DOLE

Audiovisual performance, 60 min, projection and multichannel sound

“I didn't listen to my father and I fooled my mother, I thought that I make a human out of devil.”

DOLE is an audiovisual performance based on field recordings by photographer Lucia Nimcová and sound artist David Petráš collected (2021-2025) in the Carpathian Mountains, in the border region of Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania. The soundscape is primarily composed of language – collected songs considered to be raw, too honest and therefore forbidden.

“I sang and danced as much as I could.”

The individual stories are shaped and documented together with the environment in which the characters live, and their fateful life decisions often fit into sentences that are repeated so many times that they sound as if they were sung. The collage of recordings, photographs, and texts is based on the personal experiences of the women, presenting a wild, living, and unpreserved Rusyn, Lemko and Hutsul underground.

What is contemporary folklore and what forms can it take? How can its lively character be preserved and shared further? The authors search for answers to these questions in the outskirts of remote villages, on forest paths and in scrap yards.

The audiovisual performance offers an experience, to search, hear, see, translate and taste.

“Oh, beautiful girl, now you are mine.

The more you were kissed, the more you will be beaten.

The more you were kissed by my mouth.

The more you will be beaten,

beaten, by my hands”