Published
Pictures Of The Warm South
It’s her longest work to date, but the soundworlds present on the recordings are far from random, focusing on Rossetto’s relationship with her mother Toni. “She was liquidating her possessions and selling the house so that she could move into an apartment complex for older people. For almost four months I was helping her do this and recording the whole time. She moved to Alabama and then passed away. I went there and recorded her funeral at the apartments.”
Towards the end, “the chapel” captures the ritual of mourning at Toni’s funeral. Rossetto’s eulogy encourages those in attendance to dance rather than grieve. Even though the ones we love leave us, life carries on.
“At the time, I was really just trying to paint well but I was interested in performance art too. I had this microcassette recorder and was trying to record my entire inner monologue. I wish I still had the tapes.”
Vanessa Rossetto’s Pictures of the Warm South is a sound portrait of her mother, 92 years old at the time of recording. She narrates much of the set as we follow her through her normal activities in New Orleans: making phone calls, watching television, playing bingo. At times she is funny, at times harsh: in one of the more upsetting sequences, she snaps at Rossetto, “What the hell are you crying for again?” Unfortunately, shortly after these recordings, Rossetto’s mother passed away; in the final track, we hear Rossetto picking up the death certificate. Like a great documentary, Pictures of the Warm South is uncompromising while remaining empathetic. By the end, you’ll feel like you know its subject, or wish you had the opportunity to.