COPENHAGEN — Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen is bringing a digital swamp to life at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, offering visitors an immersive experience that combines art, technology, and ecology. The exhibition, titled "Wetland," opens Monday and features “Berl-Berl,” a virtual environment rooted in the wetlands that once defined Berlin’s landscape.
“Kudsk Steensen’s “Berl-Berl” is a large-scale video and sound simulation created with game engine technology. The piece first premiered in 2021 in Berlin’s Halle am Berghain, a former Soviet-era power plant now known for its underground club scene. Since then, it has evolved through multiple iterations, each exploring the intersection between nature, history, and folklore tied to swamp ecosystems.
The name “Berl-Berl” derives from a Slavic word meaning “swamp” and also relates to the etymology of Berlin, reflecting the region’s prehistoric wetland origins. The installation at MoMA will be presented on a 24-by-24-foot digital screen in the museum’s garden lobby, accompanied by a surround sound system designed to envelop the audience. Unlike more frenetic digital art, Kudsk Steensen’s work is associated with the “slow media” movement, emphasizing contemplation and gradual engagement over rapid stimuli.
Kudsk Steensen’s fascination with wetlands traces back to his upbringing in Norre Nissum, a village on Denmark’s west coast surrounded by marshes and brackish ponds. Video games catalyzed his creative journey as a youth: encountering immersive, 3-D environments such as “Half-Life” introduced him to the Unreal Engine, a software tool that allows users to design custom virtual worlds. This early interest evolved into a career blending digital technology with ecological and cultural storytelling.
After attending art school, Kudsk Steensen moved to New York, where he initially produced virtual reality videos for environmental organizations. Over time, his focus shifted toward artistic projects. His breakthrough came with a commission from Berlin’s LAS Art Foundation, centered on climate change themes. Collaborating with ornithologists, sound artists, and other experts, he captured the sensory and biological realities of wetlands, translating them into a virtual space enriched with naturalistic sounds and visual elements.
In addition to ecological themes, “Berl-Berl” draws on regional folklore and pagan mythology. Central to the MoMA installation is a depiction of Triglav, a three-headed deity historically venerated in areas surrounding the Spreewald, a forested inland delta near Berlin. Triglav symbolizes the navigation between worlds—earth, water, and sky—and embodies the liminal quality of wetlands themselves. Other mythic figures, such as Nokken, a shape-shifting water spirit from Nordic tradition, appear in related works but not in the current MoMA presentation.
Kudsk Steensen’s work also addresses the broader significance of wetlands in urban development and environmental resilience. Many major cities—Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Mexico City—were historically built on marshy terrain that was later drained or covered over, often to accommodate industrial or infrastructural expansion. Today, these ecosystems play crucial roles in mitigating flooding and supporting biodiversity, a fact underscored by the ongoing climate crisis.
At MoMA, senior curator Paola Antonelli described “Berl-Berl” as a fusion of technology and nature that prompts reflection on human consciousness and ecological stewardship. For Kudsk Steensen, the project represents a convergence of his technical expertise, environmental interests, and creative vision. “I like working with wetlands and swamps,” he said, “because they allow a mushy, transformative process within a hard-edged technological framework.”
The exhibition marks Kudsk Steensen’s first solo show in the United States and highlights the potential of digital media to engage audiences with complex environmental narratives through immersive, poetic virtual experiences.