chico mello – destino das 8

outros capítulos

It was a good luck that the festival MaerzMusic had two promising focal points – the human voice and the Brazilian music. Especially in Brazil the experimental and most involved musicians often are getting in touch with popular music. Chico Mello lives in Brazil and in Germany. He created his own style of music theatre. Here he is combining the for the Brazilians very important form of TV soap opera, the „Telenovela“, with Bossa Nova. The result he’s calling TELEBOSSA. His piece, with the title „Destino das Oito/ Fate at Eight“, was first performed in a marvelous light and ironic-imaginative production by Christina Tappe at the Berlin festival MaerzMusik.
The dramatic basis gave the British author Caryl Churchill. On the other side Chico Mello discovered with his own son how important repetitions are for narrating stories.
For this reason Mello was able to reflect in a light and ironic way the stupid and at the same time abysmal rituals of every day rituals, constantly served by TV soap operas.
Musically Mello connected the cool sensuality of Bossa Nova. He permitted the singers and musicians just to use certain notes and rhythms. The result was a sound on the golden mean in-between Alban Berg and Joao Gilberto. Rarely contemporary music theatre as Chico Mellos DESTINO DAS OITO – without falling in cynicism – offers so much ground for laughing and reflection.

Volker Michael, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Berlin

The play

A family waits for the return of the daughter. Captivated in the vacuum of every-day rituals the couple Brian and Alice repeats together with aunty Maisie again and again the same procedures. Change lies in commonness with trivial problems: misunderstandings, conflicts with the wayward drunk son, feelings of guiltiness, fear, old secrets, affairs, addictions, absurd encounters, departure, death. Will the daughter arrive? Will she bring the redemption from the deadlock?

„Destino das Oito – Fate at Eight – Schicksal um Acht“ is the setting to music of the drama „Heart’s Desire“ (1997) by the famous British Author Caryl Churchill. Caryl Churchill, born 1938, is one of the leading British dramatists. Her plays are extremely political and deal with social alienation and mechanisms of power. Very effectively she combines formal dramatic experiments with exciting political issues
In „Heart’s Desire“ the realistic situation of waiting for the daughter becomes a dramatic unrealistic elaboration – the story of waiting is narrated in a non-linear way. The dramatic development constantly is interrupted and restarts from the beginning. In a situation of a reset the story gets a new possible development. Every reset, every repetition includes musical and scenical variations. The result: an absurd and funny, constant perplexity of references in time and space.

The grotesque play with repetitions and interruptions get in the musical setting of Chico Mello a new dimension. Every beginning brings new variations and events and clears up the exciting patterns of the dramatic play.

The concept
The narrow patterns of family, the family issues themselves are very similar to the dramatic constructions of popular TV soap operas, of the famous Brazilian „Telenovelas“. The action itself seems to be realistic, full with social and psychological situations of the brasilian every day life. This genre of soap opera gives a high emotional identification for a huge audience. For a big part of the brasilian population the main protagonists are as close as family members. The everyday life is dedicated to the world of Telenovelas – the Telenovela copies problems of the common life.

The formal and dramatic constellation of „Heart’s Desire“ gives an ideal basis for an investigation of this entanglement. Similar as is in a TV setting the audience can experience how the protagonists fall into their own soap opera. For this reason the play „Heart`s Desire“ becomes a free interpretation in the fictional telenovela „Destino das Oito – Fate at Eight – Schicksal um Acht“.

By linking together different possibilities of action and dramaturgic developments in one series, by the scenic interaction of real action and telecasting, by mixing pictures from real telenovelas and live-videos arises a performance where the borders of TV and reality, of real and artificially produced experiences fade away.

The most important Brazilian telenovela is daily broadcasted at eight o’clock: a collective fate, broadcasted at eight, played by fictional protagonists, experienced by the majority of a huge tv-audience.

