Opinion Sur Joven

There are more kinds of art everyday. They used to be seven: painting, sculpture, music, literature, architecture, dance and cinema; I’ve never known why theater wasn’t included. However, as time, postmodernity, cultural relativism and other stuff go by, the amount of formal and informal arts started to grow. Many people say that everything’s an art, which makes it hard to outline a classification: if what the baker around the corner makes is an artistic expression, then there’s not much to analyze in art. Thinking implies forgetting about differences, generalizing, abstracting. [1]

So we’ll try to think for a moment, even if we know we’re wrong. And we’ll return to traditional art, where the cinema is called “the seventh art”, although we know there are a lot more kinds of art. However, even the most conservative people are already talking about “the eighth art”… a new form of expression brought by new technologies: digital art.

What’s this exactly about? It’s basically an artistic expression that may be performed by combining sounds and images processed by a computer. Onedotzero is an international show that went on a tour in Latin America a few months ago; there will be more information about it in the next issues of Opinión Sur Joven. Now, however, we’ll focus on a local experience. There is an artistic group called Buenos Aires Sonora, which makes sound interventions in different locations of the city.

In the first exhibition, they turned a cable-stayed bridge into an extra large harp. That took place in the Puente de la Mujer (“Women’s Bridge”) in Puerto Madero. A group of musicians “played” the cables with giant sticks and special microphones amplified the sound. This happened in 2004.

Then they undertook another incredible experiment: it consisted in recovering the Plaza de Mayo, a traditional space of Argentine politics, by reproducing by means of sounds all that happened there between 1945 and 2001, using files of speeches and chants recorded during public meetings and demonstrations.

Now they’re planning on making an intervention at the Obelisco. “It’s a very noisy place –says Martín Liut, one of the members of Buenos Aires Sonora-. That’s why we wanna compete against it, by playing the sounds that we generally can’t make because of the alienating state we live in”.

— How did you get there?- Opinión Sur Joven asked to Martín Liut.
— I’m a musician and a college researcher at both Quilmes University and La Plata University. Apart from making music in the traditional way, I work with sounds in a wider manner… I do what we call “sound art”, which implies dealing with the sound within time and with all its features. Along with the group Buenos Aires Sonora we make interventions in public places where the sound is the raw material. — What do you do exactly?
— Sometimes we turn an object into an instrument. For example, we take the Puente de la Mujer, in Puerto Madero, and turn it into a 120-meter-long giant harp. Other times we use the place as a means to recover the use of memory. We took Plaza de Mayo as the main space of Argentine politics, and we did it through the sounds that took place there. That’s what we call a sound landscape. — What’s the work like?
— We are a group of ten people with different specializations, but we’ve worked as a team since the beginning of the project. This differs from the concept of the musician composing at home because, for instance, making sound out of a bridge implies making decisions as to where to put the microphone, the type of equipment or computers to be used, how to assemble the song, hiring musicians to play the score… It implies many things. — Do you make a living out of this?
— Quilmes University really encourages research and creation of knowledge through production. The university system enables it. A part of the group works at the university doing this, and besides each one does their own things.

Making history

But the greatest success of this group was accomplished when Buenos Aires Sonora filled Plaza de Mayo. For those who don’t know it, most of the relevant events in Argentine history took place in this square. It’s surrounded by the Cabildo (the old town council) on one side and by Casa Rosada (the government building) on the other. There are located also the Banco Nación, the Treasury Department and the Cathedral, among other important buildings. Events such as the Revolución de Mayo in 1810, the birth of Peronism as a movement, a bombing to overthrow Peronism, the demonstrations by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo –who would walk around the central monument of the square claiming for their missing children- and the pot-banging protests (“cacerolazos”) on December 2001 took place there. All in the same place. Buenos Aires Sonora had an idea. They assembled a surround circle with speakers around that monument –called Pirámide de Mayo- and created a show that allows spectators on that historic site to listen to speeches and situations that happened there.

— How was this project carried out?
— It took two years and a half since we first thought about it. There are two main ideas: a sensorial idea and a political one. The first one is related to how Plaza de Mayo sounds as a theater, because it’s surrounded by buildings; you should go there one day and see how it sounds when it’s empty. The second part was related to reconstructing the events in the square along history and bringing them back to the people through the sound. We did it without inventing anything, by working with documentary files. So, since we don’t know how May 25th of 1810 (“Revolución de Mayo”, to stop depending from Spain) sounded, we started since 1945, when events of the collective memory started to be registered. And then we decided to limit it to one hour only; we know we could be doing it all day, but we choose the most shocking moments. — When I saw your work I found different things everywhere I was. There was no way of listening to a sole account, because there were several ones. How did you decide that?
— The problem was how we would transmit without images. One of the members of the group decided to assemble a circle across the square, because that way we had the ideal circle for listening. So, besides of listening to the person who was talking, you were inside the actual demonstration. And that allowed us to have multiple forms of sense. This is related to what actually happens in demonstrations, which is the impossibility to grasp it all. For instance, in a riot you never really get to understand what’s going on. So we want spectators to be able to choose what they want to listen to. There’s no way of seeing it all, nor an ideal place for listening. Sometimes we’ve even made it hard to listen on purpose, just to let people get the mood. That kind of listening is more musical. — What kind of publicity did you get?
— The more knowledge we have about history, the greater the project. A lot of people asked us to release a DVD, but I didn’t want to. I don’t think you’ll be as much impressed at home. We’re going to record it as a document, but this work is to be seen in Plaza de Mayo.

To be or not to be

Seven, eight, nine, ten… How many arts are there in the world? Can this almost amorphous mix of sounds be considered an art? “With the bridge performance is easier, because there’s music played –Martín answers-. Instead, the Plaza de mayo performance is a mix of collage with sound intervention and journalism. It’s the place where artistic discipline meets anthropology”. — Do you think traditional art is unvalued?
— I wouldn’t say unvalued. The thing is that there’s a very high and refined abstraction level, but it requires a very significant work of knowledge from the audience too. The problem with abstract art is specialization, which makes mass audience be left aside. An art? Not an art? Who cares? “The good thing is trying to bring art to the street or the public space,” he concludes.