Playing the Rural Landscape
Sound art residency and public event
Civil parish of South, municipality of São Pedro do Sul (Portugal)

April, 12th to May 2nd, 2015
Public Presentation, May 2nd, 2015 at 16:00

with:

Helena Espvall (SE/US)
Pierre Berthet (BE)
Yannick Guédon (FR)

An artist residency part of SoCCoS (“Sounds of Culture, Culture of Sounds”) European Network, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.

In the year that reaches its 10th annual program of artist residencies in sound and media arts, Binaural/Nodar hosts in its first cycle of residencies three European sound artists/composers: Helena Espvall (Sweden), Pierre Berthet (Belgium) and Yannick Guédon (France), who will all work under the generic concept of  “playing the rural landscape” in its double, tactile and musical, meanings.

After several years  hosting projects that worked thematic aspects of the territory that were beforehand proposed to artists (riverscapes, voicescapes, religion, rural architecture, social mobility), Binaural/Nodar returns this year to the liberating nature of the absence of a script or of a previous guiding theme, inviting artists to emphasize the organic, expressive and visceral contact with (natural and built) landscapes of the Gralheira mountain range (São Pedro do Sul), through performances and/or installations which urge would be locally defined from the stimuli and interactions that will ultimately be present.

The three artists who will do creative work in Sul have multifaceted and diverse paths in the fields of visual arts, contemporary music, free improvisation and even weird folk/rock:

Helena Espvall (Sweden/USA) is a swedish-born composer and performer, known for her participation in the post-millennial psych-folk and  free improvisation scenes. Her main instruments are the cello, guitar and voice. She moved to Philadelphia in 2000, having initially dedicated herself to free improvisation (especially with cello), and  later actively involved in the city’s weird-folk circuit, having been part of groups such as Espers and The Valerie Project and formed Anahita, a duo with Tara Burke. A collaboration with Masaki Batoh (Japanese psych band Santo) produced two albums released by  Drag City. The first, “Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh,” included several Swedish folk songs and marked the artist’s first significant vocal appearance. In 2010 she released “Lapidary”, an improvised collaboration with Marcia Bassett, a leading figure of the noise/drone scene

Pierre Berthet (Belgium). He studied percussion with André Van Belle and Georges-Elie Octors at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles (first prize in 1986) and at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Liège (improvisation with Garrett List, composition with Frederic Rzewski and music theory with Henri Pousseur). He designs and builds sound objects and installations in natural and built spaces (steel, plastic, water, magnetic fields ….) presenting them in exhibitions and in solo or duo performances, with Brigida Romano (CD “Continuum asorbus”, Sub Rosa) or Frédéric Le Junter (CD “Berther Le Junter”,  Vandœuvres). He played percussion in the Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings and released three CDs so far: “Un piano cadre prolongé” (Sonoris), “Two pieces continuum” (Sub Rosa) and “Extended loudspeakers” (Sub Rosa).

Yannick Guédon (France/Belgium) is a French born composer, singer and performance artist, currently living in Brussels.His work focuses on tiny variations of timbres, the inner pulsation sensations and subjective notions of time, silence and error. He pays particular attention to the place and context in which each musical situation is displayed. In 2006 he wrote his first piece, pitulatif, for a solo voice. He followed it with ticdê (2007) a vocal trio, infimie (2007) for voice, electroacoustic, video and light, soupir (2009) and pause (2010), for clarinet, guitar, percussion, cello and voice.  In 2011 he initiated the cycle of situations a _ t e m p _ s, which generated five compositions between 2011 and 2014 using a variety of instruments and devices (viola da gamba, electroacoustic settings, sound research on artis’s absence, birthday candles, etc.). He has recently collaborated with composers/musicians such as Radu Malfatti, Deborah Walker, Eliane Radigue and Mattieu Delaunay.