The music

The musical composition takes this dramatic structure and works with it’s patterns of repetition and variation. The recurrent basic situation is taken for a musical fundament and opens many possibilities for the exploration of an own musical language. The composer develops a special musical vocabulary. This he adds to the harmonies of the vocals of the English text. The result will be a fine grid of melodies, that are not motivated in a psychological or affective way, but offer an artificial construction for the naturalistic scene. In this exciting combination of Chary Churchill`s excellent composed text, the artificial vocal inflection and a naturalistic scene the rich diversity of the play becomes evident. The funny absurdity and the complexity of trivial daily scenes become even more obvious.

The clear language patterns made the composer develop an own “alphabet“ of pitches directly out of the vocals and consonants of each syllable of each word. Chico Mello constructed an own system of composition that gives every figure it`s special character, and of course repeating ­ non harmonic – melodies to each reply. The basis of the work is the entire text.

Each singer-actor has 1 or two 2 accompanying instruments, as follows:

Brian + Bariton Saxophon + Contrabass
Alice + Clarinet + Viola
Susy + Celesta
Maisie + Oboe + Violine
Lewis + Tuba + Contrabass
Official + Percussion

Similar as in previous compositions (”Amarelinha” and “do lado de lá” for orchestra), Chico Mello works with „decontextualisation“ of Boss Nova. The “Tele”-”Bossa” is a combination of brasilian Telenovela and the musical genre of „Bossa Nova“. In both forms strong emotions are produced by repeating patterns. The difference is the melo-dramatization of emotions in telenovelas to the static condition of happiness and sadness in the Bossa.

In the new music-dramatic form of „Telebossa“ the dramaturgy of telenovelas is so to speak „bossanized“ – an exciting contradiction, intensified by the scenic action.

podemos começar?

Brandon LaBelle, audio installation by Marie Wennersten and Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Thomas Nordanstad’s film works

Konst-ig bookshop presents
Errant Bodies Press
A celebration of books, words, sounds, projects and activities
Friday, January 18, 17:00
Åsögatan 124
Stockholm
Tel: 08 20 45 20
http://www.konstig.se
Join us for drinks, readings and soundings

With reading by Brandon LaBelle, audio installation by Marie Wennersten and Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Thomas Nordanstad’s film works.

Errant Bodies Press is a publisher focusing on sound art, performance, spatial strategies and related theory. Since 1995 it has published anthologies, monographs, CDs and DVDs, artists books and special projects from artists, writers and activists working with sounds, places, bodies, narratives, and visual languages and documents. Their publications include Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear, Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, Social Music, Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, among others.

http://www.errantbodies.org

Social Music Kiosk – Vienna

Social Music Kiosk
(on-air, on-line: http://www.kunstradio.at, Sunday, Nov 25th, 23:00
Brandon LaBelle

In conjunction with the Kunstmarkt event held at the Schöpfwerk housing community in Vienna in October 2007 where art was used as a meeting point for social diversity, Social Music Kiosk functions as a gathering of different narratives related to art and social environments. Originally staged as an artistic contribution to the Kunstmarkt, the Kiosk functioned as a participatory sonic platform, inviting visitors to add to the mix by way of their favorite CDs, audio reports made on-site, and live treatments and interactions. Using the Kunstmarkt as a base, the radio work overlays multiple inputs: a series of audio recordings made by local residents and visitors to the Kunstmarkt, an interview and discussion with the organizers of the Kunstmarkt and social workers from Schöpfwerk, and electronic treatments. Part-documentary, part-question and answer, and part-mix, the work is a telescoping of multiple perspectives onto a social topography.

http://www.kunstradio.at/2007B/25_11_07.html

Thanks to Ulla Ebner for her DJing, Annette Stahmer for her assistance, and to Rudolfine Lackner, Renate Schnee and Sabine for their invitation and conversation.

text from errantbodies web page at
http://www.errantbodies.org/labellesocialmusic.html

Social Music was initially developed as a radio series for Kunstradio, Vienna in 2001. When I was invited by them to propose a series of audio works for broadcast (radio poses provocative questions to the idea of site-specificity…) I wanted very much to create a conceptual framework for organizing the works not so much around making music within the confines of the studio, but by inviting outside influence or social input in determining sound production. Social Music functioned as an overarching umbrella for generating musical and sonic activities that sought out public space, social interaction, spatial discoveries—found sounds, phenomenological tests, conversations between friends…

