Cona events source

The story opens perspectives on the architecture of Edvard Ravnikar and his collaborators in the construction of Cankarjev dom.

The authors incorporated numerous quotes and reflections by architects, as well as politicians and cultural figures connected with the building of Cankarjev dom. These are interwoven with poetry and drama by selected artists. The subtle and semantically multilayered soundwalk outlines the period of construction and the architecture of the building itself in the context of the present, offering a deeper understanding of its historical and cultural background.

The audio narrative also touches upon Ravnikar’s wider creative oeuvre, from the design of Republic Square as a demanding and long-term spatial intervention to his pedagogical work at the School of Architecture in Ljubljana. In his characteristic understanding of urban space, Ravnikar involved numerous architects and students who, in dialogue with politics and the broader professional field, laid the foundations for high-quality spatial design in a modernist Mediterranean spirit.

The speculative story of the soundwalk performance garden GOround points to the problematic relationship between people and plants, which is geared to mainly benefit people. The colonialism itself and the human-mediated dispersal of plants capitalize on the subjection and exploitation of nature. It is vital to radically change this attitude if we want to deal effectively with the existential threat of ecological crisis and contemplate a brighter scenario for the future. To become more familiar with the world of plants, garden GOroundgoes into the temporal dimension. Through the prism of the journeys of these two utterly different temporalities of humans and plants, seemingly offering no possible point of encounter, it speculates on the development of a future solidarity-based coexistence of humans and plants. Plants, the most populous species on the planet, live at their own pace in their own time, walking the paths we cannot access. garden GOround will take us along the paths of a possible future scenario for our overstressed, noisy planet mirrored through the development of local greenways. Can we learn from plants to build a more solidarity-oriented future?

The audience experiences the soundwalk through specially developed headphones used as a tool to speculate the world and the sonic landscape of the future. The world is getting too loud and harmful for our sensitive ears, which have failed to adapt to aggressive frequencies. To survive outdoors, we will need headphones that will both mute and sharpen the sound image and, at the same time, take us into the acoustic narrative.

The soundwalk is broadcast on an AR (augmented reality) headset, the result of an innovative  in-depth collaboration between the artist and hardware and software developers. The AR headset allows for simultaneous amplified, binaural ambient listening and audio co-composition. They also include an FM receiver module and an EMS sensor input.

The soundwalk path connects the Orangerie Park in Strasbourg and the Tivoli Park in Ljubljana, both designed during the reign of Napoleon. The featured photograph was taken in a disrupted avenue locked today between a road and a railway. It is part of a larger avenue complex in the Tivoli Park, designed by the French at the time of the Illyrian Provinces. The vocalist, dressed in a Slovene folk costume, wears original AR headphones and listens to the landscape.

A testimony form one of the participants of the AR soundwalk:

Even before water becomes something we need to protect, it is the stuff of dreams. This soundwalk begins with the awareness that we ourselves are bodies of water and that our responsibility to water is deeply connected to how we remember and imagine the world. Water, as an element, becomes a material conduit for our imagination and an extension of our connective tissues.

We draw on the works of Gaston Bachelard and Ivan Illich, thinkers deeply engaged with water, who argued that imagination is not merely the ability to form mental images but an embodied capacity that enables creative coexistence with the world. Bachelard describes water as the “eye of the world”—not only because it reflects the sky, but because its depths hold fragments of the past; deep water is a silent memory, an embodied symbol of how the past continually inhabits the present.

Our journey moves from clear, lively spring and river waters to heavier, dormant and dead waters. We walk among songs, verses and images, navigating the temporalities of different bodies of water – from surface currents to the riverbed depths; from the river of forgetfulness to the lake of memories. In an era of constant flow – of information, people, currencies and traffic – while navigating the rapids of time, we will build a temporary harbour at the “pool that contains the whole world”, in the “moment of the dream that contains the whole soul”.

Echoing the Youth Palace is a sound workshop developed by Mladi zmaji in collaboration with the Cona Institute. The programme offers hands-on work with sound, from equipment basics and production foundations to field recording and collaborative editing.

Through soundwalking, recording, and composing, participants explore the acoustic landscape of the emerging Youth Palace centre. The resulting sound composition was used in the documentary Palača Cukrarna and later presented in an exhibition context.

After a funeral, we often try to move on quickly. Our world is about life, not death. For most of us, there is no clear before and after until it happens.

This soundwalk opens public space to what is usually unsaid, unspoken or suppressed, yet remains present as a shared feeling.

Why is there a wall between the dead and the living?

The soundwalk begins and ends at the same location and unfolds as a collective walk, where space, voice and sound intertwine in a reflection on memory, community and our relationship to death.

