sound action by Simona Da Pozzo e Roberto Fiorentini.

Duration 14′, Materials: Maasgod Voice (file), contact amplification system, showcase, balaclava, wind.

Action realized at Curvapura Gallery (January 13th 2025) for Dialogos #8 as part of La stupidità della Filosofia curated by Pasquale Polidori and Michela Becchis. Dialogos is a relational project by Ermanno Cristini and Giancarlo Norese

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video: excerpt from Angelo Marotta’s documentation video of the action at Curvapura.

River water is both matter and a sonic environment: the chemical structure of every drop of river water takes on a specific form depending on the events it passes through, on every relationship it forges (with every animal, every plant, every mechanical rumble, every tributary, every city, every industrial outflow).

From its source, this sonic fabric accumulates, intertwines and expands, travelling at the speed of underwater sound—5,300 km per hour—all the way to the sea, where the sound continues to propagate for years.

Rivers as ancestors and other realities translates the water of the Rhine into a duration: 13.9 minutes. This is the time it ideally takes for the sound to travel the entire length of the river from source to mouth, transforming geography into a ‘duration’ to be heard.

The translation takes place through underwater recordings and sound editing that place the listener in a specific position, one in which they become ‘bodies amongst the bodies’ of the river: “at the midpoint between the riverbanks, we float on our backs, halfway between the bottom and the surface. At night, under a full moon and a clear sky, we feel the hulls, silhouetted against the light, shaking us.”

The performance recreates this riverine score by using urban, mineral and impervious surfaces as amplifiers, behind which humans take refuge, distancing themselves from this relationship of interdependence.