Following the radio series, Social Music continues as a general theme, as a conceptual attitude, and as a platform for future projects.

radiobookeventkiosk
What is your favourite music?
What tunes do you dance to?
What music do you share with friends or family?
Developed in conjunction with Kunstmarkt 2, the Social Music Kiosk was a participatory situation designed to work with the event as a social meeting specific to the Schöpfwerk social housing community on the outskirts of Vienna. Built in the late 1970s, the Schöpfwerk houses roughly 5000 people, representing many nations, mostly Arabic, and of low-income status. With shops, and related community facilities, such as a library, post office, and school, the Schöpfwerk is a complex and dynamic social environment (with its own mythological status amongst the Viennese population), embodying many of the problematics of social housing while also producing a rich and difficult situation that includes many cultural and social functions, such as garden initiatives, cooking events, radio broadcasts and publications. The Kunstmarkt functioned to offer a positive experience for the community by using art as a vehicle and platform: artworks by local residents were put on display and were offered as gifts to visitors. In addition, other visiting artists were invited to contribute, through forms of action and participation, lending to the live experience. For more information see: http://www.bassena.at

exilibris – hackeando catataus

nos galhos das árvores onde as palavras estão presas;

todos os jamais são sombras…

no meu braço que formiga adormecido
sobre o corpo que estanca o sangue;
o sangue não palavra,
e sim seiva

De linguagem barbárica, os sopeiam
Os filhos dois de Nómion preclaro,
Nastes e Anfímaco. Este, qual donzela
De ouro enfeitado, insano floreava:
O enfeite o não salvou; que às mãos de Aquiles
Tem de haurir no Escamandro o gole amaro,
Será do vencedor esse ouro presa.

toda a furia do irmão mais burro de apolo

havia navegado para muito além china

ele nem tinha sobrenome de atenas

mas prometeu ir muito alem dos modos gregos

havia ouvido falar das musas

havia havido falar de las muscas

havia ouvido falar das musicas

mas ele precisava só de uma bússola

prometeu e cumpriu

capturou o fogo da cachaça

e guardou no monocórdio

cante me ó bussola a fúria do toscolão.

pt_br———————->

Cozinhando Puros Dados

Liquidificadores e Eletrodomésticos do Agenciamento Coletivo

Os Lícios lá do Xanto vorticoso
Conduz Sarpédon, e o sem mancha Glauco

Trabalhando em um formato de grupo aberto a participações mediadas apenas pela intersecção de buscas sociais e estéticas, que organiza suas ações por meio de convergências de redes de coletivos principalmente pela Internet, a Orquestra Organismo tem um meio de trabalho onde o processo de “solda de discursos” é colocado desde seu ínicio como o próprio “objeto” a ser realizado. Um “produto da ação destes encontros sendo moldado no tempo”, onde o objeto “em cena” é a própria intenção dos indíviduos (e sua função como catalisador destas relações) buscando equilíbrio entre o grupo e sua dimensão subjetiva (além de qualquer análise social ou artística). Obras que se constroem e são esculpidas de acordo com a interação e envolvimento e que trabalham também com idéia da transformação do significado destas ações nos espaços em que ele é percebido, sendo estas moldadas pelas institucionalizações em que se inscrevem (música, teatro, audiovisual, galerias, internet, bares, lares ou ruas), mas sempre reforçando a lúcida situação em que o que fica de todos estes signos são as relações humanas que eles permeiam e estimulam.

