Mas Presto Ven, Palomba
(dwelling project, London, 2022)
Mas Presto Ven, Palomba [Come Quicker, Dove] uses filmmaker and photographer Daniela Germade’s footage of her familial hometown: Fuengirola, Malaga (Andalucia). My visit to Daniela’s family home sparked this artistic collaboration. The film and sound interact as two perspectives on the place, from the point of view of guest versus dweller. This work was exhibited at ‘dwelling project’, London, in January 2023.
I approached my sonic portrait of Fuengirola through field recordings made during the trip. These recordings were inspired by discussions about the layers of migration that have shaped this place. Whilst dwelling with Dani’s family I reflected on the possible presence of my own Sephardic Jewish ancestors, who would have inhabited this area of the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the late 15th century.
Over the last few years, I have been researching Sephardic folk music and recording my own versions of various Ladino songs with guitarist Ynys Barnard Masterson. One such song is incorporated into the end of this work – ‘La Rosa Enflorece’ – to represent the ghostly resonances of these diasporic dwellers in the contemporary sonic landscape, where industrial and organic sounds cohabit with Flamenco music and pop. The title of the piece is taken from ‘La Rosa Enflorece’ and is written in the Ladino transcription: a language which will soon become obsolete due to a lack of speakers in the younger generation of Sephardic Jews. The image of the dove being called by the song’s lament aligns with the work’s preoccupation with the avian lens of dwelling: the camera as a bird, the diaspora as migrating birds, making dwellings wherever they land.
