MACBA Escrituras en fuga Hacia una historia de la acción en los 90

30 y 31 de octubre de 2020

Escrituras en fuga Hacia una historia de la acción en los 90. Prácticas performativas en la música experimental, para Poéticas sonoras. Mesa de debate con Eduard Escoffet, Bartolomé Ferrando y Barbara Held. Presenta y modera: María SalgadoMACBA x

Los relatos de la década de 1990 están aún por escribir. Se ha esbozado ya una historia oficial, la que certificó el fin de la Europa de bloques y el triunfo del capitalismo, creyó en la “globalización”, abrazó de forma acrítica los avances tecnológicos en la vida cotidiana y … Pero hubo otra realidad en esa década. La que ignoró el mercado como rompeolas del trabajo en cultura, la que mucho antes que entrara en crisis en 2008 vio las fisuras del nuevo orden neoliberal, la que se basó en la complicidad, la fraternidad y en poner las bases para una cultura de lo común. En España es un período amplio, que desborda sus límites cronológicos, al iniciarse cuando, hacia mediados de los 80, emerge una generación que comienza a sentirse incómoda ante la desmemoria de la Transición y vuelve su mirada sobre los artistas que habían comenzado a trabajar en el conceptual.

Enmarcado en Acción. Una historia provisional de los 90, el presente seminario indaga en algunas de las prácticas que atravesaron esa época, que, tras la irrupción de una pandemia, vuelven a estar en el centro de muchas miradas sobre nuestro tiempo. Más allá de reivindicar la centralidad de nuestros cuerpos y de la acción y la performance como una forma de problematizar muchas de las líneas de tensión que se marcan, el seminario plantea una reflexión sobre la vigencia de muchas de las prácticas que se iniciaron entonces: la necesidad de generar espacios que permitan la fluidez de las relaciones intergeneracionales; el compromiso con unas prácticas que parecen navegar siempre a contracorriente; las extensiones a campos paralelos, como la música o la poesía, lo parateatral, el cuerpo en movimiento, las nuevas tecnologías, con los que siempre la acción ha mantenido una relación estrecha o la misma estrategia para desvelar y reescribir junto a todos los agentes de la década los múltiples relatos que quedaron invisibilizados.

Muchas gracias a mis antecesores / mentorxs / maestrxs / compañerxs de todos las decadas atràs.

Pausa (Casiverde) 2017

La Place, Barcelona
June 2019

Pausa (Casiverde) Barbara Held and Benton C Bainbridge

LA PLACE hosts its second edition of Interpose, with Barbara Held and Benton C Bainbridge: Pausa (Casiverde), 2017. Pausa is an ongoing series of artworks and performances for flute, digital sound and analog Video Synth, here realized as a 4-channel media artwork of analog-synthesized video, acoustic and computer sound. Casiverde is presented as a four digital files, each uniquely “fingerprinted” via artHash, taken from residency sessions at CultureHub in NYC. June, 2019 Curated by Mayssa Fattouh

LAND-ING, Barbara Held and Daniel Neumann

Near Mirador de La Corona  /28°22’32.5″N 16°36’06.5″W/ 23.11.18, 8:10 PM

Prácticas Territoriales (visitantes con oídos),  a series of interventions by foreign sound artists on the island of Tenerife
Laboratorio de Acción – TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
Curator: Juan Matos Capote
November 30-December 14, 2018

catalogue
review

LAND-ING is a multi-channel sound installation by Barbara Held and Daniel Neumann that was developed exclusively from recordings they had made interacting with the landscape of the island of Tenerife during a two-week residency. During this time they undertook field trips to seek out acoustically interesting terrains and places. At those sites Held used her flute and flute-like instruments, and Neumann played test tones (pink noise, sine waves etc.) to articulate specific acoustic phenomena and to sonically relate to the land. Landscape becomes something very different when approached from an aural perspective.

The project was part of the series “Prácticas Territoriales” curated by Juan Matos Capote and shown at TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (Santa Cruz, Dec 2018). The multi-channel installation became a new acoustic place, algorithmically meandering through the different recordings and different places.

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Installation view, Sala Puente, TEA Tenerife espacio de las artes

LAND-ING Tape reconstruction

Recording Process

01 Cueva Roja /28°28’30.4″N 16°16’03.0″W/ 20.11.18, 3:00 PM

02 Tunnel, Los Campitos /28°29’06.4″N 16°15’28.3″W/ 20.11.18, 5:45 PM

03 Pool, Unnamed Road, Fasnia /28°13’43.6″N 16°25’32.7″W/ 21.11.18, 1:30 PM

04 Canyon, Fasina /28°13’52.9″N 16°26’43.6″W/ 21.11.18, 3:55 PM

05 Arco de Tajo   /28°06’57.2″N 16°28’19.7″W/  21.11.18, 6:45 PM

06 Last Tree, Minas de San Jose  /28°16’00.8″N 16°35’03.2″W/  22.11.18, 2:05 PM

07 Teide Treeline  /28°16’22.5″N 16°44’37.7″W/   22.11.18, 5:10 PM

09 Cueva Del Viento  /28°21’11.8″N 16°42’14.1″W/  23.11.18, 3:25 PM

08 Bathroom Window, Santa Cruz de Tenerife /28°28’48.8″N 16°14’44.1″W/ 22.11.18, 12:05 AM

10 Near Mirador de La Corona  /28°22’32.5″N 16°36’06.5″W/ 23.11.18, 8:10 PM

Land-ing installation at TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes

