A ROOF FOR SILENCE

A Roof For Silence

 
Soundwalk Collective’s composition for Hala Wardé’s ‘A Roof For Silence’ is inspired by the centrepieces of the Venice Biennale’s Lebanese Pavilion: the thousand-year-old olive trees of Bchaaleh, a remote village in the Batroun region of Lebanon. These trees of wisdom are silent witnesses of permanence and fragility: their natural formations evoke and elude gravity at once, as they live and breathe simultaneously in the past, present and future. They exist beyond the grasp of our concept about time and space, still producing fruits yet stoically standing, unmoved for over a century. The sound piece is composed of two chapters, ‘Falling Into Time’ featuring Lucy Railton on cello, and Antiforms featuring Daisuke Tadokoro on piano, reflecting the notion of the olive tree as a bridge between these two worlds of presence and void.

‘Falling Into Time’ slowly immerses us into the ground; roots grow deeply within the earth and natural matter, every day, hour, minute, second. The sound of a vibrating cello connects with the resonant frequency of the olive tree, evoking a timeless space where presence and void coexist.

‘Antiform’, a piece inspired by Paul Virilio’s concept, evokes the sky and the idea of expanse, anti-gravity and elevation. We remember Virilio’s words: “where there is a sentient object, being or thing, the space is no more, we take away a volume from it, by this very act we give it a shape: the Antiform.” All elements let go of structure and become informal and abstract; the improvised piano loses order and breaks free from existing patterns.