In the memory of the fallen innocents of the Ukraine invasion war.
Voices of war is an immersive audio installation that attempts to aurally and affectionately reproduce the regime of terror endured by ordinary citizens of Ukraine, faced with continuous bombardment and a state of siege.
The concept, which belongs to the artist Cosmin Perța, relies on the idea of the fragility of being opposed to the absurdity of war, voluntary human action meant to end the lives of other innocent human beings, without any other justification than the political one. Politics is an ideological, abstract construct, while the sensations of those caught involuntarily in the middle of war are as natural and concrete as possible, revealing, in a distressing dimension, man's impotence to resist a destiny governed by decisions that he did not took.
The installation consists of the editing and collage of several authentic recordings from the bombing of the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye, made by the Ukrainian musician and artist Denys Vasyliev. Voices were added to them, but the sounds were not stylized and no other effects were added, relying on a more natural approach to the sounds of war.
Denys Vasyliev recorded these sounds, in total darkness, risking his life, outside the bomb shelter. That's why darkness is an important part of the installation, to try to reproduce as faithfully as possible the context in which these sounds were heard.
In the middle of the installation, you will hear running footsteps and the voice of a mother, accompanied by children, asking if this is a simulation or a real bombing. Another voice answers that it is as real as possible. A few minutes after this recording, a rocket exploded several tens of meters from the shelter where the protagonists were.
(c) Cosmin Perta & Denys Vasyliev
Curator: Ana Negoita
Concept, sound, text & voice 1: Cosmin Perta
Audio recordings of real bombing over Zaporozhye: Denys Vasyliev
Voice 2: Mihail Vakulovski
The project is part of the subtheme Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss.
Author
Cosmin Perța
Cosmin Perța was born in Maramures, Romania, in 1982. He is a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. He graduated from the Faculty of Literature at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj. Perța went on to earn an MA in Contemporary Literature at Bucharest University, followed by a PhD with a thesis about fantastic literature. His works have been translated into eighteen languages, and in 2012, he was selected as the Best Young Romanian Prose Writer. In the Romanian and foreign press, there are more than five hundred reviews and references to Perța’s work. In the last ten years, he has been awarded some of the most prestigious Romanian literary prizes. His novels have been translated into Serbian, Croatian and Arabic and he has poetry anthologies translated to French and Spanish. Perța is currently working as a freelance editor and professor of comparative literature at Hyperion University in Bucharest.
