Binaural and Associação Cultural de Nodar present:

4 Artists by the Paiva river
16 August 08 | 6.00 p.m.
Nodar Artist Residency Center
Nodar, S. Pedro do Sul (Portugal)

A multidisciplinary event in a rural context, organized within the scope of the Nodar Artist Residency Program. Four projects will be presented in several locations on the village and on its surroundings, forming both a spatial and an artistic itinerary through several contemporary expressions, namely sound art, performance, land art, video art and multimedia installation.

Art Projects to be presented:

Viv Corringham (UK)
“Shadow Walks”
Sound Art, Vocal Performance

A sound project with the participation of local inhabitants. The artist asked for volunteers to take her on their “special” walk, a walk that has been repeated many times and has distinct meaning or significance for that person. An initial walk with the person along their selected route, in which their conversations were recorded, was followed by the artist’s solo walk in which she attempted to sense her previous companion’s traces on the walk and to make these audible through her own improvised singing in the location.

Lezli Rubin-Kunda (Israel)
“Marking Stones”
Performance, Visual Arts

The artist wanders through the village, where the local slate stone is used to build walls, houses, pave roads, mark boundaries. She responds to the rocks at different sites by marking incising, drawing onto them, as well as making rubbings from them. A video and a set of photos will document her spontaneous interactions at each site. And for the open house, a live performance will take place along the stone roadway.

Jurate Jarulyte Weiss (Lithuania)
“Dream Objects”
Land Art

Behind every real object there is a dream object” (J. Baudrillard, “The System of Object”). Do we try to adjust our imagination to the real object or a situation? Then, how do our “dream objects” interact with new “real objects” or situations? The project intends to look for a natural and harmonious interaction with a local place and to create some extraordinary “dream like” situation.

Francisco Janes (Portugal)
“Interior”
Mixed-Media Installation

The project was structured around a hike along the river Paiva, from Nodar to the source in Carapito, Moimenta da Beira. Sounds, photos and video were recorded in Nodar and during the walk and will be presented as a mixed-media installation. The elements captured by the artist reflect a subjective vision of the relationship between a body and a landscape as well as the contingency and memory of a trip made against the flow, to the “interior” of a river.

The American sound artist John Grzinich stayed at Nodar Artist Residency Center last April 2008 where he developed a sound project (“Nodar Flowlines”) based on the interaction with local water flows, either the downhill streams that arrive in the Paiva river and the water channels that bring the water to the village. His work methodology was based on the following parameters:

1 – Choice of an appropriate location for each sound recording session;
2 – Set a mechanical device (wire threads, wine bottles, metal objects, wood objects, etc.) that in interaction with the water flow and the microphones would produce modified sound patterns;
3 – Sound recording of the interaction between soundscape + waterflow + device + microphone;
4 – Simultaneous video stills of each specific location, as a means of documenting the sound recording process;
5 – Edition of a DVD with the audiovisual result of the recordings made during the residency.

Here are some photos of John’s presence in Nodar along with a short movie clip of “Nodar Flowlines”:

[MEDIA=10]

A sound improvisation with bottles in contact with water:

John Grzinich - Bottle Phones Play Now

Manuela Barile and Rui Costa were at MUSAC – Contemporary Art Museum of León (Spain) were they directed between February, 19th and 22nd, 2008 their workshop “La Scatola: The Amplified Expression of the Body”.

This workshop was structured with the purpose of creating a multidisciplinary performance through collaborative processes and intersecting body, voice, physical-acoustic space and sensors as a way of amplifying their expressive possibilities. A group of 20 enthusiastic performers, musicians and students helped to conceive a very powerful body-voice-electronics improvisation that was seen by an audience of about 30 people.

Here are some photos of the workshop:

La Scatola
An intermedia project by Manuela Barile and Rui Costa

“La Scatola” explores the notion of confinement using multiple approaches. Working on the border zone between the ‘I’ and the outside world, ‘La Scatola’ (“The Box”, in English) can be thought as a narrative device, that represents a diffuse space between the “inside” and the outside”, between the “I” and the “other”, in which multiple and sometimes opposite strength lines are present: sensitive manifestations of the incarcerated and/or protected body, distorted visions of the external world, anxiety, wishes and memories. We may define this zone in purely spatial terms (“forbidden zone”, “abyss”, “barrier”) but also in terms of bidirectional “energy fluxes” created by the sensorial and emotional projection of the incarcerated individuality into the outside world (pain, desire, resistance, impotence, etc.) and by the representation (idealized, distorted, diffuse) of the outside world in the mind and body of the incarcerated individual.

The several narrative devices to be used will be organized in order to create enigmatic situations, between the familiar and the weird (or distant). The images or objects to be used, in its simplicity and depuration, can be transformed in a mirror capable of facing the audience with their own memories and individual experiences.

The project is developed in multiple metamorphosis and presented in several interchangeable contexts: installations, performances, concerts (solos / duos), site-specific presentations and workshops.

