HORN ERU BEYGJUR / CORNERS ARE CURVES (that is why we walk into them) (Ísafjörður, Iceland, 2017)
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. 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 Outsert.
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.
This residency was made possible by financial support from the following institutions:
OS TRÊS INIMIGOS DA ALMA (Viseu, Portugal – Stockholm, Sweden, 2016)
In one of the verses of a religious hymn from her childhood, Maria de Adelaide de Oliveira Rouxinol cautions against “the three enemies of the soul”, without explicitly naming them. According to christian tradition these would be the world, the flesh and the devil (mundus, caro, et diabolus).
If the soul is indeed intangible yet omnipresent, the same can be said of the listening experience. If there is a sonorous soul, what would its three enemies be? Distraction, unawareness, lack of empathy with the vibration of a place? I do not know.
Departing from the field-recording archive Viseu Rural 2.0, Os Três Inimigos da Alma (The Three Enemies of the Soul)” is an exploration of the rhythmic dissonance implicit in fragments of the soundscape of the rural area of Viseu, Portugal. Attentive to where and when boredom gives way to beauty and vice-versa, this piece is composed in relation to distance and absence – my listening point – and the ways in which imagination tries to access a non-visited site.
THE HERE AND NOW AGAIN (Reykjavík, Iceland, 2016)
An immersive performance collaborative experiment, investigating strategies for sensuous embodiment in artistic and pedagogical processes. The Here And Now Again was the continuation of my poetic self manifestation, in a continued artistic research engagement with the Sisters Academy, this time an takeover intervention taking place at the Reykjavík School of Visual Arts, during a two week period in October 2016. Apart from co-authoring the transformation of the space, my participation consisted of a series of one-to-one performative encounters with students and staff, exploring improvised compositional techniques, rhythm pattern awareness, and shared sensorial expansion.
TRAVESSIAS E ENCONTROS – SUSANA ESCUTA EDUARDO DEPOIS EDUARDO ESCUTA SUSANA (Lisboa, Portugal – Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016)
A collaborative exploration on distance, audio correspondence and psycho-geographic mapping, together with artist and researcher Susana Mouzinho (PT). In Travessias e Encontros (Crossings & Encounters) – a sound piece commissioned by the interdisciplinary online platform ESC:ALA, the full curated piece being accessible here – Susana listens to a Copenhagen that Eduardo has cycled through, then Eduardo listens to Lisbon as it has been walked by Susana. A hybrid sound map results from this mutual curiosity, every now and then intersected by short voiced introspections. A dialogue with distance.
OUTSIDE IN – INSPLAB III (Næstved, Denmark, 2016)
Participation in Cantabile2’s Inspirationslaboratorium III – a collective exploration of creativity in the hybrid context of theatre, performance and live art. Outside In is a soundscape composed by the play between voice and the acoustic site-specificity of the landscape. It features vocal improvisation by Christine Borch (DK), poetic fragments gathered from Mary Elizabeth Frye’s 1932 piece “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”, and the binaural wanderings through the Grønnegade Teater surrounding area, with its life rhythms of farm animals and rich textures of the land. It was performed together with live sound improvisation, in both group explorations and intimate sensorial refocusing for a small audience.
THE HERE AND NOW (Malmö, Sweden, 2015)
Sound performance and series of artistic research workshops developed during an immersive one week residency at the Boarding School / Sisters Academy project by the Sisters Hope (DK/SE) artist collective. During a strictly ritualized close cohabitation period, living at the Inkonst (SE) art space, an old chocolate factory in the center of Malmö, The Here and Now is an experiment in the transformation of everyday rhythms and practices, while heightening performative awareness of oneself through the emergence of a “poetic self”. It deals, in sonic and performative terms, with intersubjective borders, territories and their permeability through conflict and vulnerability.
