The Sounding Temple

Abstract:

The Sounding Temple is a sound installation which invites the audience to take a stroll around an environment where each might realise a variety of sound dialectics: the natural soundscape of the area, the composed soundscape and the eight verbal narrations of the inhabitants of the village Mavromati. Ancient Messina’s soundscape has been recorded, reshaped and reinvented together with the voices of the inhabitants telling stories of everyday life. The Sounding Temple is an attempt to connect the past with the present, the ancient with the contemporary through the act of listening. The themes of the narrations are based on remembrances on topics such as: matchmaking weddings without the consent of both parties, domestic cheese production and ways women made cheese in the old days, brothers killing brothers during the Greek civil war (1946-1949), how people produced and consumed their own products, the relationship with animals and what people can learn from them, ecological consciousness -seeing themselves as part of a larger 'whole' in which man coexists with other animals and plants, self-sufficiency and how life in the village prepares people able to survive with the absolutely necessary, on absence of cars on the streets in the old days. The school during the winter, the children were bringing their own firewood, detailed description of games played by children in the 1950s, the poverty that the village experienced over time. Access to education, which children could move from preliminary to secondary education. They had to go away and rent a room away from the village in order to attend classes.

The Sounding Temple was part of Tuned City 2018 and commissioned by Onassis Cultural Centre, Greece.

http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=5013

Source: Manual