Since 2020, Lucia Nimcová and David Petráš have been collecting folk songs and stories of survival from older women living in remote locations on the border zone of Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania. Some of them still practice witchcraft and healing rituals rooted in pre-christian traditions as part of their traditional way of living in villages.

To create this listening situation, they gathered field recordings from our archive inspired by descriptions of places and sounds in magic spells, interviews, and local mythology, including their own speculations. Most of them refer to the interspaces and transition zones to a mythical, unknown world, the entrance to which is often mediated by playing musical instruments or whispering repetitive chants. The stories are reinterpreted by listening to and recording the environmental sounds of the areas where the tradition still survives.

“Betake yourself to the crossways, to the swamps, where God's creatures do not go, where squirrels do not peer in, where geese do not hiss, and cocks do not crow.”