This is the way the world ends — not with a whimper, but with a wave.
That is the impression of “FLÓÐ,” a multi-sensory art installation created by Icelandic artist Jónsi, best known as the bandleader for the post-rock group Sigur Rós. To create “FLÓÐ,” the mononymic artist blended elements of sound, sight, scent and space, evoking the sensation of looking up through the wave that ultimately carries you to your death as the world burns.
“FLÓД feels like drowning on dry land.
Upon opening the doors, the visitor is greeted first by white text raised slightly on a white wall.
“Nearly everything is under water,” it begins. “The weather is still but has been unpredictable so far, with briny tar and smoke trails flittering through the air.”
The words are preparation for what comes next.
The visitor enters a long hallway, its dimensions barely perceptible despite the fact that it is a short walk from one end of the installation to the other. The smell of brine tinged with smoke hangs in the air, pushed out through diffusers hidden in the space. A thin stripe of LED light runs horizontally across the ceiling, pulsating in whites and blues to the sounds of a wave and the roll of thunder that surrounds a person in an audio embrace. The bodies of other visitors become part of the experience, some sitting propped against the wall, some standing like statues and others lying prone on the ground looking up, waiting for the wave to wash over them.
The visitors, the victims.
“FLÓД didn’t start as an apocalyptic event, but it developed into one, Jónsi said on a discordantly sunny, warm Friday at Seattle’s National Nordic Museum, a few hours before the installation opened. The display was still being tweaked when the artist met with Real Change in a room one door over from the space that he would debut later that night.
The goal
“I want to move people, somehow,” Jónsi said. “I like it when people get moved.”
The art came together over the course of a few months. Initially, the museum pitched the concept as an exhibit themed after the ocean. That kernel morphed, Jónsi told The Stranger, into a story about the impacts of climate change on the sister cities of Seattle and Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.
“FLÓД is a blend of Jónsi’s various artistic endeavors. He designed the visual elements, the music and even the smells — he’s been practicing perfumery for nearly 13 years. To create the salty, smoky aroma that infused the space, he used a tincture developed with seaweed that his sister flew in to Los Angeles on a trip from Iceland.
The result of his efforts is a 25-minute experience that leaves a person feeling like they’re floating, staring up through the water of an apocalyptic wave that ends the world. It’s a strange calm, aided by the ethereal, dreamy soundscape that is emblematic of Sigur Rós’ musical style.
As an aural event, “FLÓД was shaped by the space that it fills. It took time to design the audio to exist in the room provided by the National Nordic Museum. It’s very different from the musical shows Jónsi is used to and will be embarking on again, shortly — in June, Sigur Rós is launching a world tour with a 41-piece orchestra and releasing its first studio album in a decade.
For such a spare affair, “FLÓД is remarkably intricate. It requires 36 speakers positioned throughout the room to create the sound of a rolling wave, smoke machines to distribute the scent and fill the room with haze and five staff who came up from Los Angeles, where Jónsi currently lives.
The installation is at home at Ballard’s National Nordic Museum, an institution founded in 1979 to celebrate the Nordic cultures of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the regions of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. While the museum has existed for decades, a new building opened in 2018, a nearly 56,000 square-foot space that was designated as the National Nordic Museum by an act of Congress.
The new building is light and airy, its door guarded by a giant statue of a Nordic swan made out of recycled buckets, a testament to the museum’s ethos and ethic of sustainability.
The organization hosts art, events and even a film series where an educator lets people know which movie references are faithful to Nordic culture and which aren’t.
That series popped to mind with “FLÓД because the museum recently showed “Thor: Ragnarok,” a campy 2017 film that’s part of the Marvel cinematic universe. In the Ragnarök of actual Nordic mythology, gods and giants battle, leading to the death of the gods and the end of the world, submerged into the sea.
The myth didn’t inspire the wave of Jónsi’s “FLÓÐ,” however. That honor, ultimately, belongs to climate change and the rising sea levels that threaten Jónsi’s home in Iceland and his new locale.
According to the U.S. government, sea levels have risen between eight and nine inches since 1880, in part due to rising global temperatures that have melted reserves of ice at the Earth’s poles. Torrential rains in California are tearing away at the ground around them, sending multi-million dollar seaside homes into the ocean.
Jónsi has his own ideas, of course, but he isn’t about to determine how other people see his work. Asked how he wants people to experience “FLÓÐ,” he had a simple, joking answer.
“Naked.”
Ashley Archibald is the editor of Real Change News.
Read more of the Mar. 22-28, 2023 issue.