The Lost Carrier, 2026
Materials: two sheep bells, miniature loudspeakers, sheep wool, amplifier, audio cables and sound recordings.
The work consists of two sheep bells, each containing a small loudspeaker and wool inside its cavity. Activated by the human hand rather than by the movement of the animal, the bells play back their own recorded sound: a reactivation of the ringing they once produced when they were worn. What remains is only the gesture of calling, while the animal itself is absent.
In Lesbos, sheep bells serve both a practical and a deeply spatial function: they allow shepherds to locate their flocks across mountainous terrain often covered by fog, where sight fails but sound continues to travel. Each bell has a distinct tuning, giving every animal an acoustic identity within the flock. The soundscape created by these bells forms a living geography of sound a continuous signal of presence, movement, and collective well-being. Τhe sound piece presented responds to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease and the mass culling it requires. This crisis does not merely eliminate animals; it erases an entire sonic ecology. The sound of the bells, relocated into themselves, calls without a body to follow, a mourning that takes the form of repetition, and a question about what listening means when what we are listening for is no longer there.
Audio recordings with Leo Bonato y Tomás Eyzaguirre, as part of the residency at Hermitage (Sykaminia)
LAST YEAR´S WOOL
12.06.2026-14.06.2026
Exhibition at the Hamam Lower Castle
Curated by NiMATA AMKE (Julie Loi)
Mytilene, Greece