cassette – Ricerca Sonora

Filippo Lilli and Donato Loforese, aka Polisonum, remind us that sounds by their nature are connected to the uniqueness of events. You must be present and know how to grasp the moment in which an acoustic event takes shape in a specific place. ‘Sound exists if the circumstances that make it possible exist, if there is at that moment something willing to oscillate with its own motion.’ The occasion, in the case of 778FS, is provided by a six-hour walk along a disused stretch of the Castellaneta – Gioia del Colle railway in Puglia. An excursion punctuated by the old rusty sleepers along a route that, despite the tourism success of the region, has yet to find effective urban planning solutions that are compatible with new functions. The environmental charm of a walk in the open countryside is however assured, including a sense of nostalgia for an indistinct past, and for ruin porn fascinations that always emerge when something with its own unique architectural vocabulary and vocation is abandoned. Only the rails remain on the route (they are too heavy to be stolen), along with mechanisms once useful for the functioning of the entire system – the rattling of the trains is now only imaginary, the last gasp that it comes to mind in the memory of an undecided space, of a subnature that lies between the natural world and the artificiality of industrial and urbanisation processes. This is a report of diverse and dispersed realities. The duo, at ease with such liminal territories, recognise spaces can be physical, emotional, or even metaphorical, something tangible that can be identified in its intimate essence. The audiovisual investigation proceeds without interruptions, a sensitive accumulation of data on space, a continuous flow of stimuli through a random succession of connections between image and sound, revealing the fragmentation and indeterminacy of the places crossed. ‘Sound is born, passes through time and is extinguished, never to be audible again.’ Liminal spaces are above all psychological realities, a sensitive shift between daily life and ways of being and thinking which involve emotionally uncertain areas of our perception, giving life to new connections within the mind, bringing the indeterminate and the void towards broader horizons – this is valuable and transformative work.

 

Polisonum – 778FS