Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
PhD Candidate in Music
- Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, Musikhöghskolan i Malmö -
OPEN STUDIO EXHIBITION
Plastic Extension of Music - Sustainable Development
PhD Conference on Sustainable Development at Lund University (Sweden)
- From 30th September until 31th October 2021 -
:: Plastic Extensions ::
...pas digun ne vedèva sa cara (uma vontade de foder) [2016-17]
[tableau vivant/sound installation]
"El mundo es una máscara, el rostro, el traje y la voz todo es fingido; todos quieren aparentar lo que no son, todos se engañan y nadie se conoce."
Capricho nº6 - Nadie se conoce (1799) - Francisco de Goya, Manuscrito del Museo del Prado.
...pas digun ne vedèva sa cara [translation from occitan to english: no one was seeing her face] (uma vontade de foder) uses Breviario de espejismos by Elena Mendoza, a solo guitar piece sounding in the structure.
Conceived as a Tableau vivant recreated by the beholders; public in order to "feel" the work will need to "be" the work, all five masks represent the characters in the Capricho by Goya and their recreated perspectives inside the Capricho ; we are the masks, we see and feel what we/they are, show and hide.
In order to have an extended visual link -in a cultural and geographical way- with Goya, the artist used video material from Luis Buñuel and Segundo de Chomón; artists born in Aragon, Spain, as Francisco de Goya.
The mask hides our persona in order to pretend to be what we are not, but the mask also gives us the hability to freely be ourselves with the image of someone else; protected by a disposable image, we are able to reveal what we really think due to anonymity, our thoughts, actions and words towards our interlocutor will be engraved in the mask of another being.
Seduction, falsehood, naivity and voyeurism build an extended sensation that Goya achieved with his Capricho.
200 x 400 cm - Glued paper, two speakers, amplifier, video, tablet, LED light, photographic montage, four metal supports, fishing line, metal strings, two wooden boxes, two mixed metal-wooden supports..
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[video - inside mask]
(complete version)
...pas digun ne vedèva sa cara (uma vontade de foder)
unexpected stammerings [2016]
[Sound Installation/Amplification System]
"unexpected stammerings" is the plastic reverberation of "ezkil" (which means "bell" in euskara), a solo guitar piece for quarter-tone tuned guitar by Basque composer Ramon Lazkano.
The present work is an actual bell, with it's own particular sounds (The piece “Ezkil”) that emerge from the installation itself into the audience, being a live and dead object (we can interact with it as an interpreter being connected to the installation and play the piece using it as an amplification system, and also through a recording that can be in loop working with the installation.), the idea is to offer different situations and interactions with the work: presence/absence of the interpreter, fixed sound/oscillating sound (again here in this piece, plastic elements like protuberances emerge from the speakers that represent the “fixed sounds” (sons fixes)), live/dead object, virtual/physical sound.
The “stammerings”, unexpected ones, come from the mouvement originated by the woofer, reproducing a bell mouvement with the speakers inside the “bell”. Resonance objects (the wings of the “bell” and the small plastic resonance emerging from the structure beside the installation), work as a visual and acoustic object.
300 x 450 cm - brass sheets, wood sheet, mosquito net, speakers, amplifier + 3 microphones and a guitarist when “needed”.
coyote [2017]
[Sound and visual installation]
coyote is a visual transcription of "Pièce pour guitare seule" by french composer Elisabeth Angot. Each hand position of the piece is represented on the emptiness of white paper and graphite as different ephemeral hand sculptures of each gesture of the piece itself.
Loop video projection and 66 paper sheets with graphite
[video] coyote
Esta es la tierra que nos han dado [2019]
[Series of 12 paintings]
Esta es la tierra que nos han dado, it's the plastic extension of Sonata Mexicana by Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce. These series of paintings evoke the character, fingering, rhythm and gestures inside the four movements of the Sonata.
12 paper sheets with mixed materials
ephemeral critters [2020]
[Entomology catalogue of light painting critters]
The ephemeral critters are light painting recreation and traces of the sound gestures and sections from the bottleneck sliding of Pascale Criton's guitar piece "Plis". These ephemeral gestures and its traces, similar to an entomology collection became a catalogue of ephemeral light critters.
