An industrial city on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sodertalje is a global capital of the Syriac Orthodox Christian diaspora, an ethnic and religious minority group. The Ronna Forest is a broad swathe of densely wooded area surrounding the Ronna housing projects to the north and northwest of the city. For many local youngsters, the local forest is a “green avoidance space” – an unfamiliar zone where wild boars and other disagreeable elements threaten safe passage.
The aim of this VIVA PLAN collaboration with Sodertalje Kommun (2019- _) is to engage a sonically-mediated co-learning experiment with interested Ronna youth, specifically around the nearby Ronna Forest. Our gambit is to engage Ronna Forest as a musical resource and means of asking broader questions about youth identity, community belonging, and nature. Working with producer Nicos Merchatskis (https://soundcloud.com/spiritualimprima) the rotating crew of interested Ronna youth aims to harness field recordings of forest sounds and the community-constitutive powers of music (and specifically: techno) to cultivate ideas about nature. Might attitudes about the local environment change as its constitutive sounds become materials for new forms of collective, creative expression?
We call ourselves “Ung Tra” or “Young tree” (Swedish). All the sounds (minus the techno/house) will be sourced from the forest and its myriad contents. Check out a track!
** Editors Note – Sadly, this project was ruined by coronavirus, which made the subsequent collaboration meetings impossible.
SONIC GEOGRAPHIES 