How Text Becomes Clay and Clay Becomes Music is a project exploring ways to translate Sofia Andrukhovych’s novel Amadoka into the language of sound and clay. The project involved collaboration with Oaxaca-based artist Hernan Vargas and focused on different sound systems, particularly the traditional American hydraulic system that uses water to produce sound.

The methodology of this transmedial translation is built around the metaphor of water, a key element in the novel. Veronika Yadukha created three musical instruments extending the imagined line of Amadoka, once the largest lake in Europe, which no longer exists. These instruments serve as metaphors for lost memory, forgotten voices, transgenerational trauma, injustice, and the impossibility of restoring history that has been deliberately erased from collective memory.

This project was supported by the Arts Integration Grant Program of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth.

It is part of AMADOKA: Concert of Contemporary Ensemble Music, an initiative of the TRANSLATORIUM NGO.

Video documentation: Hernan Vargas.

Watch the full video HERE