In this stone you are bound, in time you are bound
Break! a stone in two–
lick its insides.
This is the way to taste time
Take a ruin, let it breathe,
cut the weeds from hazelnut trees
There is nothing new or old,
only order and disorder.
There is nothing new or old
A stone shatters, eternity breaks.
Geologic Sonification
Tectonic Migration.
Ex Nation Formation.
Trans Stone
As stone moves we move
We could stop and rest here
forever
and yet we move
Contextual Mapping
WHERE ARE WE?
What we did find was something we were not looking for. We found something that could be considered the opposite of migration—we found stone. Everywhere, stone. We found and felt the geological magic of the the murgia—The Altopiano delle Murge—a karst topographic plateau. Ancient rocks have pushed up from under the sea, joining a once island sliver of land to the rest of the mainland. And yet in this land there is a movement, there is In Puglia we learn about Transhumance, which is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (vertical transhumance), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter … horizontal transhumance is more susceptible to being disrupted by climatic, economic or political change. (wikipedia)
In this land there is a road of pilgrimage, an ancient road of migration from the Rome to Jerusalem where travelers would traverse, stopping every 40 kilometers or so at another resnting point, “estacion del poste”.
These songs and sounds found in stone–suoni pietra–colors our entire journey and we carry it through.
It began when we arrived the first night at Giardina Diversensible in Ariana Urpina. There we discovered the magical sound and sensation garden built throughout the land, integrated into the hillsides. It came naturally to take our sound equipment and begin to play the instruments set throughout the land.
From the murgia in Puglia to the erupting Etna mountain above Catania; from the marble quarry in Apricena to the natural caves and eco-instruments in Ariana Urpina; from the powder released from a broken stone that the artist Vito Maiullari cracked and had us taste with our tongues (“this is the way to Touch Time” he said); to the stone streets paving every city. The stone is that which cannot move but manages to. It moves with horrific lethargy, terrifying slow-motion drama. Moves despite everything. And as Vito showed us—produces sound despite its density. We broke stones in two, and the two halves formed the half of eternity, and they formed the magic of time, of all time, tasting time. We began throughout all time bound, bound in stone and bound in the geology of the earth. And yet despite this, we MOVE. We must MOVE.
Yes this time our theme was something else, something that perhaps I did not intend, that I could not have embarked upon with intention.
It was Maria Teresa who may have first uttered the word recuperare when speaking about the vision of Ferula Ferita, the arts organization in the Old Station on the Antique Road. Recuperare recover, recuperate, regain. In relation to architecture, it means to take ruins, old run down spaces, unoccupied buildings, and make them functional again, even if just for a temporary amount of time. In relation to things it means to find old furniture, discarded bits of trash, and to refurbish them. In the way of land it means to pull away the weeds from nut trees and give them the chance to breathe again. It means both to scavenge and to reuse. It resists consumerism, resists the tendency to discard and build or buy anew. It resists the idea of supporting an economy where jobs are generated in order to make new things and we toil at making new things to buy new things to make new things.
Listen to the unedited recording of our conversation here and read more from Maria Teresa’s blog: https://incontrinmareaperto.wordpress.com/