Polsko Rumuńska ballada

While living in Warsaw for a couple of years I had this weird feeling people on the street were secretly talking Romanian and not Polish. Although the two languages are very different, they share a specific sonic landscape in their usage of rough sounds, placed in the back of the mouth.

ă î â ș ț e y sz c ć ę ł ż dz tz cz ż, ź, ń, ą, ę, ś etc

I say secretly because the moment I would get closer to eavesdrop the perception would change and they would speak Polish. It was a familiar feeling arising at the margin of other people’s intimacy. In other words: I could fool myself into a feeling of familiarity only as long as I stayed afar.

At one point I started collecting the common words. The bigger the number, the closer I’d get, I thought. The list contains over 500 words, but since they’re mostly nouns and adjectives I can’t really understand much of a conversation and can’t really converse much myself.

Here is my attempt at voicing out the common territory described by the two languages, while letting words play and describe absurd stories through their associations.

Sound, stereo, 16.48min
Text, voice: Larisa Crunțeanu
Recording, sound design, Laurențiu Coțac

Commissioned by Arsenał Gallery Białystok for the exhibition Milk Me Sugar, curated by Ewa Tatar.