A video by Valentina Sciarra

With Miná Minov

Voice: RaJa ElMad

Editing: Rayna Teneva

Original Music: RaJa ElMad, Iliyana Georgieva

Camera: Svetlin Marinov, Valentina Sciarra

Sound: Simeon Hristov

Production assistants: Elena Anatckhova, Blagica Zdravkovska

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The video was created thanks to the support:

Gaudenz B. Ruf Award, the Fridge - Sofia, National Museum of Natural History, Sofia

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The video was created at the naturalistic site “Strupanitsa” rock phenomenon, the largest ancient landslide

(rockfall type) in Bulgaria, where, with the kind support of Gaudenz B. Ruf Award, was realized the work of land art “The Path of the Oscillating Stones” by Valentina Sciarra that is open to public .

“Strupanitsa” is a large-scale landslide (rockfall type) with area of 13.2 hectares, located on the right bank of Iskar river, about one kilometre from the railway station of Karlukovo village, in the region of Lukovit. Here the river is steeped in the thick limestone that forms rock with steep vertical walls. The limestone is yellowish to white in colour, full of black or dark brown flint kernels. The rocks are almost horizontal, crossed by cracks in various directions that give them an even more incredible look. These rocks completely deserve the name “Strupanitsa” (heaping) because it is actually a large fall of rock blocks, most of which are in the form of cubes or parallelepipeds with dimensions exceeding 15 cubic meters.

The featured text in the video, narrated by the voice of Raja ElMad was taken from the last (unfinished) book

by Italo Calvino, “Under the Jaguar sun”, dedicated to the five human senses. In Calvino’s story about the sense of hearing, the protagonist is a nameless king.

The king, holed up in his castle-prison, cannot move from fear of losing his throne. All that remains is to get

in touch with the world through a single organ, the ear. The king, captive of his passions, which are essentially those of power, motionless on his throne, will learn to recognize all possible sounds that, if invariably repeated, will guarantee his stability. The noise of the city reaches him almost imperceptibly, until one day he hears a young woman singing. He is attracted to that voice, he would like to answer, but he cannot, his voice is gone.

Unfortunately, the song of the woman will be lost among the thousand city noises that will engulf every possibility of contact with the rest of the world.

In a society in which the man’s greatest difficultly is to properly perceive the surrounding world, in an age in

which the individual feels increasingly weakened, disoriented, fragmented, the only thing that can deliver

man from his fears is to follow the “own voice”, the soul voice.

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* First screening : December 4th 2018 at National Museum of Natural History, Sofia / Curator: Zoya Petrova

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