Art, in all the wrong places

A lone figure moves through Venice with a hidden recorder, gathering voices and sounds from strangers who have no idea they are being captured. Part field recordist, part outsider, part something harder to name — this is a first-person account of listening as compulsion, observation as survival, and sound as the only thread connecting someone to a world they no longer quite belong to. For Cities a...

A reluctant tourist's stream-of-consciousness spirals through Rome's sun-drenched Giardino degli Aranci: acrobatic jets overhead dredge up a grim German tragedy, an off-key Elvis crooner grates, heels sink into pebbles, and a too-polite, too-short suitor fails to impress—or even buy a prosecco. From bored sighs to bladder panic, one woman's hilariously miserable June day begs the question: why did...

It was the days of COVID lockdown, which in Italy was particularly brutal and unforgiving. Sarah Geis' Audio Playground was one of the few windows into the world that kept my mind awake. Each month, Sarah sent an audio assignment and some inspiration, via the Audio Playground Newsletter . The audio were then published on the website, "like it’s our collective refrigerator door". The point was neve...

2018 is the 26th anniversary of the Mafia murder of anti-mafia prosecutors Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone and of their escorts. They have become symbol of an Italy that fights and does not surrender to organised crime. Cosa Nostra bosses have been condemned for the killings but there is still the shadow of alleged State-mafia talks over the two bomb slayings of Falcone and Borsellino. Sicil...