Stalker is an immersive sound installation for Slam Jam born after a long research started from a little object found in Luca Benini’s archive.
This object is a little mysterious card box from the Italian 80’s fashion designer Roberto Mengoni.
After a long research about Roberto Mengoni which didn't lead to anything, I started a research about the few more informations printed on the box.
From the definition of nuclear child and nuclear family, I started a visual research about children who were born or lived during Hiroshima’s and Chernobyl’s nuclear disasters.
I ended up discovering the existence of "stalkers". This name comes from the Tarkovsky film and the homonymous video game. This title is reserved only for those who regularly hike in the zone and do so respectfully and out of a love for the zone, its history and its peacefulness. They feel true love for all things in the zone and they desire it to be preserved for future generations.
Looking around to know more about stalkers, I found some videos on tik tok from Lindsey, a documentary photographer whom in 2021 spent a week in the zone with the stalkers.
Starting from a long and mostly visual research I understood that these images could have been replaced by the sound they produce. From Chernobyl children’s wept and moans to Chernobyl stalker’s walk and geigers, sounds are capable to tell this story alone. The story of Nuclear Children, born in the years of the nuclear disaster, affected by it physically and emotionally.
This brought me to think about a sound immersive installation made by mixing and post producing the noises and sounds of Chernobyl’s stalkers hikes. Steps, voices, rain, laughs and sighs will take the audience in an alienating space and will produce images in their minds.
Chernobyl stalkers are also infamous for creating restored time capsules in spaces such as schools, apartments, and hospitals all over the abandoned city. In this project the time capsule will be the hidden display for stalkers videos. The videos will be played on a little display hidden in a card box (setting one) or in the back of a ripped poster on the wall (setting two).
The time capsule will be the only light source in the room.