Procne Speaks

Reimagined by Bronwen Livingstone.

"In the legend of the nightingale, Procne's sister Philomela is raped by Procne's husband Tereus, He then cuts out her tongue to silence her. When Procne learns what has happened, she enacts revenge by killing her own son, cooking his flesh and feeding it to Tereus. Tereus finds out and grabs an axe to kill both sisters, but in mercy the gods transform the sisters into birds. Philomela becomes the songless swallow while Procne is turned into a nightingale, singing a beautiful but sad song in remorse. The news today is full of women telling their stories of pain and abuse, and often they are disbelieved or ridiculed, sent messages of hate and threatened with violence. Procne's song is no longer a remorseful lament but angry, anguished and vehement as she sings on behalf of all the silenced and abused women. I took a beautiful recording of nightingales and slowed it down, sped it up, distorted, degraded, sampled, spliced and mulit-layered it to turn the gorgeous song of the nightingale into a dirty, uncomfortable, ugly scream of rage."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature