Harvest 2023 uses field recordings and interviews, conducted in the pistachio groves of Aegina, Greece, to communicate the effects of climate change and the growing need to reshape prevalent agricultural models. Food is a universal connector, yet the growing divide between producers and consumers is intensified by industrial scales of production and globalised supply chains. A desire to collapse this distance led this inquiry.
In 2023, disrupted weather patterns of increasingly warm winters, and a record-setting September storm led to a quarter of the expected yield, highlighting the increasing unpredictability of seasonal cycles and instability for farmers who depend on the pistachios as a valuable crop.
Using sound as a primary research medium, Harvest 2023 invites listeners to engage with the lived, laborious, non-human and often invisible processes of food production. The aural texture of pistachios gathered by hand, repetitive machine processes and ambient shifts in weather find their place within a soundscape that has been artificially structured and manipulated, echoing the environment it attempts to document.
In an installation context the work is presented over an unorthodox surround sound system, rigged onto a temporary structure of wood, metal and stone. Agricultural materials and tools are placed amongst this to provide a way into the source material, and the windows were tinted with light gels, bathing the room in a permanent sunset. At the center of the installation was a bowl of pistachios to eat, as well as a mound of discarded pistachios which had been damaged by insects.
Harvest 2023 - Sound Installation
5 Channel Sound System, light gels, agricultural sacks, reclaimed wood, steel, Aegina pistachios, stones, wooden shims, tools, tarpaulin, plywood.
With special thanks to:
HP Coulon, Alex Coulon, Markos Papageorgiou, Georgia, Kalliopi Dikaiou, Jeremiah Crook, Julia Couto, Coral Harding, Alessandro Vincentelli