Playing the Rural Landscape
Public presentation with sound art works developed in specific context
with Yannick Guédon, Helena Espvall and Pierre Berthet.
Saturday, 2 May | 16h00-1800 (followed by a communal traditional buffet)
Açores, civil parish of Sul, municipality of São Pedro do Sul
Geo coordinate: 40° 50’ 15.0″ N 8° 03’ 54.0” W
Presentation part of SoCCoS (“Sounds of Culture, Culture of Sounds”) network of sound art residencies, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission (http://www.soccos.eu).
Binaural/Nodar presents the end result of an artist residency with three European sound artists / composers, Helena Espvall (Sweden), Pierre Berthet (Belgium) and Yannick Guédon (France), who worked during the last three weeks in the small village of Açores (located in the south hillside of Mount St. Macarius, civil parish of Sul, municipality São Pedro do Sul) under the generic concept of “playing the rural landscape” in its double meaning, tactile and musical. The public presentation will include live performances by Helena Espvall (cello) and Yannick Guédon (viola da gamba) and a sound installation by Pierre Berthet, being conceived as an expressive window that opens and amplifies the relationship with the countryside of the said village of Açores.
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.