Why did I started this project? Time to look back where it came from;-) – Frouke Wiarda

 

It is spring on Kefalonia, Greece, in 2018. I am participating in an artistic research project with several artists exploring the meaning of sound and space. The island of Kefalonia boasts an impressive raw history, with ancient tombs from pre-Christian times everywhere. Moving forward in time, one encounters a small fishing port where an inflatable boat, carrying refugees, recently sank off the coast.

 

While my colleagues mostly stay by the sea, I head for the center of the island with my camera and sound equipment. Initially passing through majestic pine forests, I soon reach the bare mountains with low vegetation, leaving all the villages behind. In the middle of the island, atop the hills, I discover a battalion of wind turbines – contemporary giant monumental instruments. These machines harvest the wind, pointing to a world of possibilities such as sustainability, innovation, and mechanical precision. With their constant universal movement and slow, percussive shadows, they hum and transform the hills into a place of fiction. Their sound moves invisibly through the air, connecting me to them. I wonder if they can talk with the wind and if they ever harbor doubts and if their white blades are like hair. They are as much wind as they are a thing.

 

The ancient tombs have a story, the wind turbines do not (yet), but are only seen as a machine that converts the kinetic energy of the wind into electrical energy. Yet, in this place, surrounded by these white giants, it feels like they connect the place with the wind, and in that movement, they are always on their way to becoming something else.

 

I am with John Cage. ‘Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise,’ he wrote in 1937. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.