NEITAR AÐ FORÐAST / REFUSE TO REFRAIN (Ísafjörður, Iceland, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

 

There are two things about working artistically with sound that are particularly inspiring to me. One is that your materials are found anywhere. Another is that they usually gain by becoming displaced.

When you record sounds outside in nature, and then later listen to them, join them, and manipulate them in some kind of indoors-domestic environment, you are effectively dabbling in alchemy. You are making connections, you are separating what is together, you are unfolding vibrating immateriality into physical presence. You are also allowed to do all of this without using words.

During November 2017, staying in Ísafjörður at ArtsIceland Residency, I have created a series of short sound pieces. All of them include sounds recorded on location, most often transformed beyond recognition. Some are pulsing, quick and noisy, others slow, repetitive and quiet – most of them are both because I enjoy contrast. Listener, you are welcome to be curious, you are welcome to be bored, you are welcome.

This series of dual channel compositions was first performed before a live audience, at Edinborgarhúsið on November 28. Three of the thirteen compositions – Foom Foom Bloom, Krílið and Vegna Næturinnar – can be heard below.

Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Ísafjörður, Iceland 2017
Photo: Eduardo Abrantes, Þingeyri, Iceland 2017

This residency was made possible by financial support from the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.

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OPKALD OG SVAR (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

 

Ofte, både i min egen lydkunst og i andre kunstneres, mærker jeg lyde som håndgribelige bevægelser i rummet. En af de mest bemærkelsesværdige, mystiske og alligevel almindelige af disse, skal jeg nævne opkald og svar.
Når du siger ”hej” til nogen, du kender, og de svarer tilbage. Når to skibe blæser deres tågehorn, mens de sejler nær. Når alarmen på en mikrobølgeovn bringer dig tilbage til køkkenet, og dine skyndte trin stepper på gulvbrættet. I musikalsk kontrapunkt. Overalt i naturen under parringssæson.
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Often, both in my own sound work and other artists’, i experience sound as tangible movement in space. One of the most common yet mystifying categories of this movement is “call and response”.
When you say “hello” to someone, and they answer back. When two ships blow their foghorns while passing close. When a microwave alarm brings you back to the kitchen, your steps resounding on the wood floor. In musical counterpoint. Everywhere in nature under breeding season.

Appropriately to its title, Opkald og svar (“Call and response”) was inspired by an invitation to participate in an Æstetisk Salon session, themed “Interaktion – Reaktion”, an artistic research sharing/presentation/dialogue platform created and curated by Camille Roth and Linh Le. Opkald og svar was presented as both a two channel stereo field sound composition and a co-created collective performance, taking place at private apartment situated in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, on October 2017. In its performative phase, the public was invited to divide in two groups, the first venturing out and exploring the acoustic space of the private home by find a call-sound to respond to. The second group would, after a few minutes, also venture out and try to individually position itself in relation to the mid-points of call and response defined by the individual members of the first group, adding their own intermediate sound to the ongoing play. The result was a playful collaborative exercise in sound exploration, active listening, and performative engagement. 

(Photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes, Copenhagen 2017)

HYS (Gnesta, Sweden, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

 

A word written on a wall in an old brewery, in a small town in Sweden. A long re-sampled soundscape reaching for the 10 bpm un-lifelike rhythm offered to bodies of abandon. Vocal intimacy as undertow, the slowing down of the “impact of lighted bodies” in Mina Loy’s words. Slow but not tame, percussive but not uplifting. Maybe.

(Photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes, Berlin 2017)

BACK TO WORK / CITIES AND MEMORY (Copenhagen, Denmark – London, UK, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

A sound collage dealing with mysticism, utopian desire, and resistance, both for and against change. It includes manipulated samples of composer and Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098-1179) choral piece Canticles of Ecstasy, fragments of an original field recording in London at the G20 rallies, and a sample and slightly pitched detail of a voice of dissent, ironically protesting against protest. Back To Work is about raising one’s voice, about the utopian mindset that often runs parallel to activism as its mystical counterpart, it is about a gathering of voices as a sonic ritual and the joy, melancholy, and weirdness of it all.

It was created as part of the call for field-recording re-apropriation and reconfiguration Protest & Politics, a global sound map of protest that is part of Cities and Memory, a collaborative “global field recording & sound art work that presents both the present reality of a place, but also its imagined, alternative counterpart – remixing the world, one sound at at time”.

