/ˈrej.nə/

/ˈrej.nə/ is a performative lecture that delves into the languages developed by shepherds to communicate with animals and the land. Drawing on spectrograms of recordings of the voices and calls of present-day shepherds, the session explores the communicative ingenuity of one of humanity’s oldest and most significant ways of life: pastoralism.

The lecture presents the shepherd as the guardian of a cultural, linguistic and sonic heritage closely bound to the processes that led human societies towards sedentary living and permanent settlement. Along the way, every region, climate and community has developed its own ways of relating to livestock, giving rise to vocabularies, phonemes, calls and other forms of communication that belong as much to the language as to the environment that produced them.

Drawing on the material gathered by Joan Amades in El vocabulari dels pastors, the session unpacks the creaks, cries, calls and phonemes of several Catalan shepherds in order to reconnect us with one of the most primordial forms of the spoken word: the imitation of nature and the communicative exchange between nature and its fauna.

Throughout the lecture, Núria del Toll will work on an original Diable carding machine from Grenoble while presenting the session. The wool processed during the event will be offered to the audience at the end.