A proposta de “Cozinhando Puros Dados” pode ser vista como continuação dos trabalhos que a Orquestra Organismo desenvolveu em suas performances/mostras mais recentes: “Desafiatlux”, “A justa razão aqui delira” e teve sua genêse durante “Surface Tension@Curitiba”. A idéia em comum destes trabalhos é a de que vivemos uma época de sobrecarga de informações e possibilidade de conexão de redes moldadas em discursos similares que ultrapassam fronteiras sociais e geopolíticas. Por outro lado a organização cartesiana e sistemática destes dados, para qualquer tipo de função institucionalizada (da arte à engenharia; do ativismo ao academicismo) tende a diluir-se no espaço onde ela quer tomar forma, e o fluxo de identidades que tocaram-se em subjetividade acaba perdendo a força moldando-se aos espaços, entrando em contradições e adquirindo um significado “institucional”. Observar estes discursos e “dados” como uma dança caótica de entidades, em forma de rituais simbolistas, teatros da crueldade e estetização da ação direta, molda sua prática e ética numa percepção imediata da dimensão humana. Esta é a busca destas performances.

Em “Cozinhando Puros Dados” trabalhamos com uma cozinha no espaço da mostra que pode conectar-se com outros participantes pela Internet em qualquer lugar do planeta. A cozinha estará incubando o conceito antropológico de “Cru e Cozido” trabalhado por Levi Strauss: a criação de processos rituais que estabelecem uma dialética daquilo que era um dado “puro” e sem função e que passará até o final do período da mostra assumir diversas dimensões de significado, convergindo intenções dos “cozinheiros”. A cozinha também pode ser vista como o espaço onde existe freqüentemente coletividade para a construção daquilo que nos alimenta. Busca-se construir uma metáfora da cozinha como espaço de “alquimia” onde a tal dialética ferve as intenções de coletividade e a fome (ou gula) é um anseio que nos traz de volta a dimensão humana.

A instalação funciona da seguinte maneira:

1. Deve-se utilizar a cozinha do espaço da mostra e montar uma exposição plástica dentro dela, com rascunhos, pinturas, desenhos, esculturas, registros sonoros e audiovisuais, e principalmente objetos do cotidiano de participantes da ação, incluindo organizadores e visitantes da mostra que desejem interagir. Isto deve ser feito sem tentar tornar a cozinha uma “galeria”, o foco está em deixar diponíveis os “dados” a serem cozidos. Isto tornará a cozinha um espaço em comum entre os participantes, para encontros informais que tentam trazê-la para uma dimensão de “zona autonôma temporaria” dentro do espaço onde os “dados” serão “fervidos”.

2. Simultaneamente ao local da mostra, pretende-se articular estruturas similares em diversas cidades do Brasil: Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Campinas, Belem, Porto Alegre, Recife, Brasilia e Florianópolis e possivelmente outras cidades em locais distintos no mundo. Tal ação será articulada pela internet e seu processo de articulação também faz parte do registro de “dados” a ser reprocessado a cada ação.

3. Desconstruindo a percepção de “lar”, faremos música com eletrodomésticos como liquidificadores, batedeiras, aspiradores de pó, abajures, ventiladores; que devem ser pintados como telas brancas e cobertos de escritos com trechos poéticos, desenhos e instruções técnicas para as ações. Os eletrodomésticos devem ser trocados entre os locais distintos e ficarão nas cozinhas. Estes eletrodomésticos poderão ser controlados remotamente via Intenet, por um website.

4. Serão programados rituais de “cozinha” no mesmo horário entre as cidades, considerando fusos, onde participantes preparam comida enquanto a ação é gravada em som e video, desenhada, fotografada, escrita e este registro interage com os outros locais no mesmo instante pela internet recombinando e transformando dados. Esta “realimentação” de dados no espaço da cozinha causa uma sensação de simultaniedade e a cozinha passa tornar-se um local único que vence barreiras geográficas tornando os dados repertórios comuns de construção de realidades. Estas influenciarão ações diretas e relacionamentos entre esta rede. Os processos desencadeados pela “cozinha” também devem ser registrados e reprocessado em novos rituais de cozinha e futuras ações.

5. Tempere a gosto e leve ao forno.

6. Estimula-se o uso rítmico da cozinha, leitura de textos e poemas, musicalização do ato de cozinhar e da refeição. Pede-se o uso de diferentes línguas e sotaques ao fornecer os dados. Depois da refeição deve-se digerir os dados e consumir sua energia em ações diretas pelas ruas.

