Cottier Alpine Pasture Soundscape

In the background, one can hear the steady flow of the Navizence, a river fed by the Zinal glacier. Its waters supply the region's hydroelectric plants. In spring and summer, its flow intensifies, amplified by the melting glaciers.

Around this deep rumble, the gentle clinking of Hérens cowbells. Known for their traditional combats, these cows have long held a central place in the daily life of Anniviers. Today, they are seen as a living heritage, at the heart of the valley’s identity.

All around, the cries of the raven, the common buzzard, and the more discreet songs of the fieldfare and the wood pigeon. These birds, adapted to high-altitude conditions, bear witness to a land still welcoming to a rich and diverse wildlife.

Then, a donkey’s bray echoes through the valley. It’s one of the two donkeys owned by Sarah and Stéphane, who live on the pasture year-round. In their high-altitude garden, they grow medicinal plants, which Sarah uses to produce natural cosmetic and healing products.

Gradually, a low, growing roar sets in and wraps around all other sounds: a plane crosses the sky.

In my film project The Invisible Mountain, stepping away from the contemporary world, ignoring its traces as much as possible, and immersing myself in nature is a way of immersing oneself in another temporality.
Closing my eyes and listening becomes a way to move through time, to reconnect with the sounds our ancestors would have heard, and to weave, through listening, a subtle link with them and with the invisible world they inhabited.
But this process also reveals its limits: what the image can avoid, the sound brings back. The marks of our time emerge in the soundscape — persistent, almost impossible to silence.