Audiotopo [cáceres]
Site-specific sound installation. Sound system, field recording, architecture.
Plaza de San Jorge in the context of Cáceres Abierto, ES. 2021
Audiotopo [cáceres] is a contextual installation realised for Cáceres Abierto 2021 based on the disappearance of white storks in the historic centre of the city in the last 15 years.
This sound piece reintroduced in San Jorge's square the distinctive bill-clapping of the white storks, a sound that has gradually vanished from the soundscape of Cáceres but is still present in the collective memory of its inhabitants.
Bernie Krause in The Great Animal Orchestra writes that the fragile weave of natural sound is being torn apart by our boundless need to conquer the environment rather than to abide in consonance with it.
Is it possible to turn the violent human impulse to conquer and subdue into an interest in cohabitation?
As Vinciane Despret says, to understand other ways of inhabiting is to multiply the ways of seeing the world, it is to make our world more habitable.
This project was possible thanks to Julio C. Vázquez, José María Corrales, Eloïsa Matheu, Blas Molina, Fco. Tomás Cerezo, SEO Birdlife and Joan Sandoval among others.
Footage of bill-clapping by Javier Azua.