Series of light painting photographies
forced ergonomics [six strings for improvisation] [2020]
[modular installation]
This modular installation is the plastic extension of 6 Preludios cortos by Manuel M. Ponce. The plastic tubes recreate -similar as ephemeral critters- certain passages from the music that are part of the left hand and finger movements on the guitar.
1 modular installation (6 plastic tubes 1,50Mx70cmx1,50M circa)
phantom errand [muscle memory] [2020]
[Painting Installation]
phantom errand is the plastic extension of "Preludio 1925" by Manuel M. Ponce, each painting represents two different sections of the piece as well as their erratic gestures (in graphite) along with the final perfected gesture (in ink). The small installation with stones and drawing reference the sound production of the left hand of the before mentioned sections.
2 ink and graphite drawings on cloth (2Mx2M & 2Mx1,60M)
1 installation (stones and graphite and ink drawing on paper)
bullesye [2020]
[video: 4:18 min]
All my summers, the windows of my "chambre de bonne" are filled with screams from morning until midnight. Cries always accompanied by furtive images of fragments of the new mechanical summer attraction in the "Fête des Tuileries".
The mechanicity of these attractions prompted me to make a spiritual analogy with the perfection sought in the work of a performer of classical music, in this particular case, with a study for classical guitar. This little "mise en abyme" is the plastic extension (here audiovisual) of Étude V for guitar, by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Qui frappe l’air, bon Dieu ! de ces lugubres cris ?
Est-ce donc pour veiller qu’on se couche à Paris ?
Et quel fâcheux démon, durant les nuits entières,
Rassemble ici les chats de toutes les gouttières ?
J’ai beau sauter du lit, plein de trouble et d’effroi,
Je pense qu’avec eux tout l’enfer est chez moi :
L’un miaule en grondant comme un tigre en furie ;
L’autre roule sa voix comme un enfant qui crie.
Ce n’est pas tout encore : les souris et les rats
Semblent, pour m’éveiller, s’entendre avec les chats,
Plus importuns pour moi, durant la nuit obscure,
Que jamais, en plein jour, ne fut l’abbé de Pure.
Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)
Les embarras de Paris (extrait)
sempre morbida [2021]
[clay sculpture-installation]
sempre morbida is a clay study installation and Plastic extension of Ètude I by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The fingers are represented in a tablature for the left hand, a visual map of the iconic piece by the Brazilian composer.
21 white clay bricks (12x17x1,8 cm approx.)
3 white clay bars (12x60x1,8 cm approx.)
79 white clay sticks (1cm diameter in different sizes)
:: Music & Poetry ::
(de)cor(o) [2019]
A mixed musical electroacoustic work for choir, percussion, objects and wind instruments made to interact with the residents of the CAO (Centro de Atividades Ocupacionais) a Special needs residence in Amares, Portugal.
This work was created during an artistic residency at Encontrarte Amares 2019 in July.
The concept of (de)cor(o) is based on ornamentation in medieval music and photographic processing. The first material of the piece was conceived with the gesture of grabbing an objet and letting it fall and the sound consequences of this simple gesture. In the second phase I brought all the samples of the piece in order to record all the residents imitate these sounds and recreate the electronic part with their imitations; the original sound (the negative in photography) was "developed" by their interpretation. The third and final phase was ornamenting LIVE the "cantus firmus" of the electronics with objects freely played but in the different and specific sections of the piece.
Poetry
The kind of poetry I do came very natural. When I was a child I had my own language, which was a mixture of Spanish, French and English, a language that was only fully understood by my parents. When working in 2017 on my theatre piece La nef des fous, I realised that sounds or onomathopeia could also express very inner feelings. This feeling was confirmed when in Portugal at the special needs residency, saw that a few residents had also their own language; that instantly brought me back to my childhood and how I started writing poetry in my own and non-translated language, or, proto-language.
This poetry is now fully integrated in my work as a composer.
pômrô [2020]
for guitar, sirimcho and electronics
fomio [2020]
for sirimcho and loop pedal
[côrīo]·étilá [2021]
for guitar and sirimcho
Sign Language Poetry
I’m trying to explore a personal sign language poetry with a series of ergonomical objects that I created that represent the 24 quarter-tone scale, trying, in a way, to make a plastic extension of my own poetry.