Bayt Yakan by Luca Nasciuti

Comprised of field recordings and the situated playback of performance walks, ‘Bayt Yakan’ is Luca Nasciuti's attempt to mark and map a famed historic house in Cairo, Egypt.

The home of Bayt Yakan dates back to 1640 and its recent renovation has attempted to highlight its contemporary architectural hybridity as one way of reflecting on Egypt's own complex and layered histories.

Nasciuti re-located from London to Cairo in 2020 and this document was produced during the time he spent living in the city to 2023.

The album features five edited recordings of playback performance walks recorded within the walls of Bayt Yakan. The echoes of Nasciuti's footfalls, movements and activations resounding in the complex spaces of the house.

During the walked performance, pre-recorded material was broadcast via a portable loudspeaker. In the interactions between these mobile broadcasts, and Nasciuti's performances and the soundings and quietenings these involve, this particular encounter with Bayt Yakan unfolds.

His slow journey within the building brings together soundscapes from both inside and outside, inviting listeners to engage with the multiple layers of audibility that resound and fall silent in this historic site.

Bayt Yakan serves as a reminder of the interactions between history, memory and embodied experience that produce our lived environments. With this attempt to walk and sound in this complex space, Nasciuti seeks to highlight the complexity of urban regeneration and cultural conservation.

What is saved, lost, heard and not heard?

Bakt Yakan, Cairo, residents and passers by collide and converge in this location where time itself might be thought of as a loop, bringing with it traces of presence and absence, memory and forgetting.

========================

Bayt Yakan is a home in historic Cairo al-Darb al-Ahmar restored and opened to the community by Ola & Alaa el-Habashi.
Instagram: @ bayt_yakan

Read the NYT article on this building: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/t-magazine/cairo-mansion-bayt-yakan.html

“Flaming Pines is itself a topography of hidden global sounds." The Wire.

We are a label focused on field recording, sound art and experimental ambient music.

flamingpines.com
SoundCloud