In the shade of Palestinian gardens, memory once bloomed — fragrant with olive groves and the quiet gestures of care. These were spaces of closeness, of which Christiane Dabdoub Nasser recalls inviting us into her childhood and Palestinian culture from another time, where the Mediterranean breathed through shared rituals of tending and living in harmony with the land. Rooted in practices of cultivation, refuge, and sensory proximity, such intimacy has been systematically disrupted by the colonial project of the Israeli state, which reconfigured land into instruments of control and dispossession. Today, the relational fabric of Palestinian landscapes lies fractured — yet the soil remembers.

 

Through powerful storytelling, family history, and enduring friendship, this piece gathers what remains: the rustle of leaves under siege, the echo of footsteps in forbidden groves, the persistence of tenderness in a terrain marked by erasure. It traces how ecological and cultural memory endure despite spatial fragmentation and political violence.

 

Manja Ristić engages with sounds gathered from war-torn landscapes and towns across the former Yugoslavia, from WWII memorial sites to intoxicated rivers — bearing witness to how the land carries its wounds in silence, while the echoes of war still tremble through every pore of the heart.

 

Concept and direction: Anamaria Pravicencu
Storytelling by Christiane Dabdoub Nasser, with the support of Maya
Sound design and composition: Manja Ristić
Presentation text: Manja Ristić
Mixing: La Plant Studio, Belgrade
A production of SEMI SILENT and tranzit.ro/ Bucharest

 

The first version was presented in the frame of To Give a House the Form of an Event, a program by Tranzit.ro at the Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, Silistea Snagovului, Romania, June 2025.

The present form, with the invaluable contribution of Manja Ristić, was premiered at Orizont Sonor festival, in the Botanical Garden of Bucharest, September 2025.

 

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Anamaria Pravicencu is a sound artist based in Bucharest and founder of the platform SEMI SILENT (2016), dedicated to podcasting, sound art, radio art, and field recording. She also developed the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES program (2018, 5 editions) to support mobility in contemporary sound art. In 2022–2024, she co-curated Sonic Narratives (Simultan) in Timișoara as part of the European Capital of Culture, and in 2024-2025, she co-curated Orizont Sonor (French Institute in Romania and SEMI SILENT). She is a founding member of CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.

 

Manja Ristić is a violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator, and researcher. Ristić’s sound-related research besides contemporary performance in the field of instrumental electro–acoustics, is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to sound and field recording as well as experimental radio arts. Ristić has created commissions for Kunstradio – Radiokunst, Radio Cona, SEMI SILENT, Radiophrenia, Radio Art Zone, Radia.FM, Framework Radio, and all national broadcasting agencies across SE Europe. The winner of several distinctive awards for solo and chamber classical music, holds an honourable mention from the Phonurgia Nova Awards, and a Golden Award for the extended media from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia. She is a founding member of CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.