Performative sound walk
Saturday 17. 9. 2022, at 18:00
Gathering point: railway station entrance North
Registration required: info@cona.si
Duration: 40 min

Photo: Matjaž RUŠT.

Photo: Alisa OLEVA, CONA archive.

A walk along the railway tracks, with the help of an app and headphones, leads a viewer, a wanderer and an eavesdropper into a performative space. The work was created during the time of the epidemic when all public life had come to a standstill. As a result, the thick layer of the all-encompassing and constant noise disappeared, the existence of which we only really became aware of once it was gone. The authors captured this period, marked by weeks of silence and the gradual return of noise, with their recording equipment, walked paths and by discovering local microspaces. The result of their research is the existent locative performance, which, through the absence of noise, tells a tale of a future space. By using geolocation tools, the performance reflects on an experiential experience of landscape and sound and, in these complicated times, brings forth thoughts about the potential of a degraded space from the perspective of a society incapable of dialogue. The latter is using its last atoms of strength to depict dominance over the planet, while plants on the other side are blossoming, intertwining and even consoling, soothing, silencing and covering the all-pervasive species. The rhythm of walking, listening-in to the transitional space, a path that leads away from the overburdened city, and of listening to the degraded, waiting spaces, which are being taken back by nature, form the stance of this period of time … before it ends.

Irena PIVKA (SI) is an artist and producer. She works in the areas of new media, sound and performance arts. In recent years, she has been focusing her artistic expressions on the preparations of sound-walk performances which, by means of transmission tools and sound pictures, through walking and listening establish space anew and reflect social reality.

Brane ZORMAN (SI) is a composer, sound and radio artist. His work explores the possibilities of processing, presenting, perceiving, understanding, positioning and reinterpreting sound, space and ecology. By employing analogue and digital technologies and techniques, his work traverses the fields of music, multimedia, and visual space, using both sophisticated and simple tools, strategies, methods, and interactive interpretation models, soundscapes, evolving electronic and acoustic sound sculptures.

Colophon:
Text: Irena PIVKA
Sound composition: Brane ZORMAN
Voice interpretation: Irena PIVKA (SI), Jana WILCOXEN (EN)
Translation: Katja KOSI, Jana WILCOXEN
Production: Društvo Ljudmila, laboratorij za znanost in umetnost, zavod Cona, NOVARS
Coproduction: NOVARS Research centre – University of Manchester, ECHOES