Work description
With a subtle sound installation, I highlight the bodily rhythms of the city’s residents - the sounds of their vital functions within the urban fabric (street, square, market, park). To the soundscape of public spaces in the historic center, I add the heartbeats and breathing of citizens who moved out after the earthquake.
Sound modules placed at Dolac Market, Ribnjak Park, Petrinjska Street, and Britanski trg (Britanski Square) play “sound portraits” of people for whom these public spaces were once their neighborhood - places they now rarely visit, where they are absent, where they no longer live.
The discreet sound of the body’s internal systems is constant, everywhere, and usually ignored - by the person and by their surroundings. In this installation, the rhythms of breathing and the cardiovascular system are replayed and accentuated through a set of sound portraits installed in locations where the portrayed no longer reside due to the earthquake. Markets, streets, squares, and parks - together with the quiet inner sounds of these people - again form a shared acoustic field, a memory, an echo of the time before the quake.
After the Zagreb earthquake, many residents faced major challenges: damaged apartments, high reconstruction costs, and a general sense of insecurity at home. Many therefore chose to leave the city center. Slow reconstruction, expense, and fear of future earthquakes reinforced these decisions. The exodus has changed the face of the center, its spirit and its rhythm.
The sounds were recorded with a digital medical stethoscope that can record, amplify, and store audio in MP3 format via a mobile-phone app.
Audio zapis
Fotogalerija
Author
Nenad Laktašić (b.1967, Zagreb) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb. Works as sound installations artist, scenographer and animator on animated films.
Member of Croatian Association of Film Professionals HDFD. Lives and works in Zagreb.