Echo Quiescentiae (Latin for Echoes of Stillness) is an artistic research project exploring the relationship of ruins, cultural presence, and inner perception through fieldwork across Switzerland. The project documents forgotten medieval castles through sensory observation, archival analysis, sound recording, digital reconstruction, and painting, aiming to polymerize historical layers with non-verbal dialogues between landscape, architecture, and human memory.
Settling into a new country and cultural context, Makar seeks to explore historical hill traces, exploring how ruins, symbols of impermanence and decay, can be reimagined as sites of contemplation. An unexpected feeling of safety experienced in these places becomes the starting point of the research, suggesting a subconscious pursuit of a sacred answer.
The project examines how former defensive structures, now freed from their original purpose, evoke a sense of serenity and stillness for a newcomer. These country’s oldest architectural spaces, shaped by both periods of conflict and prolonged stability, serve as both an artistic subject and a co-storyteller, making direct, on-site engagement essential to the research process. This work became possible through the support of the IfCAR-grant.
Attuned closely to the textures, reliefs, and acoustics of these sites, including the hum of fractured stone walls, the profound silence of relics, the distant clatter of railways, and the shifting watercolor shadows across the terrain, the artist treats these elements as living material that shapes both emotional response and artistic form. The methodology combines field recordings, plein-air work, and conversations with local residents, alongside archival study of castle histories in both private and public collections.
By connecting digital preservation with emotional archaeology, the project unites technological tools and intuitive sensitivity, proposing new ways of relating to forgotten architectures through both collected data and embodied experience. Building on earlier explorations of sound, space, and time perception, Makar’s work continues a broader reflection into movement, settlement, and the process of revisiting past experiences through a new lens.
Grantee
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Fabrika Makar |
Dates and places
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April to October 2026, Cantons Graubünden, Ticino, Valais, Solothurn |