Safe Place [SemiSilent] | Sounic Future Residencies

A Safe Place: The Time of Wind and Waters composition was published in SemiSilent podcasts.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organised by Asociația Jumătatea plină and www.semsilent.ro in Letea Village, Tulcea County, Danube Delta, Romania in June-July 2019 and produced by Anamaria Pravicencu.

“Terrans tend to feel they’ve got to get ahead, make progress. The people of Winter, who always live in the Year One, feel that progress is less important than presence.” 

— Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

They say time stretches out in a place where the pace of technological progress has not caught up with the people’s ambitions. For a newcomer, the village of Letea, on the brink of the ancient Letea Forest connected to the vast wetland of the Danube Delta, may be the place for quiet contemplation, the time to reconnect with the wild and find one’s inner peace. It is peculiar how this imaginary safe unspoiled place full of wildlife is contrasted with the harsh infertile land, cruel and violent for human and non-human animals alike. The voyage to these lands was much deeper than expected. The piece is a psycho-geographical memory of the safe place of wind and waters.

Photo by Vlad Bâscă, 2019