After a funeral, we often try to move on quickly. Our world is about life, not death. For most of us, there is no clear before and after until it happens.

This soundwalk opens public space to what is usually unsaid, unspoken or suppressed, yet remains present as a shared feeling.

Why is there a wall between the dead and the living?

The soundwalk begins and ends at the same location and unfolds as a collective walk, where space, voice and sound intertwine in a reflection on memory, community and our relationship to death.

Even before water becomes something we need to protect, it is the stuff of dreams. This soundwalk begins with the awareness that we ourselves are bodies of water and that our responsibility to water is deeply connected to how we remember and imagine the world. Water, as an element, becomes a material conduit for our imagination and an extension of our connective tissues.

We draw on the works of Gaston Bachelard and Ivan Illich, thinkers deeply engaged with water, who argued that imagination is not merely the ability to form mental images but an embodied capacity that enables creative coexistence with the world. Bachelard describes water as the “eye of the world”—not only because it reflects the sky, but because its depths hold fragments of the past; deep water is a silent memory, an embodied symbol of how the past continually inhabits the present.

Our journey moves from clear, lively spring and river waters to heavier, dormant and dead waters. We walk among songs, verses and images, navigating the temporalities of different bodies of water – from surface currents to the riverbed depths; from the river of forgetfulness to the lake of memories. In an era of constant flow – of information, people, currencies and traffic – while navigating the rapids of time, we will build a temporary harbour at the “pool that contains the whole world”, in the “moment of the dream that contains the whole soul”.

The soundwalk weaves together personal memories, dreamlike landscapes and the brutal reality of the war in Ukraine. Conceived as an audio walk through an urban park, it alternates between realistic and surreal worlds – telling the real stories through the mindscape of an injured Ukrainian soldier. Dedicated to the Park Rastoče knjige, through multilingual narration (Slovenian, Ukrainian), VRTATYS’ sound walk brings to the audience diverse literature resources – Ukrainian baroque poetry by Hryhorii Skovoroda, Slovenian modernist prose by Ivan Cankar, an authentic Crimeantatar poem by Alie Kendzhe-Ali, as well as personal narrations and sound environments from people who are currently in Ukraine and on occupied Ukrainian territories. The project highlights the tensions between home and exile, roots and transplantation, past and future. It merges an artistic approach with documentary precision and poetic sensitivity.

Even before water becomes something we need to protect, it is the stuff of dreams. This soundwalk begins with the awareness that we ourselves are bodies of water and that our responsibility to water is deeply connected to how we remember and imagine the world. Water, as an element, becomes a material conduit for our imagination and an extension of our connective tissues.

We draw on the works of Gaston Bachelard and Ivan Illich, thinkers deeply engaged with water, who argued that imagination is not merely the ability to form mental images but an embodied capacity that enables creative coexistence with the world. Bachelard describes water as the “eye of the world”—not only because it reflects the sky, but because its depths hold fragments of the past; deep water is a silent memory, an embodied symbol of how the past continually inhabits the present.

Our journey moves from clear, lively spring and river waters to heavier, dormant and dead waters. We walk among songs, verses and images, navigating the temporalities of different bodies of water – from surface currents to the riverbed depths; from the river of forgetfulness to the lake of memories. In an era of constant flow – of information, people, currencies and traffic – while navigating the rapids of time, we will build a temporary harbour at the “pool that contains the whole world”, in the “moment of the dream that contains the whole soul”.

How to remember the events you want to forget? How to tell stories you wish to keep silent about? How to ask questions you are afraid to hear answers to? What is the role of sound and silence in resistance to violence, the search for justice and our attempt to be together?

The soundwalk was created for a journey through the dunes of The Hague. It encompasses personal memories, the historical memory of the place and reflections on the concept of a city of peace and justice.

This lecture addresses time as a key dramaturgical category in the creation of spaces of perception, wonder and attunement. The authors approach temporality as an active agent that structures experience, opens possibilities for alternative modes of attention, and enables the emergence of relational and sensitive spaces between participants, environment and the event itself.

H2O Interface explores the role of water in the Anthropocene, highlighting its connections to both human and non-human entities. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s Parliament of Things, the project challenges conventional distinctions between natural and social phenomena and invites a reconsideration of human and non-human actors as part of larger hybrid networks.

Within this framework, water appears as an active participant in interconnected systems, while acoustic ecologies are foregrounded as a key means of understanding relationships between living organisms, water and objects. Sound art reveals complex interdependencies that shape our environment, presenting water as a dynamic force within intertwined ecosystems.

What does it mean to be at home? Can listening practices be connected to a broader sense of home? In this presentation, the author connects Arne Næss’s concept of ecosophy with soundwalking and the practice of connected listening as developed by Abigail Gardner, in order to propose her own interpretation of rural futurism (Leandro Pisano).