SOUNDSITE/LISTENINGSCAPE CORRESPONDENCE (Druskininkai, Lithuania – Stockholm, Sweden – Basel, Switzerland, 2015)
A collaboration with artist, researcher and performer Christina Burkolter (CH, DK) which was presented as a site-specific sound performance in Druskininkai, Lithuania, during the NSU Summer Session in July 2015. Soundsite/Listeningscape Correspondence is an ongoing project that started as an exchange of sonic sketches between myself, living in Stockholm, Sweden, and Christina, based in Basel, Switzerland, and it evolved into an embodied dialogue of site-specific exploration of the notions of togetherness and permeability through the use of sound. Soundsite/Listeningscape Correspondence was performed before a live audience in a hybrid format, including both pre-recorded sound pieces and live voice manipulation. It was framed as a sonic exploration of the mutual engagement essential to a nomadic artistic research community, and also as an embodied inquiry into performative practices of co-authorship and collaborative research.
SOME BODY IN THE LANDSCAPE (AND THERE WERE OTHER BODIES) (Mooste/Tallinn, Estonia – Stockholm, Sweden, 2015)
Sound piece composed of voice and manipulated field recordings captured in Mooste and Tallinn, Estonia, during March 2015, and edited in Stockholm and Lisbon during May 2015. Some Body in the Landscape builds upon the impressions of the wandering mind and ear, and deals with pathos and improvisation both in dialogue and in the context of performative intervention in the immersive presence in the surrounding landscape. Commissioned by the interdisciplinary online platform ESC:ALA, (escalanarede.com), the full curated piece is accessible here
SING-A-LONGING (Mooste/Tartu/Tallinn, Estonia 2015)
Performative sound piece composed from a local choir recording at Mooste and vocal fragments collected from passersby in the streets of Tartu, Estonia, between 16-26 March 2015. Performed at the Crossing Contexts NSU Winter Session at Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Tallinn, Estonia. Sing-a-longing was inspired by a radical notion of “site specific” engagement, as the intimate sound field available in direct memory recall, and by the role of choral singing in Estonia’s recent political history, namely the series of events known as the “Singing Revolution”, taking place between 1987-1991, the period leading to the independence of the Baltic states.
SILENT DINNER SOUNDSCAPE (Mooste/Tallinn, Estonia 2015)
Soundscape composed from field recordings taken between 16-26 March 2015 around Mooste, Estonia, during a residency stay at MoKS, for a collaborative performative silent dinner taking place at Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Tallinn, Estonia) organized by artist/researcher Luisa Greenfield (US/DE) and philosopher/artistic researcher Sebastian Dieterich (DE/CH), with the participation of artist/researcher Christina Burkolter (DK/CH). This performance operated as a ritualistic sensorial immersion, in the context of a nomadic community of artistic researchers and practitioners, bringing an embodied experience of the outer space (sounds collected from walks through the forest around Mooste) into an intimate location where the basic needs of the performing, living body are met – both the needs manifest as hunger and exhaustion, the need for privacy in an intense exchange environment, and the need for the partial release of the self as ego after prolonged exposure to a shared space of intense identification between work and artist. The meal was prepared, using local resources and a DIY ethics, by the Berlin based nomadic artist ensemble NoWhere Kitchen (Pepe Dayaw and Ayumi Saito).
TWO IN TRANSIT (Stockholm, Sweden 2013)
Two In Transit is an artistic experiment on the interplay between two voices and the surrounding acoustic environment, while in motion. Two vocal performers (Ylva Fred and Sara Franceschi) engage with each other as they make their way through the shifting urban landscape of Stockholm, riding their bikes, struggling with harmony, their own physicality and the balance between distraction and concentration in relation to the ever-present sound world of the public space. Two In Transit deals with the possibility of heightened awareness through sonic participation and the challenge of instability, both bodily and acoustic. Two In Transit was recorded, while performed in motion, using binaural microphones and an external stereo source. It was produced in the context of the LUR Levande Urban Radio project, a series of sound art pieces dealing with improvisation in the urban environment, within the IN SITU research group, coordinated by artist Monica Sand (SE) and architect Ricardo Atienza (ES/SE), and based at the Arkitektur- och designcentrum in Stockholm, Sweden.
Eduardo Abrantes 