"An ode to bear" (2013) Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria

In about the end of the summer, during my stay with family in the village Daskot in Bulgaria, I made a lot of walks into the hills. There I found a certain type of reed or cane growing in the fields. From one of these reeds I made a flute.

When I heard we would visit a very old cave in the same region I decided to take it with me. I ended up playing for my family in what is referred to as the Concert Hall of the Bacho Kiro cave.

The Bacho Kiro cave is located close to the Dryanovo Monastery. It was formed initially in the Paleogene period, between 66 and 23 million years ago. Over thousands of years it has been shaped and taken amazing forms. Since it was first inhabited for over 40.000 years ago, different humans and animals have lived there over time. And the oldest remains, in the Balkan peninsula, of a cave bear were found there.

In terms of the relation between sound-space-perceiver it is historically a very interesting space. The functionality given to this specific part of the cave indicates the importance of music in daily life and that performance took place in the homes of humans. It also shows that humans were very much aware about the acoustic qualities of spaces, how it effects a sound source and the perception of it.

I can imagine that inhabitants would pick a certain space in a cave for its specific acoustic quality and determine by there own choice of aesthetics what instrument worked best in that space.


I would say that these Concert Halls can be considered the predecessors of any type of architectural designed structure build for music performance.

"When man & mountains meet" (2013) Bougoumez Valley, Morocco

For a while I have been wanting to make a performance with my audio-system in a mountainous area. Bougoumez Valley is situated in the High Atlas of Morocco. We moved through the valley from village to village and stayed in gîtes which are family run shelters or homes. The landscape is believed to be formed within the Mesozoic era and succeeded my expectations of how majestic the mountain range is.

A mountain can be considered a sacred place and has something mystical and magical. But at the same time I found out that the higher part of the mountain is occasionally used as a toilet and to dump the village garbage and/or burn it. The reason, because it is furthest away from the river or streams which local people also use as drinking water.

During the walking trips through the valley I found different objects to construct my pre-historic mountain instrument (piece of wood, metal wire, tin sardine can, nail, elastic and metal strap) to use with my autonomous portable audio-system.

















When I went up a hill to look for the spot to perform I came across my potential cardboard speaker box. By being on top of a hill I also had a broader perception of the sound environment. I was enveloped by the surrounding sounds coming from within the valley, echoing as they were bouncing of the mountain sides traveling upwards.

















When I found the right spot I fixed the speaker and connected my system.

















Now I was ready to perform my mountain song!

"These sounds will lead the way" (2013), Groepsexpositie: Couchsurfers and A-Boys, Jabu Arnell's house, Amsterdam

Jabu Arnell invited me to do a performance at his house which he turned into a exhibition space for a bunch of artists and couchurfers.

I decided to approach this performance in a similar way as my previous action, this time I made one continuous recording while I drove my bike through the city from my house to Jabu's. The recording was used as a sonic recital accompanied by the reading of a text and instrumentation with a small cardboard box I made into a poly-instrument and microphone. The text were slightly modified fragments taken from the book "Listening to Noise and Silence" by Salome Voegelin, it was chanted in a Vedic like manner.



















The night before I found a very large cardboard box at a construction site near his house which I used for my mega-speaker. For amplification I used my portable audio-system, contact mic and an audio mixer.