——————–> english:

Cooking Pure Data

Blenders and Electric-Appliances for Collective Modelling

Working with the formation of a group open to any kind of participation, mediated only by the intersection of social and aesthetic searches, whose actions develop according to the convergence of collective networks (mainly by Internet), the “Orquestra Organismo” group has a way of production where the process of “molding speeches” is taken from the beginning as the real “object” to be generated. Group work is the “product of actions modulating through time” where the intentions of interacting individuals (as well as their function as catalysts of relational dynamics) are the object “on scene”, operating as a live search for equilibrium between group performance and individual being (beyond any artistic or social analysis). Pieces are interactively built and sculpted through processes that foster a mutation of meanings produced through actions that seek to function as part of a space molded by institutionalizations like “music”, “theater”, “film”, “galleries”, “bar”, “home” or “streets”; while always reinforcing the lucid situation that stimulated human relationships than all those generated as “objects” or “signs”.

The purpose of “Cooking Pure Data” should be seen as a continuation of Orquestra Organismo and their most recent performances – “Desafiatlux” and “A justa Razao aqui Delira” – and has its genesis in the actions of “Surface Tension_Curitiba”. These ideas stem from recognizing that we live in an age of overloaded information and possibilities of connection over networks formed by shared speech that is beyond territorial and linguistics borders. On the other hand, the Cartesian and systematic organization of this DATA tends to be dissolved into the space where it takes form by institutionalized functions (from arts to engineering; from activism to social theory). Nevertheless, those flowing identities are touched by subjectivity before they lose strength – through this process of intervening within such functions and spaces they will produce contradictions even while acquiring an “institutional” meaning. Our effort is for all “DATA-processed-speeches” to be perceived as a chaotic dance of entities, sculpted into symbolic rituals, “cruelty theaters” and aesthetics of direct action, leading forms of practice and ethics to an immediate perception of human dimension. This is the ambition of making projects.

In “Cooking Pure Data” we work in the kitchen of the exhibition space, which will be connected to other participants through Internet anywhere in the planet. The kitchen functions to incubate the anthropological concept of the “Raw and Cooked” worked out by Lèvi-Strauss: the creation of ritual processes that marks the dialogic way in which “raw” DATA that at first is without “function” becomes able to assume (at the end of the meeting) various meanings, as long it helps to converge the intention of multiple “cooks”. The kitchen should be emphasized as a space where we always get together in rituals of “feeding” (and all our processes are about “feedback”). Using this meaning, we aim to build a metaphor of the kitchen as a space of alchemy where dialetics boils the collectivist intentions and the “starvation” (or gluttony) is the anxiety that brings us back to the human dimension.

Plans for staging events:

1. The installation should be built in the kitchen of the exhibition place, with drafts, drawings, annotations, personal audio/video recordings, mainly objects brought from “home”, included as participants, the organizers and visitors who wish to interact. This has to be done without turning the kitchen into a “gallery”, the focus rather is to collect material so as to generate “DATA cooking”. This procedure may transform the kitchen into a common space for the participants, for informal meetings that will facilitate bringing them to a “temporary autonomous zone” inside the space where data are “boiled”.

2. Simultaneously to the place of exhibition, we intend to articulate similar structures in various cities of Brazil: Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Campinas, Belem, Porto Alegre, Recife, Brasilia and Florianopolis, and possibly cities in other countries. This action will be scheduled over Internet, being sensitive to its process of articulation as an important part of the “data recipe” scope.

3. Deconstructing the perception of “home”, we will make music with electric appliances such as blenders, vacuum cleaners, fans, multiprocessors and others that should be painted as a canvas and covered with diagrams, annotations, poetry and impressions about the actions. The appliances should be traded between places to reside in different kitchens. These appliances will be controlled by participants remotely through a website.

4. Cooking “Rituals” will be scheduled at the same time, where participants prepare food as the action is recorded on video, sound media, drawings, and streamed through Internet, interacting with people doing whatever they want in the space, recombining feedbacks of data from other kitchens at the same time. This “feed-back” and mirroring of data will cause the sensation of simultaneous presence and the kitchens will become a place passing through geographic borders taking the repertoires as a common database for reality constructions. This will influence direct action and relationships through the network. The processes caused by the “kitchen” should also be registered and reprocessed in new rituals and future ideas.

