There are times and places where art and community come together and something truly beautiful happens.
This weekend, an extraordinary exhibition opened in Coimbra, where artists Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller have transformed the spaces inside and around the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova into evocative explorations of memory, history and sound.
I’ve experienced ‘The Forty Part Motet’ (2001), a 40-speaker reworking of ‘Spem in Alium’ by Thomas Tallis, a number of times — but not like this. Never before has it resonated so powerfully.
‘The Infinity Machine’, a kaleidoscope of suspended spinning mirrors the pulsations and reverberations of NASA’s sound recordings of space (and the ferry from Vancouver to the Island), is installed for the first time since its only other iteration in Houston ten years ago.
The work ‘Blue Hawaii Bar’ (now known to a few of us as the Tiki Tiki bar), has been installed in an enormous recently emptied cistern… we don wellies at the entrance and carefully wend our way down the metal staircase to the bar where we sip maple-syrup and lime cocktails as the crooner tunes roll around the 17th century walls and the cold water slowly rises up our ankles.
It’s possible to create narrative soundscapes composed by fragments of sounds of water, boats, gulls, police, guns, and soaring music on a 60’s Mellotron rigged up to play sound effects, musical instruments, and spoken word in spherical surround sound. Who doesn’t want to play on ‘Instrument of Troubled Dreams’… it’s fabulous and truly immersive in so many ways.
It’s as if the space, so full of history and layers, has been waiting for Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. This incredible exhibition is like a séance allowing us to communicate with the spirits of the Monastery… we literally could touch an old wood table and hear voices, living and dead, speak to us (‘To Touch’).
Many thanks to the passion and dedication of
@carlos_antunes_1969 and the team at
@anozerocoimbra and
@capc_coimbra and to the artists
@janetcardiff and
@george_bures_miller for such an unforgettable experience.
#art #soundart #portugal
