Alessia Berra raises 110 goats, whose milk produces wonderful cheeses. In these Natisone Valleys, her daily life as a peasant woman is punctuated by the sounds of activities that vary according to the season. In summer, the song of swallows at dawn is followed by the sound of milking machines. From grazing to returning to the barn in the evening, passing through the preparation and cutting of cheeses, a sound chronicle of a day on his dairy farm.
Alessia Berra created ZORE, a small state-of-the-art dairy farm that produces cheese, in 2008. After studying at the University of Natural Sciences in Padua, she returned to her native valleys. Respectful of nature, it is part of a landscape that it also shapes. Because the pastures, which she visits every day with her 110 goats, maintain biodiversity, between meadows, fields covered with shrubs, birches, ash trees, hazel trees or beeches.
In my opinion, the profession of peasant, badly regarded, is in reality the noblest there is. Taking care of the earth and feeding other human beings is important. You don’t necessarily think about it, but it’s also creative work with very diverse activities. From milk, I make, with my hands, my whole body and my senses, between ten and fourteen different cheeses.
Presentation of the 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 », 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 the festival-goers.
All the recordings in this series have been the subject of listening sessions, workshops and public presentations as part of the 27e international art festival Station of Topolo / 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 international art festival Station of Topolo/Postaja Topolove every summer in July this deserted mid-mountain village, on the border of Italy and Slovenia, transfigures. 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
listen 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
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.