Slow Steps have Ears is a sound meditation and a sonic treasure hunt at the same time: 25 hidden speakers will play with our sense of reality in the Kerekerdő park through 2 and a half weeks.
We can listen to a series of interwoven, site-specific compositions pieced together from locally recorded sounds, snippets of conversations, domestic sounds and minimalist musical elements. Blending in and out of its surroundings, the piece transforms its location into a unique, dreamlike soundscape that invites the audience on an experience somewhere between a sonic meditation and a treasure hunt of sounds.
The speakers scattered around in the space offer a brand new soundscape to the listener from whichever location they choose, through the unique combination of the varied length, noise and quiet of each snippet. The composition is repeated hourly, and as each speaker plays a different part that also changes over time, audience members are advised to relocate as often as they wish.
“Once you start experiencing the world with the sense that the world is actually speaking, every sound of the world is telling you a history a feeling and a cosmic atmosphere that is in fact both a repository of an echo that has not ended, a sound that is continuous and a resonance that belongs to a particular occasion, a particular time, a particular place, and the lives in this place are still resonating. You’re actually piercing time through sound. You’re reaching across the horizon of time, through sound, through that which continues to speak and echo. But you have to be able to listen.” Peter Sellars
Dates: 11-27 May 2023
Monday / Wednesday / Friday: 11am – 2pm
Tuesday / Thursday: 5pm – 8pm
Saturday / Sunday: 3-6pm
On rainy days the event will not be held, this will be announced in the Facebook event on the day.
Location: 1096 Budapest, Kerekerdő park (map)
Concept & Composition: Dávid Somló
Installation: Balázs Kontur
Special thanks: Gabriella Gál, and the students of the Polytechnic of Economics
Free programme
Dávid Somló has won a grant from the European Festivals Funds for Emerging Artist for his creation Slow steps have ears. The project debuted at the Sofia Underground International Performance Art Festival in Sofia on the last weekend of April, followed by presentations in Budapest (PLACCC Dance), Georgia (Movement, Physical and Dance Theatre International Festival Tbilisi) and Prague (4 + 4 Days in Motion Festival) later this year.
The Budapest project is also supported by the Public art grant of the Ferencváros Municipality of Budapest’s IX. district.