Artistic Direction: Manuela Barile (Italy) and Rui Costa (Portugal)
Video Collaboration: Maile Colbert (USA)
Sound Collaboration: Mario Volpe (Italy)
Dramaturgic Collaboration: Bojana Bauer (Serbia)
Production Direction: Luís Costa
Artist Residencies: Nodar Guest Studio (Portugal) | MoKS (Estonia)

Funding: General Office of the Arts | Ministry of Culture, Portugal

Acknowledgments: Associação Cultural de Nodar (Portugal) | S. Pedro do Sul Municipality (Portugal) | Zoom – Associação Cultural (Portugal) | Amigos do Museu de Olaria de Barcelos (Portugal) | ZDB Gallery (Portugal) | MoKS (Estonia) | Vel-Net (Italy) | Villa Franchin (Italy) | Madcap Collective (Itália) | Città di Venezia (Italy) | MARCO – Contemporary Art Museum of Vigo (Spain) | Sinsal Collective (Spain) | MUSAC – Contemporary Art Museum of León (Spain) | Junta de Castilla y León – Consejeria de Cultura y Turismo (Spain) | Almazen. Serial Artist (Spain) | La Casa Encendida de Obra Social Caja Madrid (Spain) | Asociación Musicalibre (Spain) | Centro Huarte – Contemporary Art Centre of Navarra (Spain) | Presence Capitale (France) | Erratum (France)

Upcoming Presentations:

28 January 08, 8.30 p.m.
Manuela Barile
Concert for voice and sound objects
Festival Hurta Cordel 2008 – International Festival of Musical Improvisation
La Casa Encendida, Madrid (Spain)
http://www.lacasaencendida.es

5 and 6 February 08, 8.00 p.m.
Manuela Barile and Rui Costa
Intermedia installation-performance (5 Feb.) and intermedia concert for voice, electronics, sound objects and video (6 Feb.)
Almazen, Barcelona (Spain)
http://www.almazen.net

19 to 22 February 08, from 5.00 p.m. until 9.00 p.m.
Manuela Barile and Rui Costa
Workshop “La Scatola: The Amplified Expression of the Body”
A theoretical-practical workshop with the purpose of creating a multidisciplinary performance through collaborative processes and intersecting body, voice, physical-acoustic space and sensors as a way of amplifying their expressive possibilities.
A workshop for musicians, sound artists, performers, actors, either professionals or self-teaching, with interest in experimental and multidisciplinary artistic creation.
MUSAC – Contemporary Art Museum of León (Spain)
Applications to be received until 19 February 08
http://www.musac.es

29 February 08, 9.00 p.m.
Manuela Barile and Rui Costa
Intermedia concert for voice, electronics, sound objects and video
Villa Franchin, Mestre – Venice (Italy)
http://www.veneziagiovane.net

4 and 5 April 08, 9.00 p.m.
Manuela Barile and Rui Costa
Intermedia concert for voice, electronics, sound objects and video
Centro Huarte – Contemporary Arte Centre, Navarra (Spain)
http://www.centrohuarte.es

Artistic Biographies:

Manuela Barile is an Italian vocal researcher and an interdisciplinary performer presently living in Portugal. Her artistic research is based on a project-oriented work that combines vocal sounds with different media (video, photography, installations, performance, concert-performance, drawing, writing). Her sound vocabulary was enriched through a series of studies and researches, around oriental and occidental vocal traditions, either made by herself or with teachers such as Amelia Cuni (Druphad) and Tran Quang Hai (Harmonic chant). Her CD, “Creature Sonore” was released in 2007 on Alg-a netlabel.

Rui Costa is a Portuguese sound artist from Lisbon, Portugal. He has been performing live for more than 10 years. Rui’s artistic expression favours the creation of intricate sonic textures through computer-based sound manipulation techniques and using as a source field recordings and live sampling of acoustical instruments. He developed several conceptual projects, presented in art galleries and concert spaces across Portugal, Spain and USA. As an example, it is worth mentioning the intermedia work “Nodar”, developed with Iñaki Ríos and premiered at the Musica Ex Machina festival, in Bilbao, Spain. His work has been published in several sound art compilations (Sirr, Crónica, No Type, Universe International, Mandorla).

+info:

http://www.manuelabarile.com
http://www.myspace.com/ruigcosta

Manuela Barile presents in Bordeaux during “Burn Out – Post Crash”, 9th Symposium of Sound Arts and Mix Media, the solo voice+objects version of the intermedia project “La Scatola“, developed along with the sound artist Rui Costa. The symposium is curated by Joachim Montessuis (Erratum magazine) and Yvan Etienne, in connection with André Lombardo (artistic director of Présence Capitale).

Burn Out – Post Crash
9th Symposium of sound arts and mix media
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Entrepôt Lainé – CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain
Bordeaux, France
from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Full program:

Giuseppe Ielasi + Thomas Ankersmit (IT / NL)
Manuela Barile (IT)
Samon Takahashi (FR)
Jorg Piringer (AT)
Bryan Saunders (US)
Raionbashi & Kutzkelina (DE)

The Latvian sound artist Maksims Shentelevs presented during Fronte[i]ras 07 a project that used recordings of mixed sounds made in specific acoustic environments of Nodar (water tanks, river banks, tree branches).

During the concert in Barcelos he created a composition using each of the three sound environments along with several percussion and string instruments (two of them built by the artist in Nodar, string instruments using burnt wood from a huge fire that almost destroyed the village two years ago).

Here is the audio from Maksims Shentelevs’ concert at the Municipal Library of Barcelos’ Auditorium (September, 29th 2007):

Maksims Shentelevs @ Fronte[i]ras 07 Play Now

The Galician (Spain) sound artist Xesús Valle stayed at NOGS in July 2007 and created a series of amplified micro-improvisations as a result of interactions with the Nodar landscape, with an emphasis on the vegetable elements.

His project, “Tactile Dialogues” was presented to the local audience in the form of a video, collecting a series of these interactions:

[MEDIA=1]

And as a parallel project, Xesús collected hours of field recordings from Nodar and around that he later edited and mixed to create the nOdArAuDiO piece:

Xesus Valle - nOdArAuDiO Play Now