A sound-installation, where we experiment together with materials from different perspectives, languages and sonic knowledges, using data and media from different archives, narratives, texts and simple sounds of the streets and the current environment as well as transforming visuals into text and narrating them.

Space is sound and sound is space – we want to create a space for deep listening, where physical and mechanical ambient sounds merge with text, poetry and music produced by the artists for the matter of this artwork.

Spring has broken. A throbbing under your bare feet. Soft, damp moss in the middle of the city. The forest is the place we meet thus we come from the city. Tunis, Santiago, Moscow, Berlin. A tangle of voices made up of archived sounds. A storyline staggered in sound stages

Why is? What do we want to tell?

A woman is grounding her path: out of the motherly womb towards the street. She grabs her tools, made of metal- a metallic sound clashes through the window shields. And with irony teeth, she knocks her way through the asphalt. A protest is what shakes the ground beneath her feet – there are many of her kind, many on the streets of anger- thirsty for a renewal, an improvement to happen, hope.

And when it all falls down- rain drops hit the ground: the sky makes us wet, moistens us, dampens us, soaks us: a drench, a sound of splash. Shooting down the asphalt, wounding the ground and divides entire families. Her brother is gone, her sister is wounded on the street. She fights her way back to the edge of the road, looking for a safety spot behind a metal container. She lingers there until the rain subsides again. The moss turns dark green on the edge of the road.

“Maybe I could walk my way to Moscow from here,” she says to herself. “It might be possible within a day, even. One day or one night trip. My grandfather’s violin is still in good condition and I miss its special sound. “

So now they come together. Four interpreters of a sound carpet. Linked like a kilim made by the hands of a nomad tribe, seeking protection under the anonymous kapuza of the Chilean protest movement. The hail of stones from the streets of Tunis is what the rain in Berlin sounds like for the lonely person. In Moscow we form snow out of it and throw it at the military. We throw rain on them and it sounds dull.

Four voices, four places, four stories – one isolation. Made audible through a unifying idea, born in Neukölln-Berlin. The Oyoun gave us the chance to work together as artists in a collective despite the pandemic. The result is now audible, downloadable and perhaps also visible.

– Barbara, Mohamed, Susana,  Alexej.

1. Intro 

Susana A. Majid – text, voice, recording. Alexey Kochetkov – voice, violin.
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 

2. Mädchen (a Girl) 

Susana A. Majid – text, voice. 
Mohamedali Ltaief – recording. 
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 

3. Pan (Bread)  

Text by Gabriela Mistral.  
Barbara Ramirez – voice, metal objects. Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 
English Translation by Una Smith:  

They left a loaf of bread on the table, white inside, brown crust, 
it is top broken into a scatter 
of big snowy crumbs. 
It seems new, a thing I’ve never seen, yet it’s all I’ve ever eaten, 
but half-asleep, playing with its crumbs, touch and smell are forgotten. 
It smells like my mother suckling me. It smells like my three valleys, 
Aconcagua, Pa’tzcuaro, Elqui. 
It smells like I feel when I’m singing. 
There are no other smells in the farmhouse and that’s how it could call me. 
Nobody else around the house, 
only this loaf was broken open on a plate that knows me with its body 
as I know it with mine. 
Everywhere in the world, it’s been eaten, this same bread, its hundred brothers, bread of Coquimbo, bread of Oaxaca, bread of Santa Ana and Santiago. 
When I was little, I knew it, in the shape of a sun, a fish, a ring, and my hand knew its inner warmth like a plumy pigeon. 
Then I forgot it till today, when we two meet, I with my body of an aged Sara, He with the body of a five-year-old.

4. Matar Matar 

Text by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. 
Susana A. Majid – voice. 
Mohamedali Ltaief – recording. 
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, sound design. 

5. Protest 

Barbara Ramirez – sounds.  
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 

6. Hair 

Barbara Ramirez – text, voice, kalimba.  
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 

7. Women. Monologues. 

Susana A. Majid – text, voice. 
Mohamedali Ltaief – recording. 
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, violin, music production. 

8. Metal Memories 

Barbara Ramirez – voice, metal objects. 
Alexey Kochetkov – composition, music production. 

9. Please Be Weak 

Text by Robert Rozhdestvensky.
Alexey Kochetkov – violin, voice, composition, music production. English Translation by Alexey Kochetkov: 

Please be weak… Please become weak, please be. 
Then I’ll give you a miracle as a gift, 
So I could grow up, so special and big, 
And save you from a burning house while you’re asleep. 
Then I’ll be ready for the reckless and the unknown,  I’ll save you from the water before you drown. But you are stronger than me,  
you have the power and confidence,  
And you could save others from their despondency, 
You are not afraid of no blizzard, no fire, 
You won’t get lost, you won’t drown, won’t get tired, You’ll become smooth and windy if you want, But if you think it’s easy for me – it’s not. 
So I beg you, help me to believe in me, 
And just for a moment, please become weak.  — 

10. Als Mein Liebster… (As My Beloved…) 

Text – Yazidi folk song 
Susana A. Majid – voice. 
Mohamedali Ltaief – recording. 
Alexey Kochetkov – sound design.  

11. Outro 

Susana A. Majid – text, voice.
Mohamedali Ltaief – recording. 

Alexey Kochetkov – composition, violin, music production.
Cover Art by Barbara Ramirez.