The Third Way emerges from an investigation into the resonant histories of Barreiro and Zagreb, tracing the acoustic afterlives of two societies that once collectively sought to reimagine their futures. Moving between embodied listening, environmental composition, site-specific intervention, and sonic essay, The Third Way explores traces of those historical experiences and asks whether they still reside within landscapes and communities.
Developed through field recording, archival research, and critical reflection, the work traces a thread between post-revolutionary Portugal and post-war Yugoslavia through their shared attempts to reconstruct social life after periods of rupture, rather than through ideology alone. Beneath the political narratives, the sound work and accompanying essay explore sensorial sediments of efforts to reorganise social life and rebuild societies after fascism, war, repression, and social fragmentation.
Recorded across the industrial landscapes of Barreiro, on the southern shores of the Tejo, and the vast modernist grounds of Zagreb's Velesajam, the work unfolds as a mnemosonic archaeology of social transformation. Both sites, once central to revolutionary imagination and collective participation, were shaped by geopolitical realignment and industrial expansion. Today, they exist in states of temporal displacement, carrying visible and invisible residues of past political, economic, and cultural realities.
Inspired by Alain Badiou's notion of the event sequence and by the social histories of workers' self-management, the Carnation Revolution, and Yugoslav modernity, The Third Way listens for what is often absent from historical accounts: the sensorium of collective organisation. The album ultimately points to the possibility of sensorial residues that persist after institutions fail, ideologies collapse, and political projects are gradually absorbed by bureaucracy, repression, corruption, or market forces.
At a moment when Europe is confronting renewed militarisation, social polarisation, eroding public trust, and rapidly resurging authoritarian tendencies, The Third Way offers neither nostalgia nor a political manifesto. Instead, it proposes listening as a method of inquiry and remembrance—one that reveals how places continue to hold memories of previous attempts to build more participatory, equitable, and socially cohesive futures.
The Third Way is a sonic exploration of collective effort, political imagination, and the persistence of social memory, and it listens for the recurring conviction that societies can organise themselves beyond the limitations of institutions and concentrated power, and that more just, participatory, and self-organising forms of collective life remain possible.
Released October 30, 2026
All sounds of Barreiro, Portugal, and Velesajam, Zagreb, Croatia, were recorded, edited, and composed by Manja Ristić, except for the recordings from Vietnam by Ivana Grahovac and an improvisational intervention on a metal sculpture at Velesajam by Silvija Dogan;
Additional sounds were taken in: Belgrade, Serbia; Korčula & Vrnik, Croatia; Sa Pa & Hanoi, Vietnam; London, United Kingdom;
All instruments played and processed by Manja Ristić
Text & Cover art by Manja Ristić
Mastering by Guillermo Pizzaro
Hydrophones, contact, and ecoutic microphones used for the field recording were built by Jez riley French
Recordings of Barreiro were gathered as part of an artistic residency organised by OUT.RA – Associação Cultural and financed by the Ibermúsicas program.
Recordings of Velesajam were gathered as part of the Mnemosonic Topography Workshop organised by UIII / AIIR – Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research, in the frame of the project Spaces of New Zagreb 1: Velesajam;