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Friday 3rd March 2023

We follow Donato’s white van across the scrublands, weaving a path between Altamura and the nearby town of Gravina. Arriving at our destination, we park our cars at the edge of a massive crevice. Peering below the grassy edge, it’s difficult to see what lies beneath.

Three women greet us: an archaeologist named Doriana Galella an archaeologist, an historian and witch called Antonia Laddaga, and her daughter Carmela Zuccaro who acts as our translator, but in fact has her own deep knowledge that she will come to share with us.

We walk down paths carved into the cliff face and reach a network of caves that were inhabited over thousands of years. The area is called the “Seven Chambers”, in part because seven was significant in Christian numerology and also because of the seven rooms that comprise the cave dwellings.

We are curious to know above all the relations between the former inhabitants and the stone that formed the architecture of their lives. The stone was seen as a “tabula rasa”, a blank slate, and that the water is the carrier of life, so as the water passes through the stone, it gives life to the stone. You could say that the water is like the “soul” of the stone body. Stones are also a way of recording time, the water passes through over centuries. The stone did not have a soul, but a soul can be brought in through the medium of water. The women show us a symbol, an upside-down triangle that means “water is there” but to which a crucifix was later added when the Seven Chambers were christianised.

We learn more about how the people related to the stone: in the past the caves were everything, the locals relied on them for protection, housing, and to venerate their gods. Over time, this relationship evolved. In the Middle Ages, people ceased living within the caves, instead using them to house their animals. Then, as they began constructing the towns, they excavated more, pulling stone from the caves but living above and beside them. The modern era brought novel materials like cement, which severed the bond between humans and stone. Stone came to be viewed as old-fashioned, inefficient, delicate, and time-consuming compared to cement, which required less care and enabled faster construction.

We recall the diggers we had seen yesterday, churning through the landscape beside the ancient carvings to produce the stuff.

Cement production alone accounts for a staggering share of the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, around 8% and is radically altering our lived environment in ways we did not intend. Carmela explains that the acid rain that has arrived with industrialisation now carves its way into the stone a lot quicker than the rains that fell before, accelerating the rate at which it erodes. This phenomenon corresponds to the collective sense that time itself is accelerating. In the changing relationship between acidised water and ancient stone there is a material manifestation of the feeling that human society is spiralling out of control.

We leave the caves and walk further along the cliff tops. Adrienne asks Antonia why she is drawn to this space is interested in the space. She explains that she was born here, that she always played along this area as a child and she still lives nearby. Then her eyes glimmer and says, “I have a certain sensibility”. Carmela explains that people think of her as a witch. She has feelings about things before they happen. Adrienne asks if she also considers that she has a connection to the supernatural. She says yes, but that she doesn’t know where it comes from. Normally it is the seventh child in a family who might have such powers.

They take us to a carving on a cliffside overlooking the town. The carving bears the shape of a square with a circle in one corner. It was said that in this place, you are positioned to talk to the divine. We ask why the circle is not centered. The group speculates that this was so you do not imagine yourself as centered in the cosmic order. We each take turns to stand in the symbol, and the wind picks up, almost suspending us in the air.

During our time together, Doriana, Carmela and Antonia weave profound connections between the stone, water and human life in the town of Gravina, as we are leaving Carmela expands the fabric to encapsulate death as well. She explains that the canyon that surrounds the town, with its little meandering river, carve the shape of a skull in profile. This striking image confirms our felt sense of the region as one where death saturates life, and life saturates death, each giving the other meaning and form, like water in stone.

Thursday 2nd March 2023

We have begun to start our days later and later, our slow mornings dragging into the early afternoon. So today Donato attempts to realign us and arrives at 8am, baked goods in hand, and beckons us out of the house and into our cars. We follow him to a roadhouse some 20kms out of town.

