“Cor, Coro, Corpo” (“Color, choir, body”)
An audiovisual installation by Binaural Nodar
Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde
Várzea de Calde | Viseu
Opening November 15th at 3.00 pm

There are those who refer to rural Portugal, specifically the period of the second half of the 20th century, as a lonely, sad and black and white world. This view stems in part from the country’s economic (poverty, self-sufficiency) and political (autocratic regime) specificities until the advent of democracy, associated with the symbolism of black and white television that existed in the country until the late 1970s. However, not infrequently, there is a counter-argument from the populations themselves who refer to their villages from fifty or sixty years ago as places of color, joy, life, youth and community help, which contrasts especially with the idea of ​​a dark and sad territory.

In these post-millennial times, it is still possible to feel a “synesthesia of the common” in some rural places that preserve a strong sense of belonging and a deep relationship with the surrounding landscape. Várzea de Calde is a paradigmatic example, one in which the chromatic explosion of cultivated fields and plant species is harmoniously transformed into the colors of the festive garments of women from the local singing group. In turn, these colors are “miraculously” transformed into musical notes that echo in the collective singing that pays homage to work and living throughout the cycles of the earth and the sacred. These same notes, which diffuse in the ether and which are heard in the landscape, also impregnate the bodies, accompanying and vibrating the marks of time in the veins, muscles and bones.

“Cor, Coro, Corpo” is an audiovisual installation by Binaural Nodar that consists of a synesthetic exercise, transmuting between the chromatic richness that is distributed in space, in the collective notes sung along the timeline and in the bodies of resistant women who condense the joys and sorrows of those who still live in the rural world.

Credits:
Original idea, sound composition and video editing: Luís Costa
Technical support: Nely Ferreira
Participation: Linen singing group of Várzea de Calde
Thanks to the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde
Co-financing: Municipality of Viseu through the program Viseu Cultura and Directorate-General for the Arts.
© Binaural Nodar, 2020.