ECHOES OF LEAVING AND RETURNING
Artist residency
February, 20th to March, 5th 2023
Municipality of Vouzela

With: Ana Margarida Ferreira (Portugal), Liliana Silva (Portugal) and Luciano Piccilli (Argentina)

Organization: Binaural Nodar, in partnership with the Municipality of Vouzela

From the end of the 19th century to the present, millions of Portuguese emigrated, looking for alternatives to poverty, to a subsistence economy and/or to the lack of job opportunities. As such, emigration is simultaneously part of the memory and present of the Portuguese rural regions. In each village, multiple thematic layers coexist that relate to the different waves of emigration, those more distant in time, to Brazil, Venezuela, the United States of America, etc. or those more recent, to European countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland or Luxembourg.

In the same way, many rural areas today welcome people from the various continents, in a process opposite to that of so many Portuguese, those who emigrated, those who returned and those who preferred not to return.

However, there is an infinite range of topics that it is possible to delve into when contacting with former and current migrants and their descendants, such as architecture, economics, language, the sense of belonging and cultural insertion of those who emigrated and of their descendants, the perceptions about the evolution of places of destination and origin, the type of connection with the rural world, family narratives and document records, the symbology and the semiotics of affection, gastronomy and many others.

Binaural Nodar, in collaboration with the Municipality of Vouzela, will host the first artist residency of its 17th annual program in artist residencies in sound and media arts, with two projects that will express aspects related to migration processes existing in the rural areas of the municipality of Vouzela.

Ana Margarida Ferreira and Liliana Silva (Portugal)

The Binaural Nodar team will carry out a set of sound interviews and photographic recordings with former and current emigrants from various villages in the municipality of Vouzela, with particular attention to aspects related to “migrant sensibility”, that is, how the condition of shared belonging (between the place of origin and migration) is reflected in the senses (landscape, sounds, smells, music, gastronomy, objects with symbolic value, etc.). The recordings made will be part of with the documentation produced in different locations (Municipalities of Viseu and Castro Daire, Uruguay, Brazil, Switzerland), for the conception of a final sound and visual exhibition and a series of podcasts, to be presented in 2023.

Ana Margarida Ferreira is a young contemporary artist from the rural parish of Côta, in the municipality of Viseu, who is attending the second year of the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Artistic Creation at the University of Aveiro, within which, from February 2023, she will carry out an academic internship with Binaural Nodar. She has presented her polysemic work (visual arts, writing, media, sound, etc.) in the context of group exhibitions developed in an academic environment.

Liliana Silva is from Santo António, Funchal. In 2014, she finished her degree in Visual Arts, Multimedia Branch at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. That same year, she joined the Master in Multimedia Communication, Interactive Multimedia Branch at the University of Aveiro, which she concluded in 2016. Since August 2017, she has been responsible for the areas of communication and multimedia at Binaural Nodar, having developed intense activity in area of graphic design, editorial graphics, video recording and editing, exhibition design, etc.

Luciano Piccilli (Argentina)

Folds of migrant voices resound over a landscape that is representative of the rural area of Viseu Dão Lafões. “Reflex” (from the lat. reflexus ‘action of going back’) is proposed as an intervention in the landscape using a mirrored membrane in which stories about a community are translated. How does the aurality of a region change based on its migratory processes? The reflected image is altered, the concept of landscape is presented as a changing reality, a space in constant redefinition activated by the voices of those who inhabit/inhabited these territories.

Luciano Piccilli (Argentina) is an image and sound designer (UBA) born in Misiones, Argentina in 1991. He completed postgraduate studies in Expanded Music (UNSAM) and Sound Art (UNTREF). He received the 1st Prize “Installations and Alternative Media” at the 3rd UBA Design Biennial. He participated in exhibitions in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, United States and Spain. His sound work has been programmed by Proyecto Tanque, Site Specific Songs (Arg), the Ruido / Noise gallery in Austin Texas, the “First Look” festival in Los Angeles, California and the “Water of Change” Digital Archive in India. In 2022 he participated in the International Festival of Sound and Interactive Art INSONORA, held in the city of Madrid.

The artist residency “Echoes of Leaving and Returning” has the support of the Municipality of Vouzela and funding from the General Directorate of Arts, through a biennial support contract.