Back

Merle Karp: Fluvial Time

  • The Other Sound

Merle Karp is a Helsinki-based media artist, visual designer and co-founder of the media art biennial Aavistus Festival. Karp’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and various light art festivals. Performing as Folded Visuals, she has brought her live visuals to hundreds of events from Greenland to Kazakhstan.

Flow Festival’s art program previously showcased her video works Hehku in 2022, followed by Ahdas in 2023. This year, Karp also returns as the resident VJ for The Other Sound stage, reprising her role from 2025.

Fluvial time is a video sculpture of a weightless, floating waterfall. It brings the dangerous brute force of rushing water into a delicate, immaterial form. The rapids slow down and speed up accompanied by the sound design, revealing details in the swirling water that the naked eye would miss.

The installation relates themes of time and perception through slow motion, literally a “magnifying glass on time” (from the German word Zeitlupe). Within the festival, it offers a calm space to pause and contemplate these shifts in perception. The water cascades with endless momentum only to suddenly vanish, prompting us to wonder where the flow of time goes once it escapes “now”.

Sound design by Leo Pahta.

Fluvial Time is on display at The Other Sound between other performances.