She argues that sound walks carried out with the intention of creating new connections and emotional circuits can contribute to the development of frameworks for a multilayered understanding of relationships between humans and the natural environment, thus expanding the idea of ruralism. The work explores feelings of belonging—to household, natural environment, community, person, or animals—that emerge from connected listening and soundwalking practices, and examines how these contribute to a deeper understanding of ecosophy.

Rural futurism is also addressed as a sensitive process of emotions and values reflected in sound practices.

The artist takes a weather balloon as the starting point for her research and sonic journey. Used worldwide for meteorological measurements and weather forecasting, over 800 weather balloons are released daily. They rise through the atmosphere, exposed to changing air pressure, temperature, density and wind.

Our atmospheric imaginary journey begins at the entrance to the Ljubljana Castle funicular, which will carry us up to the castle. Once we reach a certain height, we will travel even further – following the tension and transformation of the balloon as it stretches to its breaking point: the sudden burst and fall. Afterwards, we will return by funicular to the foot of the castle hill.

The 40-minute sound composition combines recordings from meteorological instruments, field and studio sessions, interviews with experts and the tracking of the balloon’s path by an observer who descends, follows and collects data. We will follow the metaphorical journey of release, lifting, stretching, bursting, falling and landing. The sonic experience is guided by the artist’s voice, which explores moments of change, transformation, direction, speed, temperature, humidity, wind and more.

The layered soundscape shifts between the dreamlike and the scientific, offering intimate, physical, auditory and tactile stimuli that create a rich, multisensory experience.

The Muzofil Association presents contemporary saltworking as practised at salt field N19 in the Lera area. The contribution focuses on current salt production practices and an understanding of seasonal labour within the Sečovlje Salina Nature Park.

The presentation includes a screening of the short experimental documentary film SALTforSALT by Hana Vodeb, offering insight into the working processes and conditions of contemporary saltmaking. The event concludes with a poetic performative eavesdropping surprise, prepared in collaboration with the association at the initiative of the Cona Institute.

This presentation explores the concept of “sonic solastalgia” through fieldwork conducted on the Greek island of Samothraki, where shifting environmental and cultural soundscapes reveal deep connections between place, memory, and identity. Drawing on walking-with and listening-with methods, I document how residents relate to the natural sounds of their environment – waves, wind, goat bells – and how these become imagined echoes in the mind. This lecture invites participants to consider how movement, place, and listening intersect, creating opportunities to reflect on the emotional and ecological dimensions of sound in transition.

The walk takes place in the Lera area, covering 294 hectares and divided into a crystallisation zone and a seawater concentration zone. The route follows a 1.3-kilometre-long path connecting the St. Bartholomew Canal to Canal Grando.

Participants are introduced to traditional salt production methods based on medieval practices and to the saltworks as a living cultural landscape and heritage site.

How can we listen beyond sound, and what does it mean to learn to listen in different ways?

Drawing on acoustic epistemology, speculative philosophy of perception and states of focused listening, the work explores listening as a complex act, emphasizing the diversity of hearing that which is expressed as an instance that is both individual and collective. Participants are guided toward modes of walking, approaching spaces, and perceiving their surroundings and sounds, while exploring concepts of deep listening beyond the mere identification of sound sources.

During a visit to the Museum of Salt-Making, visitors are introduced to the history and heritage of salt production, as well as to the development of traditional knowledge, practices and the everyday labour of saltworkers. The presentation also highlights the founding of the museum as a guardian of tangible and intangible heritage, and traces changes in its role over time, in dialogue with the natural environment, landscape conservation and contemporary approaches to heritage preservation.

Moving slowly downstream the Dragonja River towards its mouth at the sea, participants become acquainted with the habitat of the Sečovlje Salina Nature Park, its importance for conservation, the bird species commonly encountered there, and methods for identifying their characteristic songs.

Through walking and listening, the project brings together field observation, acoustic perception and ecological knowledge, creating space for a deeper understanding of the relationship between landscape, sound and biodiversity.

Walk to a Place of Strength is an artistic contribution in which the author explores walking as a political-somatic practice through which the body enters into a relationship with territory, ecosystems and collective presence, fundamentally offering a space for public encounters – a temporary community.

The project unfolds through a practice based on three fundamental actions: breathing, walking and stillness. These are approached as “choreopolitical” gestures – movements with political and poetic power that shape human awareness of self in relation to place. Beyond their usual function, these actions open up space for deeper reflection and invite participants to inhabit their bodies differently and to listen more attentively to the landscapes they traverse. In this way, Walk to a Place of Strength becomes an exercise in presence, perceptual reorientation and the re-establishment of collective movement as an aesthetic and political gesture.