Installation view, Sala Puente, TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes

LAND-ING presentation at TEA
Workshop

EL GIRO NOTACIONAL

Installation view, Observatory / Lisa Joy Z, Barbara Held and Benton C Bainbridge

MUSAC, Museo de arte contemporáneo de León

26 de enero, 2019
15 de septiembre, 2019

Comisariado: José Iges y Manuel Olveira
Coordinación: Helena López Camacho

Francesc Abad, Ignasi Aballí, José Luis Alexanco, Alain Arias-Misson, Armadanzas (Paz Brozas y Víctor Martínez), Elena Asins, Manuel Barbadillo, Llorenç Barber, Cristina Barroso, Ricardo Bellés/José Iges, Cathy Berberian, Josep Lluis Berenguer, José Manuel Berenguer, Denys Blacker, Jaap Blonk, Peter Bosch/ Simone Simons, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, José Luis Castillejo, Merce Cunningham, Darío Corbeira, Analivia Cordeiro, Philip Corner, Carlos Cruz De Castro, Maria Escribano, Pelayo Fernández Arrizabalaga, Esther Ferrer, Giovanni Fontana, Terry Fox, Laura Gibellini, Yolande Harris, Barbara Held/ Benton C Bainbridge, Joël Hubaut, Concha Jerez, Tom Johnson, Manuel Jular, Mauricio Kagel, Nader Koochaki, Elena Lavellés, Le Corbusier, Lugan, José Maldonado, Walter Marchetti, Abel Martín, Josep Maria Mestres Quadreny, Julie Mehretu, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Luis De Pablo, Tatiana Parcero, George Perec, Ximena Pérez Grobet, Miguel Ángel Rego, Inken Reinert, La Ribot, Alyce Santoro, Eusebio Sempere, Álvaro Terrones, Valcárcel Medina, Jesús Villa Rojo, Christian Wolff, Iannis Xenakis, Zaj

Llorenç Barber & Barbara Held

Ventanas, expandiendo la música a lo visual

Galería de arte & documentos
 June 13 – July 6, 2018

Scores and drawings by Llorenç Barber and a wide range of audiovisual work made since the 1970’s in collaboration with Carles Santos, Benton C Bainbridge, Seth Cluett, Eugènia Balcells y Pere Noguera.

Ventanas, “windows”, suggests a sense of a multitude of activity in the world that can be experienced in its different interactions, putting together pieces from different eras, recent and not so recent collaborations. “You cannot recreate the moment”,  as Bill T. Jones said in a recent article for the New York Times about how artists revisit their past works, but in combining them, I have composed an installation in which everything, sound and the visual, is interconnected.  Barbara Held

La exposición revisa una parte de la amplia producción de los compositores  Llorenç Barber  y Barbara Held que iniciaron sus actividades en la década de 1970, periodo de gran efervescencia artística y de cambios radicales en la forma de entender la creación artística y musical. Los dos compositores han partido de diferentes planteamientos, aunque sus caminos se han cruzado en muchas ocasiones. A lo largo de los últimos cuarenta años, sus composiciones, actuaciones y performances se han ido expandiendo hacia lo visual y los ha convertido en dos importantes figuras del arte sonoro realizado en España. La exposición está compuesta por partituras originales, dibujos y documentos de Llorenç Barber; de Barbara Held hay un conjunto de videos e instalaciones que ha realizado en colaboración con Carles Santos, Benton C Bainbridge, Seth Cluett, Eugènia Balcells y Pere Noguera.      Juan Naranjo

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Carles Santos: 682-3133, Buffalo Minnesota (1977)
16mm film, video copy restored by Adolf Alcañiz

682-3133 Buffalo, Minnesota is a film/composition for solo flute, a piece of music constructed with elements of film. An example of what Tom Johnson calls Santos’ passionate, romantic minimalism, the piece uses the musical rhythm of film’s repeating frames in parallel with a gradual expanding of the phrases played on the flute.

restored video


Seth Cluett: the bifurcation of nature
 (2018)
performance, score and sound sculpture

A form activated by air, a cylinder filled with turbulence, carefully splits human breath with technology. 19th century aesthetics and the concurrent developments in the physical sciences tie structure, nature, and system in the design of the flute. If it can be said that musical language approaches creative exhaustion through the use of the flute as a machine of expression, what languages exist inside the flute itself? What formal possibilities are latent in its design? This work considers the modularity of the instrument, normally a convenience for transport, as a point of departure for a new engagement with this icon of historical music making as an object to be seen at work adapting to the strangeness of the present. This piece is part of a series of works where the acoustical and mechanical design of classical musical instrument are pitted against themselves by 3D-printed modification, calling into question the perfection of tuning, the virtuosity of performers, and the physical form of the instrument themselves.

