Becoming Landscape

The Delta Vacaresti Nature Park is the place in Bucharest that still features one of the grand unfinished communist projects

Ion Puican, 30.10.2021, 13:19

The Delta Vacaresti Nature Park is the place in Bucharest that still features one of the grand unfinished communist projects. Before 1989, Vacaresti Lake was a hydrological system to prevent flooding in Bucharest. During the time it was neglected the area was taken over by nature once again, right in the heart of a European capital, with protected animal species, gaining an ecosystem similar to that of a delta. In October, this urban nature park was the venue for a special project, meant to bring city dwellers closer to nature and integrate this area into the city. It is called Becoming Landscape — An Attempt to Become Scenery. We spoke about this project with one of the attending artists, Diana Miron, vocal coach, sound artist, and composer, about how the project was born, and how she came to attend it:

“Becoming Landscape is an interdisciplinary project bringing together three art forms, sound composition and contemporary music, land art, and performance art. This project is the initiative of a group of women theoreticians and artists with a rich expertise in contemporary and experimental art, where their connected understanding is dedicated to opinion shaping and professional training for emerging artists who are interested in new forms of expression, group research, audio-visual experimentation, as well as body, sound, and visual re-contextualization. Hence the initiative of the project, based on previous projects, such as Techno Fields, in which I personally, Diana Miron, sound artist and composer, took part in last year, teaching voice courses, voice timbre rediscovery, and extended music improv techniques.”

We asked our guest what her contribution was to the Becoming Landscape project:

“Together with composer and sound designer Laurentiu Cotac created with this work called Harmony of Disaster, a contemporary music work, which included the soundscape of Vacaresti Delta. Repeated meetings in Vacaresti Nature Park inspired us very much, be it about contemporary music, land art, or performance art, and offered us a fertile environment, visually and sound wise, allowing us to generate new pieces for Romanian art, but also international art. Spanning three months, which included rehearsals and actual events with the public, taking into account restrictions, we believed it was opportune to move outdoors the events, where we could socially distance, allowing the public to join us. We were amazed to see how positive the response was after the event. I am talking from experience, because I was part of the Harmony of Disaster concert, on the edge of the concrete dam, which became a makeshift amphitheater. People told us that they felt the special atmosphere, that they were transported as if through a portal. Of course, very few people have ever heard such music being played in a unique space, Vacaresti Nature Park.

At the end, Diana Miron told us about the future:

“We want to carry forward this collaboration, turn it into something much bigger. Laurentiu Cotac and I had this idea of putting together the first contemporary music orchestra in Romania, like many other countries have. We feel we need this, we need alternative culture, and creativity supported by the authorities and culture programs, in order to contribute to the development of life quality in a metropolis such as Bucharest, in order to open our minds and perspectives.”