CORRESPONDENCES, the long-term audio-visual project by Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith, documents the sonic footprints of poets, filmmakers, revolutionaries, and climate change across numerous global locations. Following last year’s release of Correspondences Vol I, they have today announced the release of Correspondences Vol II.
Accompanying the announcement of the new 2-track EP, out March 21 via Bella Union, is the first fifteen minute track, titled “Children Of Chernobyl”.
On the edge of the forest surrounding Chernobyl, a stone’s throw from the Pripyat River, stands the church of St. Elijah, the only house of worship still operational within the 1000 square-mile radioactive exclusion zone. There, in the courtyard, stands the Bell of Sorrow, which rings just once a year, at exactly 1:23am on April 26, the moment when human history was forever altered, 39 years ago, as Reactor Four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, scattering its deadly, invisible poison throughout the land.
Ten miles northwest, at the centre of the zone, stands a much larger bell-shaped structure, a 31,000-tonne sarcophagus of concrete and steel, tall enough to entomb the Notre-Dame de Paris or the Duomo of Milan. Deep inside it, the nuclear fuel of Reactor Four still burns unstoppably, and will continue to burn for two millennia more, while outside nature thrives in the near total absence of human intervention.
It’s here, where the natural meets the unthinkable, that the story of Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith’s CORRESPONDENCES continues.
More ghostly still are the same words sung in Ukrainian at the song’s end by the Chernobyl Children’s Choir: “There are roses underfoot that one cannot smell / There is fruit on the vine that one cannot eat / And they went to bed hungry / And hungry they’ll sleep / For a thousand years.”
Soundwalk Collective founder Stephan Crasneanscki gathers sounds from various locations, creating “invisible landscapes.” Patti Smith then listens to these sounds and improvises spoken-word poetry, acting as a “mental traveler.” This process is described as a “correspondence” across distance and time, similar to how people used to connect through letters.
“It’s a process of discovery through improvisation and channelling,” Smith explains. “We are sort of two halves, and we merge together the mental and physical traveller to get the atmosphere and the visual content – the music, even – and the words that will articulate what we want to do.”
“There is a long literary tradition of correspondence,” says Crasneanscki. “Writing was the only way to create proximity across distance. Nowadays, the immediacy of social media abolishes that sort of experience. The longing. That inner ability to channel and reflect, to comment on and share the poetic and sometimes mystical dimensions of travel. Distance allows you to reschedule yourself to what seems new, what is inspiring; it creates conditions for new callings.”
“It sounds abstract, but it creates an atmosphere and almost an earth that I can walk around in my mind,” adds Smith. “I can walk to these places or feel the spirits of these places, because at this point in my life I can’t make difficult journeys. I become the mental traveller. I don’t have to buy a ticket, I don’t have to go to the airport; I just listen and let myself be carried away.”
Where Vol. I explored themes of death and violence, focusing on the figures of Medea and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vol. II shifts to themes of the “sacred” and human destruction, linking medieval Russia, the Chernobyl disaster, and current ecological crises.
Vol. II is similarly conceived, not only as a dialogue between the artists but also between the two sides of the record – “Children of Chernobyl” and “The Acolyte, The Artist and Nature” – a correspondence spanning more than 500 years, from the turbulence of medieval Russia, through the terrible events of 1986, to the ecological crisis of the here and now. But where Vol. I was marked by death, Vol. II is, as Crasneanscki puts it, “more about the sacred, and how we as humans are damaging it.”
“Having worked with Patti for over 10 years now, I often use the metaphor of Rembrandt’s late paintings when we talk about her poetry,” says Crasneanscki. “There’s a deep blackness to it; a lot of gravitas, a lot of darkness. But it also has these beautiful gold highlights and clair-obscur. It reflects the transition of the world we are living in, and the feeling that there’s a new reality that’s setting in, and the realisation of what we’re leaving behind. There’s a lot of grieving in it, and a lot of longing too.”
Pre-Order Correspondances Vol ii (out on March 21 via Bella Union): https://bfan.link/correspondences-vol-2
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith live performances + exhibitions:
April 18 – Correspondences Exhibition opens at Piknik, Seoul
April 26 – Correspondences Exhibition opens at Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tokyo
April 29 – ROHM Theatre Kyoto (performance)
May 3 – New National Theatre Opera Palace Tokyo (performance)
