Link to location programme

Ash and Memory
audio-visual installation

Ash and Memory is an audio-visual installation that investigates how sound, data, and material transformation can offer alternative ways of remembering—beyond the image. Sparked by Bulgaria’s dramatic rise in forest fires in 2024, the project centers on two key locations: the villages of Voden and Gorska Polyana, and a forest near the Strandzha gas station—sites marked by both environmental devastation and systemic institutional failure. Satellite imagery from NASA’s FIRMS database is sonified through spectral synthesis, generating a haunting soundscape—a sonic map of fire, displacement, and escape. At the heart of the installation is a charred tree trunk, functioning as a natural resonator where digital data becomes physical vibration, leaving behind traces of sound as dust and splinters. These remnants gather on a raised geometric platform, turning ruin into relic—an act of witnessing and commemoration. In an age oversaturated with images, Ash and Memory proposes another mode of remembrance: one carried by frequency, silence, and the weight of material presence.