Within the confines of the vehicle we somehow get to talking to the harder aspects of our relationship: in particular our communication and where it breaks down, as well as the stress of being romantic partners and work partners. Nothing feels resolved when we pull into the roadhouse and we encounter the familiar whiplash of shifting moods to present a kind face to our collaborators.

The roadhouse is a trip—wood paneling and tiled floors that remind Adrienne a little of her grandmother’s house. Inside the journalist Cosimo Farina is already waiting for us.

We jump back in our cars and out to some hills where we hike out to the far end of a cliff. There under the hanging rock, Cosimo shows us ancient cave markings and etchings that he had discovered some years back and had researched and reported on. Running his hands over the smooth stone, he explains that it seems to be some kind of accounting system, likely for tracking the movement of herds of animals in the area for hunting.

Again, Adrienne feels lost in the lack of a shared language, the partial and miscommunications that roll past, the inability to share a subtle thought, the frustrating failure of translation apps to really support a flow between us all.

Directly below this ancient gathering place, somehow preserved for millennia is a sprawling mine, its mechanical beasts groaning and growling, as they lift and discard colossal loads of rocks and stone and dust, massacring millennia in the blink of an eye to manufacture cement. We take the audio and hope that somehow it can convey its contradictions to future listeners.

Cosimo has an uncanny knack for unearthing hidden histories: as we walk back from the cave he stoops down and emerges with fragments of ancient pottery. These artifacts are brought to the surface by moles as they travel in and out of their subterranean world: “Moles: the original archaeologists,” he says and grins.

The ground becomes increasingly lumpy and Donato explains that we are walking atop of tombs. Is it only in the Murgia region that the proximity of the living and the dead feels so wafer thin? Or are we simply not aware?

After a short walk through a forest path, we come across a Bauxite mine from the 1960s, whose red wound has been partially reclaimed by nature. A mix of sadness and inevitability washes over us each time we encounter these remains of human extraction.

Cosima and Donato lead us a little further along the path to the immensely deep “La Grotta del Cavone”. We cannot really see inside, only a tiny black hole leading to the vast cavern beneath the earth. Adrienne throws a stone and it is many seconds of anticipation before we hear it crash onto the bottom of the abyss.

We drive on and visit a town called Spinazzola. In a field on the outskirts, a flock of falcons dives and ascends against a brooding heavy-blue sky. Their screeches tussle with a cacophony of canine voices from the pack of dogs that roam the same field. Although the site is compelling, we are confused as to its significance, why exactly Cosimo and Donato brought us here. And we lack the language to really ask. We try to catch the sounds of the falcons but as we approach the field the packs of dogs growl and bellow at us, so we give up.

We drive on down a mud track and meet a couple who run a kennel for the stray dogs. They open the trunk of their car and reveal a pasta ragout that they feed the falcons and the dogs every day for lunch. Still, it feels like something is missing. It is the kind of moment where we wish we had an interpreter, because we can only half grasp at what is happening.

The smell of the dog piss and hormones is extreme.

Finally, we audition another venue for our workshop, a quarry which we informally name “the cemetery of stone blocks” because the sheets of rock left behind in the quarry look like gigantic tombstones. The glow from the setting sun, and withthe sounds of distant birds and animals caressing our ears, we knew we had found our sanctuary for the ritual.

As we leave, Adrienne discovers a water tank underground, and records its watery reverberation when struck by sharp stones creating a symphony of echoes in the gathering twilight.

Wednesday 1 March 2023

We spend the morning ploughing through outstanding administrative tasks, mainly related to grants we are applying for. We both harbour ambivalence towards becoming artists who rely on public funding, feeling uneasy about the state capture that threatens free expression, as well as the never-ending cycle of funding applications. And yet we proceed.

In the afternoon we drive to the home of sculptor Vito Maiullari. Eleanora, whom we met yesterday at her home, kindly joins us to translate. Vito escorts us through his artistic haven, giving a masterclass on creating sound from stone.