Back To Work, among others, was programmed and broadcasted for the first time on August 7th 2017 by London-based Resonance FM.

 

CHRONOS FOR KAIROS (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

Preparatory resonant sketch for The Here And Now – the continuation of a poetic self to be manifested collectively as teaching staff of the upcoming immersive performative project Sisters Academy – Boarding School at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (København, DK) in the fall of 2017.

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40 beats per minute is a common enough heart rate when asleep. A little low but still normal, especially for a trained though exhausted body. The living heart is in constant motion, not exactly translating and rotating like a planet does, but close enough. This measure can be measured as a rhythmic repetition in sequential time. 

The ancient Greeks had two names for time. Chronos refers to measurable time, from past to future, the numbering of the days, a line, a sequence. Kairos refers to the instant, the moment of opportunity where action ignites consequence and change happens. If that moment is seized. If not, it belongs to chronos, the cannibal. 

Kairos also refers to the moment in archery when the tension of the bow achieves the maximum and the arrow is released. Or in weaving, when the wooden shuttle passes between the threads tied taut in the loom.

The Here And Now is of kairos but entangled in chronos. Aren’t we all?

WHITE CIRRUS – TUNGEDREVET #1 (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

Titled in a oblique reference to a “genus of atmospheric cloud generally characterized by thin, wispy strands, giving the type its name from the Latin word cirrus, meaning a ringlet or curling lock of hair” (quote retrieved from the never unreliable Wiki), this piece is the first of a collection of compositions built upon live voice processing and manipulation. It might also seek inspiration from a meteor fragment framed on the wall – a white cirrus navigator of sorts, cutting a cooling burning trail across the sky under which we happen to live through our days.
Few things expose one more intensely to scrutiny and self-awareness than opening one’s mouth. Speaking in public, speaking to oneself, doubting one’s sanity or singing in the shower, our voice (if we have it) is the truest multi-tool. In the worlds of sound, voice is a borderless kingdom of vast property – it is also the only instrument that can die. White Cirrus is part of Tungedrevet (“Tongue-driven”) a series of compositions where the mouth pushes the sound waves into an processing array, sometimes loosing its recognizability altogether. Onto the listener, the one who lingers on the other side, it emerges as a metamorphic presence. Hopefully.

(photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes)

HORN ERU BEYGJUR / CORNERS ARE CURVES (that is why we walk into them) (Ísafjörður, Iceland, 2017)

| Eduardo Abrantes

My month-long residency at ArtsIceland in Ísafjörður, during February 2017, manifested as a series of inspiring sonic encounters. Between the surrounding landscape – both monumental and fluid – and its people, I was allowed to weave my own life rhythms, being guided, welcomed, playfully challenged, and above all, engaged and engaging with full curiosity.

HORN ERU BEYGJUR / CORNERS ARE CURVES is a surround installation/sound composition that knits together some of these sonic encounters. It is composed of manipulated field recordings taken in different environments in Ísafjörður, both private and public spaces, including that strangely simultaneously public and intensely private space, the acoustic of the fjord landscape itself.

The sound collecting and composition process was guided by the awareness of the site-specific acoustic properties of the area, together with intense dialogue and shared experiences with some of the local inhabitants. It was presented as a live mixed quadraphonic (4 channel surround) sound installation at Edinborgarhúsið Cultural Centre, followed by a group walk and an improvised choral encounter at Gallery Outvert.

The title refers to the geography of the fjords, its corners turning into curves, its play of seemingly both challenging and inviting navigation – hard on the body and freeing in the soul. It refers also to my own shared internal landscape as a human, how past and present struggles strengthen conviction, how life and wonder shun straight lines.

This residency was made possible by financial support from the following institutions:

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SOUNDING SHIFT (Copenhagen, Denmark – Christchurch, New Zealand, 2016)

| Eduardo Abrantes

Sounding Shift – The Transitional Core in Everyday Sound Objects is an exploration of how the audio format might be able to sustain and invoke transdisciplinarity. It occurs as a manifestation of the possibility of dialogue and mutual embodiment between Sound Art and Philosophy. It is both a soundscape composition and an audio-essay, sparked by the question: “What is the contemporary sound object?”. It was published within the context of the third issue of the Writing Around Sound journal, edited by Richard Keys and Jo Burzynska, and connected to the Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery, located in Christchurch, New Zealand. The text accompanying the sound piece can be read here.