Les Rencontres Arles, the Webby Award - People’s Choice VR (2018), and the Games for Change Award - Most Innovative 2018, among others.
In 2024 in his home nation of Denmark Berl-Berl was acquired by ARoS Museum of Art after its 2022 solo presentation and RE-ANIMATED by ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art.
Notable previous collaborators have included musician ARCA, experimental cellist Okkyung Lee, Composer and Musical Director for the Philip Glass Ensemble Michael Reisman, Ornithologist and Author Dr. Douglas H. Pratt.
