During the Paivascapes #1 Festival, which will take place from 4 to 8 March 2011, five new productions from Binaural/Nodar will be premiered. These works are the result of artist residencies developed in Nodar and of sound and video recording sessions made along the Paiva River.

Manuela Barile
“Rheîa Zóontes”
Sound installation / audiovisual installation

Happiness is the perception and the feeling of our own limitless expansion, when understood as encounter and fusion. Happiness is seen often as something instantaneous but it’s a condition that can be prolonged throughout life. Rilke talked about the “immense instant”, that which can be dilated as if time became space. When the Ancient Greeks would say that the gods were happy, they would use the expression “rheîa zóontes”, which means that life flows without obstacles. Happiness is like a river flowing. A river that always flows in one direction. In its constant flow, it faces obstacles, it changes its shape and identity, it receives memories, traditions and experiences. The Paiva River is characterized by the places where small communities settled. These places represent the extension of people’s homes, they are places that can’t be renounced. Here, people live with simplicity, with essentiality. These people live by letting themselves flow like a river.

Luís Costa
“Where Is the Source of My Paiva?”
A sonic and visual inquiry on the subjectivity of the territory.

“For almost 40 years, I imagined how the place where the Paiva River begins would be.”

The same river that passes through my village of Nodar, situated 60 km away from the source. Carrying with me the images of the landscape I know, I finally went searching for the voices of the river source.

The most comforting thing was to understand that, what I had though to be an unquestionable truth – the river begins in this precise spot – resulted in a tangle of information as dense as the numerous water streams that feed the river at its source.

Sérgio Cruz
“Pastorinhos” (Little Shepherds)

The two videos, presented in world premiere, resulted from an artist residency in Nodar in 2009. During this period of research, the artist slowly discovered the village and its inhabitants and the way they interacted with each other and with the environment. This was a process based on an intuitive response to the events, thoughts and feelings that would appear in the daily routine.

In “Pastorinhos” (The Little Sheperds), a fusion between a documentary and a dream-like fiction, in which Sérgio Cruz worked with the village youths, the artist tried to refine his visual language by developing a work with natural light, using the reflections of the water of the Paiva River by means of mirrors as a way to manipulate such light.

The second video to be premiered works as a counterpoint to the first one. Here, the more visceral elements of the rural world, namely the pragmatic relationship with the animals, are predominant.

Rui Costa
“A New Beginning”

An electroacoustic concert based on the sonic encounter of four people and the source of the Paiva River. The river as the facilitator of an intimate and truthful encounter of people who love each other.

For information about the Paivascapes #1 Festival: http://www.paivascapes.org