Saturday 14 February 2009

Miradas Sonoras


I wrote about the Miradas Sonoras dilemma earlier this week. The project is Salva's. It's a series of concerts to be held in Valladolid relating to the Department of Ethnomusicology at the university here. The idea is to take concerts that would normally take place within the university for an academic audience, and make them accessible for the public. The concept I came up with, was 'Sound Released'

The story is as follows. I've been obsessed with birdcages for a few months now, and as soon as Miradas Sonoras put this idea to me I saw the bird as the symbol of the musician, the cage as its confines. My idea was to show the bird singing freely on top of its cage. It looks like this will be the poster for the event. It is a photograph of a painting of mine called, (you guessed it, 'Sound Released'). 

Birds, flight, freedom, nests and cages, they are all pretty, well, I won't say banal, but well-worn metaphors. There is an interesting scene of relevance in this film, which I watched with Salva the other night, AND my extremely talented cousin on the other side of the world is also, for some strange reason, thinking about this, AND we discussed it at length today at the flea market when we debated buying a beautiful orange canary, considering that by buying him and letting him free in the house, we were saving him from someone who would buy him and keep him in the tiny cage... This argument didn't hold in the end, as we decided that our house would only be a large, extended cage, and that we needed to boycott birds in captivity, especially if this installation is going to have any credibility. As Salva so beautifully put it, birds belong in the sky.

Anyway.

Translating the idea proved very interesting. 'Music Room' in Spanish, is 'Aula de Musica'. 'Cage' is 'Jaula'. This allowed for a nice little pun, 'Fuera de (j)Aula'. (Out of the music room, (cage).  OK so this is half of my involvement, the poster. When Salva tells me the dates and venues of the concerts the poster will also serve its purpose in conveying information. Aesthetically, I'm happy enough with it so far, though I'm sure it could be improved. Any ideas?

I also agreed to prepare an installation for the opening concert. I don't know why I thought I could do this. I've never prepared anything 3dimensional. It's such a challenge. The idea is to somehow transform the space and I'm completely stuck on how to do this. I don't even have the aesthetics clear on what I want to do with my handmade wire cages. Wood bases? Painted gold? Feathers and cloth and scruffy bits and pieces or clean, geometric lines...I'm used to deciding on these things as I work, which is quite possible with painting but with Sculpture I'm learning one must have clear ideas before starting.. I'll post some photos on here in the next couple of days. I'm going to need some constructive criticism.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds exciting. It is going to stretchhhh you creatively!

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  2. A great challenge indeed! Can't wait to see your creations :-)
    Thanks for stopping by.
    Gaby xo

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  3. oh, what fun
    to pun
    in another tongue.
    :)

    Cait x

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  4. oh, what fun
    to pun
    in another tongue

    ReplyDelete

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