Lowe's Sound Art Exhibit: Discreet Improvisations

Beyond the Sounds of Silence: Latin-American Artists Connecting Art, Sound and Society

 

1

 

 Gustavo Matamoros

 

 

 

Mindful Listening

I combine recording the sound and the environment. Eventually, I try to echo the behavior of most people in the audience. My eyes closed to let the sound permeate my senses without visual distractions. Matamoros moves his hand through the space as he produces a variety of surprising sounds. In the meantime, I manage to record myself as I try to also be mindful of the sound and the images it produces in my mind.

2

Richard Garet

Head Sound

This is an attempt to relax while the electronic sounds travel through the space. I try to match the movement of my neck / head with the sound's mood. I am conscious of the surrounding audience and yet, while I also record myself, I find a way to produce minimal movement. This way of improvising dance, becomes an ideal way of subverting the conventions imposed on dancing bodies by highly formalized spaces on bodies that need to move to sounds of silence or sounds of noise, music included.

 

Zapateado Sonoro

Again, trying to not called attention to my zapateado, while the sound-artist was still performing, I recorded my dancing feet. The discreet zapateo was quiet and silent whereas the sound produced by Garet was gradually intensified, rhythmic and vibratory. The untitleness of the piece stimulated my creativity and freedom to find my own meaning, my own purpose. The dance allowed a connection between my feet and the sound, between my creative mind and my sense of propriety, between my phone/camera and my zapateado. 

3

Muu Blanco

 

Creepy Sound Bells

Blanco's piece relied on the identifiable sounds of church bells. The darkness of the space, the distance from the artist at work, and the number of audience members crowding the area, made use just my fingers and the phone/camera. Thus, an imagined Washington DC where sound bells mixed with the sound of pedestrians and city life, became a creepy experience where my fingers, moving in front of the lens, become principle dancers of an un-choregraphed dance macabre.

4

Yucef Merhi

 

 

The Altar Con Passion

After Merhi's generous explanation of his artistic process, it became obvious to me that the piece had become, perhaps inadvertently, an altar. Out of respect for the artist's work, I decide to just insert myself within the camera's frame as an offering. The message: "compassion," reminded me of Kundera's brilliant explanation of the meaning of the word compassion within the Latin culture (compasion or con-pasion) and the way it is interpreted within the Anglo culture. The passion Merhi's shows when talking about his work corroborates Kundera's assessment of the passion with which Latin peoples live.