One sculpture is comprised of long hanging shards, which resonate in harmony when struck with a mallet. Another is a gigantic rock in which a recess has been carved large enough for a human skull. When you place your head inside you feel for a moment that you have merged with the stone around you.

Our conversation reveals that stones consisting of a single layer–a single layer of time–produce the most resonant tones, which resemble pure sine waves, concentrating the energy. In contrast, stones with multiple layers emit more complex, noisier sounds, less pleasing to our ears.

We take note of an intriguing technique Vito employs: using simple squares of styrofoam as a base for a stone, allowing it to “float.” This method enables the stone to produce clear, long tones when struck without dissipating energy into one’s hands or a table.

Then, Vito repeats a gesture that captivated us years earlier: he splits a rock apart, handing each of us one of the five pieces. He explains that the inside of this stone has remained untouched by air for millennia, and by placing it on our lips, we can savor the effervescence of time itself.

When darkness descends, we enter Vito’s studio and examine a solid stone sculpture mounted on four spring legs. Striking the with your hands sends vibrations along the stone and into and between each of these spring legs, back and forth and back and forth. From one strike this assemblage embodies the essence of vitality, seemingly without an end, until its life force dissipates into nothingness.

Outside again the night sky reveals two planets – impossibly bright – that look like Venus and Jupiter. Vito and his wife invite us to eat with them: cheese and wine and a long, stringy broccoli served in a broth. It is such a joyful evening, a welcome reprieve from the cold bureaucracy that had swallowed up our morning.

Tuesday 28th February 2023

Donato rouses us once again with the scent of coffee and Cornetti. We feel loved. So much care is taken on our behalf, for our funny little vision of a world in which stones can sing if we only know how to hear them. He proposes that we make a performance workshop for the community to share our ideas and practices, and we are excited to leave an imprint here. We workshop the name for a while, settling on something like “Stone tears” or “Tears of Stone.” Donato proposes an afternoon excursion to scout potential workshop locations.

But for the morning, we take a long drive out of town, turn off a country lane and keep driving along a gravel road that snakes past homesteads guarded by dogs chase away our vehicle.

Leaving the dogs behind, we alight at a cave called Grotta Curo Li Rizzi. Stepping out of the car our eyes fall on some rows of metal bars fixed into a cube of concrete. Its intended purpose is mystifying but to our eyes – as sound artists – it looks like a sound sculpture installed into the landscape. We experiment with them for a while, capturing both short compositions and isolated twangs for future reference.

The cave itself feels like a sentient being. The walls are adorned with formations that evoke the contours of a vulva, a rib cage or a uterus. Yet, the sensation it evokes is not so much uncanny (according to Freud, the thing which triggers a twin feeling of both familiarity and strangeness), but comforting somehow, akin to a homecoming. Though unspoken, it seems to be a feeling we all share.

Therein lies a paradox: it is the human-like attributes that instill a sense of connection, and yet, our anthropomorphizing metaphors simultaneously create a distance. When we say things like “It looks like a vulva” or “Can the stone ‘consent’?” We approach non-human nature in a way that ironically widens the gulf between us. By attempting to enclose this alien thing within human terms to bring it closer to us, we actually shroud these entities, or rather we render them invisible beneath the blinding light of our projections. This raises an important question: can we transcend thought systems that devalue non-human entities, without making them into proxy humanoids?

We breathe, as our eyes adjust to the darkness. Yes. Somehow, when the mind is stilled, it is possible to eencounter the aliveness of the cave without resorting to metaphors.

We begin to sing together, first Adrienne and Donato, and then Kate and Donato. A beautiful, descending melody that repeats itself over and over, the kind of melody that lives in the cracks and croaks in our voices rather than in perfection. Donato says the song reminds him of a boat at sea. He goes on to specify that he is thinking of the boat of migrants that wrecked a few days earlier, scattering hundreds of human beings into the Mediterranean, only a half of whom survived.

