18 minute sound piece, stereo, for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.

On exhibit from May 19th to Nov. 30th, 2023 on the balcony of the Palazzo Bembo, part of the Transspecies Design exhibit at the Time, Space, Existence show at the European Cultural Center.

This piece, assembled out of sounds recorded in Venice in 2014 along with electronics and wind instruments added in 2022, weaves together tales of a famous Venetian battle from the fifteenth century along with giant logs rolled by Pacific waves on the Oregon coast, together with the tragedy of pine bark beetles decimating millions of acres of mountain forests, a musical tale for our time. 

David Rothenberg: electronics, field recordings from Venice, contralto clarinet, Bb clarinet, koncovka (A Czech overtone flute)

Curated by Adrian Parr
Sound tech Timur Bazarov


Here is the text:

There was a time when everything between this city
and the mountains
was a deep dark wood, all the way
from the canals to the glaciers

Six hundred years ago
This canal was already here
The city was already here
The Milanese already had a stronghold at the south end of Lago di Garda

The Venetian warlord Gattamelata planned to attack 
from the North side of the lake
Only problem was
They had to get their ships up there first.

In 1439 from here to there was all forest.

So they cut down the trees
made them into logs
lay the logs down on the ground
and actually rolled the ships over them
up the Loppia Valley with two thousand oxen
rolling down to Torbole
where the boats alighted on the  waters of the lake

How they could do this over a period of three months
without anyone finding out about the plan
is nearly impossible to believe

But it happened

They sailed southward on a windy day
and surprised the shocked Milanese.

Venice lost that battle.
They lost the next battle.
With the third battle they emerged victorious.

War nearly always takes too long.

All by rolling boats over the road of logs

[They call this story “Galeas per montes” [Galleys over the mountains]
I learned about it in a museum in Macesine a few hours North of here—
the town where Goethe wrote his Italian Journeys]


Thousands of miles away
giant logs roll in the waves in the Pacific Ocean
on Oregon beaches in the fog
People get crushed by them, 
the trunks of these mighty trees.

You gotta be careful.
You have to be careful
To watch for the enemy
Rolling their ships through the forest
Or the trees rolling suddenly up with the waves on the beach

Those trees are enormous
Heavy and strong
But thousands of them are killed
By tiny bark beetles
Decimating forests

Millions of acres of forest dead each year
All over the American West
The climate has moved them there

Some have thought we might repel the beetles
With their own sounds…


We want to save it all
Our cities
Our lakes
Our trees
Our stories
Our sounds

But they’re not all going to make it.

Not anymore.

Over Forest Over Time

A sonic sketch made in response to this window in Ghent City Theatre, including audio recorded on a march for Gaza in Malmö, Sweden, and words gathered from the UNESCO RIELA Spring School, in languages including Icelandic, Azerbaijani, German, Gaelic, Te Reo Maori, Basque, French, Turkish, Dutch, Mandarin, Lamnso, English, Italian and Korean.

With gratitude to Geraldine, PIki, Hsiao-Chiang/Hope, Avril, Miray, Anja, Nerea, Esa, Sarah, René, Samira, Erdem, Bella and Alison - thank you for sharing your voices, languages and soundscapes.

soft smart fragile tender

Lucy Cathcart Froden (aka raukarna) is interested in collaborative songwriting, language and translation, and is doing a PhD exploring the role of music in social integration, particularly among people with convictions and migrant communities. She makes a podcast on these themes called 'Our chance of becoming more human'.