Seth Cluett’s work is supported by Nokia Bell Labs

Barbara Held / Benton C Bainbridge: Pausa (Casiverde), 2017 (installation view)
Digital media – SD video | 4 CRT monitors, headphones
video

Pausa is an ongoing collaborative project by two multidisciplinary artists who are exploring the live creation of images and spatialized sound while extending the traditional time frame of performance. A performed installation or durational performance, Pausa activates space with multi-channel generative sound and live analog video. Our performances have created a body of recorded images in different formats including single channel video with stereo sound, and 4 channel video variations that interact with generative sound in an installation format. The project has been presented at the University of Minnesota at St. Cloud, Studio Z in St. Paul, Harvestworks in New York City, Subtropics Festival in Miami, and Barcelona’s Sampler Series.

Barbara Held and Benton C Bainbridge’s Pausa (Casiverde), 2017 is a series of digital media artworks excerpted from rehearsal sessions during a micro-residency at CultureHub in New York City.

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Eugenia Balcells: Clear Music (1981)
score/book-object
realization as video (2018)

Clear Music is an object/score that consists of 13 pages of transparent plastic that contain different shaped transparent plastic objects that can move freely inside the pages, relating in different ways to the lines of the musical staff. The musician plays the different configurations, distortions and reflections as musical notation. In performance, large photographic images of the score are projected on the wall or screen, illuminating the space with pure light.

This graphic score has been realized by Barbara Held (Performance A-Z Storefront for art and Architecture. New York. 1982, Symphony Space, New York. 1982, Film in the Cities. St.Paul. 1983), Malcolm Goldstein (Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York. 1982, Neue Galerie Linz. Austria. 1982), and by Llorenç Barber (Otras Músicas, Teatro Pradillo, Madrid. 1993,Imágenes para Sonidos. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. 1995) It was presented as part of Possibility of Action. The Life of the Score, an exhibition curated by Barbara Held and Pilar Subirà, MACBA 2008.

listen performance at Studio PASS New York, 1981

Barbara Held / Pere Noguera
YGREGA / Entre Motiu i Resultat (1995)
Installation
10 photos with photocopies (copigrafia)
4 channel audio, (4 small speakers, 2 stereo amplifiers, 2 mp3 players)

In 1995 we made several experimental performances in the soundscape of a pile of industrial refuse in la Bisbal d’Emporda. Barbara Held made a 4 channel recording. We first presented the installation at Galeria l’Angelot in Barcelona with 10 “copigrafies” or photo/photocopy collages next to the sound, as a form of resonance of the collaborative work. The small speakers act as filters, reproducing only a limited range of frequencies.

 

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Barbara Held / Benton C Bainbridge
Observatory / Lisa Joy (X), 2013-2018
Generative audiovisual installation, modified video game console, modular synthesizer

Observatory / Lisa Joy W  (2013-2016) is a media installation artwork, an interface that transforms one energy system into another. Observatory, a sonification of helioseismological measurements, translates numeric data into another natural numeric structure: the overtone series of a sampled flute note, filtered and reinforced in the rhythm of the sound waves produced by solar oscillations. Like an oscillation between a microscope and a telescope, Held varies the intensity of harmonics (the building blocks of sound) to highlight the rich deep abstraction of pure tone and the immediacy of the breath, while Bainbridge’s system divides the sound into component frequencies that are visualized onto the display, creating calligraphic patterns from the same electronic signals.

Bainbridge’s Lisa Joy generates electronic drawings with an analog video synthesizer and a modified video game console. He assembled a set of unique Eurorack modules into a custom system to create electronic calligraphy. Lissajous patterns emerge from the relationship of 3 signals which guide the electron gun from left to right, top to bottom, and up and down in brightness. The shapes vary as the 3 waves dance in relationship to each other and the sound frequencies.

Observatory was first created in 2013 for Bioderivas, Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Tenerife, and was presented by Contour Editions at Eyebeam in New York City.  Observatory / Lisa Joy was shown as part of “Escuchar con los ojos. Arte sonoro en España, 1961-2016”, a group exhibition of Spanish Sound Art from the past half century at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid in 2017.

Audio software created by Ariadna Alsina
Data thanks to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias

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    photos by Adolf Alcañiz, Pere Noguera, Juan Naranjo, Vanessa Pey, Nil Tous

Held + Bainbridge: Pausa

Concert + audiovisual installation
Sampler Series, l’Auditori, Barcelona 05/18/2018

Barbara Held, flute
Benton C Bainbridge, video
Josep Aymi, custom audio software

Stereo mix of multi-channel live performance

“Pausa” is an A/V synthesis system that generates variations in the timbre of live flute and layers abstract forms, building a multi-channel installation work in live performance. Part of my series of pieces shaping subtle variations in the intensity of harmonics of the flute, the generative sound composition pauses or holds flute sounds as a static image, using simple studio effects that make slight variations in the stereo image of the sound and an “overdrive” that awakens or enhances high partials, creating a fluid and shimmering sound texture that is further modified by control voltages and other data being received from the video instruments. The performed sound and video create a generative installation.