The song falls into silence, and we loop through a passage back towards the entrance of the cave. Adrienne stops, words trickle from her lips: a poem of sorts, imagining herself as a cave seeking to uncover the non-human voice that dwells within the human, for the barriers that divide are, in truth, rather more thin than they seem.

As we return to the cars, Adrienne suggests going for coffee so Donato navigates us to a small hotel and wedding venue en route known as I Luoghi di Pitti. We are greeted by Eleanora, the proprietor’s daughter, who guides us through the ancient manor house. Much like Dimora Cagnazzi, this stately home has been lovingly restored from a state of ruin.

We drive on to the verdant cliffs of Pulo di Altamura. The word “pulo” is unique to the Murgia region, and it means “sinkhole” – a depression in the earth’s surface where the ground below has collapsed or otherwise given way. We venture down its steep sides to see whether this is the space for the workshop but there are too few loose rocks or stones around, which would be necessary for the sound-based ritual we have in mind. We pause, the pulo‘s winds whip our hair and clothes and snatch away the very sound of our voices. No, the sheer vastness of the space would swallow any sound we could make.

A short drive to the opposing end of the pulo, where we meet two of Donato’s friends. Together we descend into another cave that opens up in an otherwise inconspicuous field. The walls glisten and the air is thick with the scent of damp earth. We notice a stalactite clinging to the roof, each drop of water reflects the light of the world above before it crashes on the floor. Again, visual metaphors abound our language, “it looks like a nipple”, we say, “like a clit”, “like a cock”.

The cave connects to a ledge that opens out onto a steep drop that descends base of the pulo below. A conversation about the geography of the place develops, as Adrienne, without any knowledge of Italian, begins to feel disconnected, underwater, or rather, buried, as if listening through layers of sediment, dirt and rock. It is true that much meaning and connection happen beyond language, but speech dominates the senses; when present, it excludes all other sensations, even when you cannot understand a word of what is said.

Sunday 26th February 2023

Day Zero has arrived. A fresh start or perhaps a new cycle in a waveform? Over the next ten days, we anticipate our final voyage to the Murgia region as we conclude our research on extraction, and our excitement for this return is palpable on the airplane. We don’t like to fly, not only for the damage it does to the collective body of the earth, but for the strange disconnection to time and space that occurs. It will be by far the greatest distance we will travel in these ten days, yet we barely register it. It’s like changing channels. Cold wastelands of Berlin. -Flick-. Green, largely treeless pastures of the Murgia, which was so arid the last times we visited.

On this particular journey, our focus will be on the resonant and sonic potential of stones. We want to explore a series of geological rock formations and make a series of field recordings of the stones themselves. We want to learn to make musical instruments from stones, and discern the intersections of the communities who have built ancient relationships with the rock. With these sonic ‘imprints’, we intend to create audio/visual artworks and physical/performative interventions. In addition to illustrating the musical universes that can be created from stone, the a/v works will explore the relationship of the human self to time; in particular the ways in which the seemingly linear passage of time creates tension with lived human realities.

We are also interested in the sentient nature of stone, the way it “moves” and “speaks,” a fascination that was inspired by a visit years earlier to the studio of artist Vito Maiullari. Surrounded by his lithophones, chimes and girating sculptures, Vito broke a stone in half and asked us to lick the powder inside. He said, “You have just tasted 4 million years; you have tasted time”.

And we want to taste it again.

We arrive in Naples in the late evening, and after a little trouble at the car rental we get on the road after 10pm. We drive through the night, stopping for dinner and again for supper, arriving close to 4.00 at the old manor house which was now a kind of community center and residency space called Dimora Cagnazzi.

There is some misunderstanding about our arrival, but after waiting for about twenty minutes by a locked gate, our old friend Donato Laborante, arrives and allows us in. Even at this cruel midnight hour, Antonio, a very kind worker who maintains the house, takes the time to light a fire for us in a fireplace carved into the wall, made, of course, from stone.

Please credit the photographer/stylist listed in the filename