5. Season as you like and put it in the stove.

6. We stimulate the rhythmic use of the kitchen, spoken words, musicalization of cooking acts. We ask for the use of different languages and accents as you cook this data. After the dinner, one should digest the data and expend the consequent energy through direct actions in the streets.

yes,we wear compass. can you wind me?

Poéticas experimentais do som

Projeto selecionado pelo programa de fomento “Conexões Artes Visuais – 2007″, da parceria Funarte/Minc/Petrobras sob o tema do título acima, deverá ser apresentado, em data a ser confirmada pelos patrocinadores, em Niterói – RJ (Museu de Arte Contemporânea – MAC), e em Curitiba – PR (Grande Garagem que Grava), um evento ao vivo e aberto ao público na forma de ações e agit-props no campo ampliado das manifestações sonoras, introduzindo em primeira audição nacional entre diversas outras propostasde variados recursos, o conceito mpoet3 (poesia mp3), transmissões em escala emissor-receptor tanto pela simples utilização low-tech de microfones, quanto do seu presente/futuro imediato, o microship, incorporando às emissões verbivoco de cárater áudiossomático emergentes possibilidades de captação e fruíção. Como resultado, radioatividades em tempo real estão sendo processadas para a ocasião por produtores experimentais de textos sonoros de variada extração, acentuadamente no particular terreno do cárater investigativo das suas interconectadas postulações.

Potenciais estratégias de ação como a poesia sonora, o rádio visual, a instalação sonora, o onomatopoema, a performance acústica, o nonsense poefonético, etc. táticas hoje perfeitamente factíveis e de cárater não-utópico, serão abordadas, entremeadas por comunicações teórico-conceituais, mesas propositada e redondamente enganosas (conquanto inconclusivas, dado às autoexigências rigorosas dos proponentes) quanto a validade deste módulo de apreensão da mecânica dos sentidos, além outras práticas caras a todo evento que procura se pautar pela implosão de inconcebíveis edifícios de certeza.

Assim, ao delinearmos um panorama virtual do q poderá esperar o visitante que porventura quererá exercitar um new ear, cremos q a questão medular desse repto seja até que ponto estes suportes e estratégias serão capazes de amplificar o alcance da percepção do ser, e contribuir para uma maior compreensão de determinantes aspectos de uma época simbiótica homem/máquina incontornável.

VERSAÇÃO EM INGLÊS

Experiments in vocal poet3

Selected by a city council grant program of the current year,

it will take place in Rio de Janeiro (MAC – Niterói) and Curiti-

ba, dates to be confirmed, as an alive event, action props in

the domain of sound art that is besides many other (re)sour-

ces planning to launch the concept of mpoet3, phonetic transmissions with the use of tools ranging from simple microphones to the almighty presence of the microship, as well as sound systems of different kinds, embodying to the verbivoco utterings new audiopossibilities of understanding media. Live broadcasting antipogroms programs will be held in the presentation of the various participants, with an accent in the particular investigation character of their propositions. Achievements as radioart, sound poetry, phantastic sound architectures, visual sonority, nonsensical emissions, etc.will be played along the activities, but the very concern/contend is to what extend this supports can modify the perceptions in sinergetic proceedings.

This apparently exquisite scenary will be, of course, occupied mostly by cultural producers and searchers of the two involved brazilian centers, but also by special guests from abroad that have been doing expressive interferences in the use of really innovative and throbbing action strategies.

Alex Hamburger

“Prototypes for the mobilization and broadcast of fugitive sound #1-4″

as part of
Cross Lake Atlantic
with Scott Arford, Brandon LaBelle, Gary Jo Gardenhire, Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether, Teresa Margolles and Fredrik Nilsen
curated by John Duncan

Sept 8 – Oct 11, 2007
opening Sept 8, 18:00

Enrico Fornello Gallery
via Paolini 27
59100 Prato
Italy
http://www.enricofornello.it

Alex Hamburger – radio escuta