Ultima 2026 is launched! Check out the festival programme, festival guides and venues this year.

The Secret Life of Objects

Sound art for old and young

11–19 September 2026
Free

Showings

Friday 11/09

12:00–20:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Saturday 12/09

12:00–17:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Sunday 13/09

12:00–17:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Wednesday 16/09

12:00–17:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Thursday 17/09

12:00–17:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Friday 18/09

12:00–17:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

Saturday 19/09

12:00–21:00
Kunsthall Oslo
Free

In this exhibition at Kunsthall Oslo, things are not passive. They fall, roll, breathe, trigger, resist, collapse and answer back.

At its centre is The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, never screened officially in Oslo before now. In the film, everyday objects set one another in motion through an elaborate chain reaction: a small event becomes the beginning of another, one action tipping into the next. The work can also be heard as a musical composition: a chance-based percussion piece whose score and instrumentation are one and the same.

Some works ask for your ears, others for your hands.

Svetlana Maraš’s Jazz can be moved around the space, while Table Book turns the room into a shared musical world. Samvær Under Tilsün’s custom-built pachinko machine invites a different kind of play: physical, addictive and never the same twice.

Other works ask for stillness. In Dimitri de Perrot’s Into the Dirt, you are invited to lie down and listen as sound rises from the ground beneath you. Cod.Act’s πTon/2 breathes and twists according to its own rhythms, somewhere between creature and machine.

Running through the exhibition is a tension between balance and collapse, accident and control. Will that object fall? Will the flame catch? We are invited to take pleasure in instability, failure, and in the held breath before everything gives way.

πTon/2. Photo: Cod.Act

Photo: Samvær Under Tilsün

INTO THE DIRT. Photo: Dimitri de Perrot

Jazz. Photo: Simon Vogel

Table Book. Photo: Zlatko Mićic

Related activities

Thursday 10/09

15:00–16:00

Exhibition opening

Meet the artists! Cod.Act, Svetlana Maraš, Samvær Under Tilsün and Dimitri de Perrot will be present and can tell you more about their works.

Friday 11/09

12:00–14:00

Minivernissage

Exhibition opening for kids: Meet the artists and try the artworks yourself.
17:00–20:00

Special late opening for Oslo Culture Night

Drop by Kunsthall Oslo after regular opening hours.

Saturday 12/09

13:00–13:45

Table Book Workshop

Join and learn how to play on Table Book, an instrument that is also a composition! You will be guided by musicians Roberto Maqueda and Miguel Ángel García Martín on 12 and 13 September, and by composer Svetlana Maraš on 19 September.
Also Sunday 13/09 at 13:00, Saturday 19/09 at 13:00
15:00–15:30

Table Book Performance

With Roberto Maqueda, Miguel Ángel García Martín, Nora Sjøgren and Maria Maximov

Sunday 13/09

13:00–13:45

Table Book Workshop

Join and learn how to play on Table Book, an instrument that is also a composition! You will be guided by musicians Roberto Maqueda and Miguel Ángel García Martín on 12 and 13 September, and by composer Svetlana Maraš on 19 September.
Also Saturday 12/09 at 13:00, Saturday 19/09 at 13:00

Saturday 19/09

13:00–13:45

Table Book Workshop

Join and learn how to play on Table Book, an instrument that is also a composition! You will be guided by musicians Roberto Maqueda and Miguel Ángel García Martín on 12 and 13 September, and by composer Svetlana Maraš on 19 September.
Also Saturday 12/09 at 13:00, Sunday 13/09 at 13:00
17:00–21:00

Special late opening on Ultima’s final day

Drop by Kunsthall Oslo after regular opening hours.

List of works

Peter Fischli og David Weiss

The Way Things Go – film, 1987

Cod.Act

πTon/2 – sound installation, 2016

Svetlana Maraš

Jazz – mobile sculpture / composition, 2025

Table Book – instrument / composition for multiple performers, 2023

presented by Svetlana Maraš, Roberto Maqueda and Miguel Angel Garcia

Samvær Under Tilsün
Kulebingo – sound sculpture, 2026

Dimitri de Perrot
INTO THE DIRT – sound installation, outdoors, 2024

Samvær Under Tilsün. Photo: Julie Hrnčířová

Photo: Cod.Act

Svetlana Maraš. Photo: Zlatko Mićic

Dimitri de Perrot. Photo: Anne Morgenstern

Want to know more?

  • The exhibition is developed for young audiences aged 8 to 16, families, school groups and curious adults.
  • Some works are made to be watched and listened to. Others invite touch, movement and participation. Look for instructions in the exhibition space, and take part in the workshops and performative interventions during the festival (tba in August!).
  • The title work, Fischli and Weiss’s film The Way Things Go, was made in 1987 and lasts around 30 minutes.
  • Svetlana Maraš can also be heard solo in Ultima’s final concert The Instrument and the Atmosphere.

In collaboration with

  • Kunsthall Oslo

Supported by

  • Pro Helvetia
  • Sparebankstiftelsen DNB

Technical assistance

  • Łukasz Moroz
  • Max Molling