Tania Candiani
Laboratorio de arte Alameda, México.
The Project Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause presented by Tania Candiani at Museo Arte Alameda, Mexico City, just received the Award of Distinction in the Hybrid Arts Category of The Prix Ars Electronica, one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).
The critic Santiago Edeloseme wrote a thoughtful text about the exhibition Cinco variaciones de circunstancias fónicas y una pausa (Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause), Tania Candiani’s (Mexico FD, 1974) most recent exhibition was held following a period of preparation of over two years.
( Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause ), Tania Candiani’s (Mexico FD, 1974) most recent exhibition was held following a period of preparation of over two years.
The ambitious show gathered together works which this creator, recognized through distinctions such as the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, had thoroughly prepared. This was a complex project of collaborations among different creators who were invited by Candiani to join the work team which ended up including more that forty people. Commanded by curator Karla Jasso, this group launched proposals that effectively addressed the supports of image and sound, without neglecting an impeccable and particularly complex museographic design.
When entering the exhibit visitors were faced with an ensemble of trumpets pointed downward, which emitted disconcerting sounds, barely recognizable texts in first person, and a voice which might have belonged to a robot, since despite its being lifeless, it detected the spectator’s presence and talked to him/her, revealing its impersonal mechanical precision. This organ, which could be manipulated by the public, did not respond to notes but to letters. Even so, it had huge musical and compositional possibilities based on the words which acquired musicality.
The exhibition constituted a delicate but evident encounter between different “tempos”. The structure of the most voluminous piece in the installation was composed of an old typewriter; the cylindrical sections ending in the mouthpieces of wind instruments started at the chorus and descended, curving up and taking center stage in the main aisle of the former temple. Showing great symbolism, it was placed precisely where the ancient tubular organ of the temple originally stood.
Tania Candiani invited Rogelio Sosa to undertake the sound composition of the piece titled Campanario (Bell Tower), which was initially reminiscent of the minarets found in Arab countries. Sixteen loudspeakers were placed in the structure of the belfry of the former San Diego church dating from 1591; as of 6:00 AM, these devices broadcasted sounds and voices which increased their intensity and presence and gradually reduced them towards the end of the day. This commissioned piece touched a raw nerve in the history of social uprisings which began, precisely, with the tolling of bells; they served as a means to summon the people who faced, together, that which history currently designates as the great social movements.
One of the important tasks performed by “Five Variations…”’ was that of rescuing from oblivion sound engineers for films who currently work in the old way. Dispensing with the sound libraries available in the market, their command of the craft rendered them producers of narratives which contained no words but only sounds that conducted us to the intimate and personal creation of stories based solely on what we heard.
A series of piano rolls dating from between 1890 and 1930 were once again in action, emitting – as if they were voices from the past – the same notes that livened up gatherings more than a century earlier. “Led” lights then passed through the spaces in the rolls, forming visual representations of the musical rolls on the wall.
The pieces placed in a row along the main nave of the former San Diego Church ended in a light projection on the wall where the altar had formerly been; it was an active image originating in the passage of light through the moving roll. On this occasion there were no Christs, or saints, or religious evocations. As if it were a new veneration nucleus in religious architecture’s key place, it faced us once again with the encounter with the ritual, although on this occasion not from the platform of mysticism but of the discovery of the union of sound narratives transformed into voice; of voice transformed into language, a language converted into light, a light in movement that is a contemporary prayer.
The most ambitious work was Bordadora (Embroidery Machine). It not only involved programming topics but also alluded to the correlation between the expressive vocation of confessionals, the embroidery machine itself, and the belfry. The machine was an invented one, conceived expressly for the exhibition. It decoded words which were then embroidered on a blank canvas. The sound it emitted when working and the signification implied in the selection of what it would embroider were perhaps some of the keys to approach this work.
Pausa (Pause) was also a carefully produced piece whose preparation had taken many months. Writers Alberto Chimal, Juan Carlos Reyna, Guillermo Fadanelli, Oscar Benassini, David Miklós, Rodrigo Márquez Tizano, Daniel Garza Usabiaga, Mario Bellatín and Bernardo Fernández (BEF), verbally transmitted to a Santo Domingo notary public (Mr. José Edith González), stories which were then re-written by the interpreter. Then the narration was compared to the written testimony. This gave rise to a new and rich polyphonic narrative, an evident contribution to the variations on a subject which originated before our eyes.
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Proyect
Ars Electronica
http://www.aec.at/aeblog/en/2013/05/16/gewinnerinnen-prix-ars-electronica-2013/
