The project unfolds in the Norway spruce forests of the Val di Fiemme in northern Italy. As early as the 17th century, the best wood for constructing violins was said to come from the Paneveggio Forest, also known as the Resonance Forest or Forest of Violins. In fact, it was in this very forest that the celebrated violin maker Antonio Stradivari personally chose trees destined to become musical instruments. The exceptional quality of this wood, from trees that grew under particularly stable climatic conditions and were thus notable for the regularity of their growth rings, contributed to the creation of unique instruments with qualities that cannot be reproduced today.

If fluctuating temperatures and weather conditions due to climate change were not problematic enough, the search for wood suited to violin making has been further hampered by the spread of the spruce bark beetle. After the October 2018 Vaia storm toppled nearly two million cubic meters of trees, the beetle multiplied and ravaged even vaster areas of the forest. The spruce bark beetle carves an intricate network of engraving-like galleries (hence the name) in the bark of the Norway spruce, interrupting the tree’s sap flow and causing its death. Laura Pugno used these markings to develop a multi-level work. In one phase, she created a number of sculptures, three-dimensional plaster molds that retain a physical and indexical relationship with the real-world subject, much as analog photography does. In another, she explored the immaterial dimension, asking composer Carlo Galante to translate those markings into a solo violin score. The recording of that piece, performed by Valdyslava Luchenko on a Stradivarius violin, thus establishes a symbolic link with that unique place, while bearing witness to a profoundly—and perhaps irreversibly—degraded ecosystem.

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