SÂMBĂTA SONORĂ : On gardens

— A listening session curated by Anamaria Pravicencu and SEMI SILENT
4 Oct. 14:00-15:30 / Garrison Command

A closed garden, walled, monumental and reserved to the noble eye, symmetrically shaped and structured by intricated water systems – qanat –, rills, and basins – havuz. A place of delight. A place of power over nature, born out of fear of its ferocity, a place of security and control. A place that, in the end, arrogantly, wants to reproduce the Work of God. Admired for its beauty and its architectural “prouesse”, the Old Persian “paradise” left its practical and descriptive meaning – walled garden – and entered the Greek translation of the Old Testament, opening the way to heavenly semantics.

Seemingly charged beyond any hope of simplicity, the relation to gardens – and enclosed nature – left in the walls small but strong “dissident” cracks. The fractally available delight of the parádeisos still finds its place in a tinny balcony flowers arrangement, in an overdrawn French garden, or in the weight of memory imprinted in the land by generations of care.

SÂMBĂTA SONORĂ celebrates the 20th anniversary of Simultan Festival with the listening of a series of sonic gardens commisioned and collected by SEMI SILENT, portraits of real or imaginary places, from hands-on gardening to the subtle revealing of the sensory networks of memory that anchores us into reality and the history of the land.

Cu tandrețe despre gustul românesc, an interview with Dolores Toma, 2017 (Romanian)

Măr din Măr, Maria Balabaș, 2021 (Romanian)

Applecore, Cosmin Nicolae, 2021

The Gardens of Christiane. The Palestine From Before, Anamaria Pravicencu & Manja Ristić, 2025 (English, French, Arabic)