Dies ist eine Geschichte darüber, als Erwachsene Fahrradfahren zu lernen — und über all die Gründe, warum es so lange gedauert hat. Über eine Kindheit in Sardinien, wo Fahrräder für Jungs waren. Über eine geborgene Gasse und meinen Freund Giuseppe.

Von Niebuhrstrasse to Savignyplatz ist ein kurzes Audiostück für alle, die jemals etwas spät lernen mussten — und es alleine lernen mussten. Entstanden für das Cities and Memory Spring Project 2026.

Es gibt noch einen kleinen Epilog zur Geschichte: Der Grund, warum ich mich zwang, Fahrradfahren zu lernen, war, dass ich einige Monate später eine lange Fahrradreise antreten würde — von Berlin nach Istanbul. Hier könnt ihr die ganze Geschichte lesen.

The salt is blinding. The provisions are half gone. There is no turning back.

Lagoon picks up where Bitter Water ends: the vault is behind her, the liquid expanse is ahead, and the white formations on the horizon may or may not be what the Elders described. The surface is hostile: quicksand beneath the salt crust, acid water, beasts adapted to sulfureous ponds. She keeps moving. Above the white formations, the sky is doing something she has no word for.

The Elders said the phoenicotterius stood still as statues in the Molentargius Lagoon, long necks bent to the water. So beautiful you felt a shiver in your bones.

She needs to feel that shiver.

Lagoon is a solo voice, created, spoken, produced, edited and mixed by M. Cristina Marras for the Columbia Radio Race.

Flamingo Lore

• Flamingo Rising · An Audio RPG by Sardinian Imaginary Games
• Bitter Water

Flamingo Lore is an ongoing body of work set in a dystopian Sardinia where the surface is salt, acid water, and UV, and humans live underground. The world is consistent across pieces, but each work is an independent entry point, a different voice, a different moment in the same collapsed future.

Across the work, flamingos shift roles: they appear as myth and salvation, as creatures of impossible beauty the survivors risk their lives to find, and (in other corners of the universe) as rulers and torturers in an improbable RPG, wielding power over what remains of human life.

I have always been fascinated by the apparent fragility but effective strength of flamingos, the only living creatures that can drink water close to boiling point, among other things.

I live in Cagliari, surrounded by pink flamingos.

"Water used to have no taste. That's what the Elders say, and that's the hardest thing to believe. In a future Sardinia where every surface water is alkaline and corrosive, a young woman leaves the underground vault at dawn, before the UV peaks. She is looking for something. She has rope, smoked glass, and not much else."

Bitter Water is a dystopian tale of hope and magic amidst the desolate landscape of the Molentargius Lagoon, which is said to be inhabited by monstrous beings and, perhaps, by sublime creatures as well, which could be the same being.

Enter the sonic experience of a post-apocalyptic Sardinia.

Created, spoken, produced, edited and mixed by M. Cristina Marras for The Water Library, a storytelling project about water by Irish audio producers Zoë Comyns and Regan Hutchins.

Flamingo Lore

• Flamingo Rising · An Audio RPG by Sardinian Imaginary Games

Flamingo Lore is an ongoing body of work set in a dystopian Sardinia where the surface is salt, acid water, and UV, and humans live underground. The world is consistent across pieces, but each work is an independent entry point — a different voice, a different moment in the same collapsed future.

Across the work, flamingos shift roles: they appear as myth and salvation, as creatures of impossible beauty the survivors risk their lives to find, and — in other corners of the universe — as rulers and torturers in an improbable RPG, wielding power over what remains of human life.

I have always been fascinated by the apparent fragility but effective strength of flamingos, the only living creatures that can drink water close to boiling point, among other things.

I live in Cagliari, surrounded by pink flamingos.