At “La maison des hirondelles”, her table d’hôtes, Caterina Dugaro concocts tasty dishes with products from her farm. Taking care of the barnyard and its few cows, picking wild herbs, for this inspired cook who mixes, in her recipes of yesteryear, Italian and Slovenian traditions, delighting her guests is almost a profession of faith. From the garden to the plate, sound portrait of a peasant woman anchored in her border land.
Caterina Dugaro runs a small farm with varied activities: cutting and selling wood, small livestock (cows, pigs, barnyard) and table d’hôtes. “ The house of the Rondini “, literally “The house of swallows”, offers all the products of the farm. A family heirloom, this friendly table perpetuates the local culinary tradition and strives to pass it on. In this wild setting on the edge of the woods, hikes are also offered to visitors.
To be a peasant here, in this neglected territory, is to revive the knowledge learned from the elders, to transmit the love of these landscapes, of their singularity, and to assume this role. I love this land and I want to live there. Perpetuating a tradition, discovering dishes from the past Italo-Slovene, since we live on the border, I really like that. No one today prepares these dishes at home, that has been lost. Sometimes customers say to me: “I’m going back to childhood with this cake!” “. This is why I am a peasant in the Natisone valleys.
Series: “The Sounds of the Earth”
Through the daily life of four women farmers, this series retraces the peasant culture of the Natisone valleys and the past life of one of its villages: Topolò. Reluctant to the industrialization of agriculture by their very nature, the valleys of Natisone, in Friuli, on the border of Italy and Slovenia, have also been marked by massive emigration. In this deserted territory, where the woods cover land that was once cultivated, four women, of different generations, have chosen to stay or return, to practice agriculture that respects the environment. Raising goats or cows, viticulture, harvesting wild herbs and preparing traditional recipes, the “Sounds of the Earth” series accompanies them from dawn to night.
“The sounds of the earth”, a series produced and presented during the 27th edition of the Stazione di Topolò/Postaja Topolove festival, gave rise to listening and collective visual creations with the inhabitants and festival-goers.
All the recordings in this series were the subject of listening sessions, workshops and public presentations within the framework of the 27th international art festival Stazione di Topolò / Postaja Topolove. From the daily sounds of women farmers, collected and edited by Monica Fantini and Luca Rullo, artists Elena Rucli and Laura Savina, members of the Robida collective, produced visual creations and led painting workshops with festival-goers. A collective work restored through mosaics, which today illustrate the episodes.
► The Stazione di Topolò/Postaja Topolove festival
Meetings, concerts, dance, sound installations, listening sessions, readings, conferences, exhibitions, founded in 1994 by a group of inhabitants who still live there, the Stazione di Topolò/Postaja Topolove international art festival transfigures each summer into July this deserted mid-mountain village on the border of Italy and Slovenia. Welcomed in residence, hundreds of artists from all over the world are invited to take over the premises to discuss, create and perform. The artistic proposals of the festival always resonate with the territory and its symbolism, linked to the border, the foreigner, the absence, the omnipresence of wood and the rebirth.
Since 2014, young artists, residing in Topolò and gathered within the collective Robida, join the festival. Combining their attachment to this land with their art, they publish art and poetry reviews − in Italian and Slovenian −, create installations and organize screenings and walks on the secret forest paths around the village.
Listening to the world: a participatory platform for sending sound postcards
Listening to the world is a miniature radio program, re-listened to as a podcast here, but also a participatory sound platform devoted to listening and sound creation. It archives and provides free access to more than 200 sound recordings sent from all over the world, and also offers sound postcards.
Each episode of this series is thus declined in sound and digital postcard, composed of a sound and an image, which was inspired to the artists Laura Savino and Elena Rucli by the sound fragments of the daily life of the Natisone valleys. Cards to send from your computer or smartphone, with a personalized message.
Discover the sound postcard linked to this episode here
Listen to The World on Apple, Podcast, google podcast, Spotify
Production team – Creation unit – RFI
Design and production: Monica Fantini
Sound recording: Monica Fantini and Luca Rullo
Funded by the IMCAP program of the European Union
The content of this publication reflects the position of the author only and is his sole responsibility. The European Commission assumes no responsibility for any use that may be made of the information it contains.