Following an artist residency held in 2013 in the village of Sequeiros (São Pedro do Sul), in which the anthropologist and sound artist Ana Rodríguez was hosted, Binaural Nodar and Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay, a project coordinated by the aforementioned researcher and artist, established in 2018 a partnership for the development of a large-scale project entitled “Ecos Antípodes” (“Antipodean Echoes”).
This project consists of establishing an in-depth dialogue between rural, cultural and territorial communities in Portugal, Uruguay and Southern Brazil, in order to problematise, through sound anthropology and sound art, themes such as language, heritage, memory, work, social changes and territory. “Antipodean Echoes” reflects common and specific aspects of rural cultures, which help to revitalize direct or indirect connections and to reflect and recover part of their memory, thus promoting these connections within the involved communities.
“Antipodean Echoes” continues the paths taken by Binaural Nodar and Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay, through the design of work strategies with communities that enhance the exercise of listening, sound recording and editing, encouraging the creation and use of music archives, of local and rural oral memories, thus proposing a dialogue between rural communities in the territories included in the project.
Over the last few years, a body of actions has been developed, including sound recordings from rural areas, community engagement sessions, sound pieces, podcasts, simultaneous artist residencies on common subjects, mixed-media exhibitions, educational projects, etc.
2013
Artist residency by Ana Rodríguez in Sequeiros (Portugal)
The Fragrance of Wild Thoughts
“La fragancia de los pensamientos salvajes“ (“The fragrance of wild thoughts“) was a free and open exploration of local ‘sacred rites’, inducing honest narratives, explanations, stories of local traditions related to the connection between religion and everyday life. Various aspects were explored, such as the community dimension (meetings in public places), agricultural cycles (harvests, wine production, grazing) and the domestic universe (prayers, healing rituals, use of plants).
2018
Public announcement of the project
Antipodean Echoes
Sound work by Luís Costa recorded and edited in Tacuarembó (Uruguay)
Casa Destino
A man arrives in a distant country, he tries to situate himself, something that comes from the past bothers him, but the time that passes tries to heal wounds and open horizons. After some time, a simple and beautiful house becomes the immense world of this man, something he did not expect, something he needed. This is a tribute to those tiny houses that emanate a beautiful and ancestral energy, of when their objects and their breaths appear in the just measure of a meaningful living.
Sound work by Luís Costa recorded and edited in Tacuarembó (Uruguay)
San Gregorio de Polanco: El Lago en Suspenso
A winter’s afternoon in a suspended lake environment. A fishing boat sets off for another day’s work, families stroll by, birds chirp, abandoned structures rest half-submerged. The immense mirror of water in front of San Gregorio de Polanco is the result of the “Dr. Gabriel Terra” dam built on the River Negro near Rincón del Bonete, which in 1945 flooded the lower reaches of the river, forming a lake with an area of more than 120,000 hectares.
A workshop coordinated by Luís Costa and Nilda Amaral with support from Ana Rodríguez and Pato Pintos
Aros y Rayuelas
A sound and orality workshop developed in August 2018 by Luís Costa and Nilda Amaral together with the community of rural school no. 49 in Piedra Sola (Paysandú, Uruguay). The sound piece captures the energy of the children, at the same time close to the ground and dreamlike, some of the exercises proposed to the children can be heard, as well as their interaction with the sound recorders, their happy games and ending in a calm “decrescendo” with the sketch of a milonga played on guitar by Pato Pintos, blacksmith, musician and singer/composer from Tacuarembó.
2019
Sound work by Ana Rodríguez and Luís Costa
Women of Land and Water
A sound piece that collects a set of stories from women of different ages and origins who live in Castro Daire, related to genealogies and personal geographies, in the form of a stream of references to places, smells, sounds, people and activities that have marked their lives.
Sound workshop directed by Ana Rodríguez and Luís Costa
Vouzela Sonora: Listening, seeing and touching the sound environment
A workshop for users of ASSOL, an institution that supports people with cognitive diversity in the Viseu region.
Artistic project by Ana Rodríguez
Spoken Plants: A Vegetable Memory Archive
An exhibition based on the concept of the archive, reflecting on the possible combination of a catalog of archived documents and the evocative presence of material elements, plants, images and sounds connected to plants and their local uses. This exhibition is dedicated to those who have slept on rye straw mattresses, to those who have worn and still wear linen, to those who think about what they eat, to those who choose what they eat or eat what they can, to all those who have sweated and missed their sleep to produce food for their family and their animals, to those who have kept a tool or a piece of furniture made by a family member, to those who have been cold, worn clogs, built their own toys, been moved by contemplating the landscape they inhabit, stolen a flower or can’t forget a scent.
Educational sound project
Shared Field
An educational project developed jointly by Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay and Binaural Nodar, which used sound communication tools to reflect on and to share meanings of life in rural contexts. The first phase involved rural students from Portugal (Fataunços, Viseu Dão Lafões), Brazil (Alegrete, Rio Grande do Sul) and Uruguay (La Estiba, Artigas).
2020
Sound album
We are still Water
Water and culture, ecosystems and social relations around water. Sound Map of Uruguay and Binaural Nodar, two associated projects dedicated to rural soundscapes, jointly celebrate World Water Day, March 22, 2020, with a playlist of sounds and voices that happen in rural contexts of two small antipodean countries: Uruguay and Portugal.
First creative residency
Echoes of the Gift
Between September and November 2020, Binaural Nodar hosted a creative residency in Várzea de Calde with Uruguayan anthropologist Ana Rodríguez. This residency was one of several moments in the development of a forthcoming publication entitled “Echoes of the Gift“, which connects healing and health care practices in Várzea de Calde (Viseu, Portugal) and in rural areas of Tacuarembó (northern Uruguay).
2022
Sound collection project
Echoes of Leaving and Returning: Place, body and sonority in Portuguese emigration
Between February and March 2022, Binaural Nodar developed, in co-production with the House of Portugal in Montevideo and the Sound Map of Uruguay, a series of recordings related to Portuguese emigration in Uruguay. Between different eras and different places of departure and arrival, a journey will begin through several generations of Uruguayans who arrived or are descendants of people who arrived from Portugal.
Second creative residency
Echoes of the Gift
Between August 20th and September 10th, 2022, the “Echoes of the Gift“ creative residency took place, including field research and texts by Uruguayan anthropologist Ana Rodríguez and photographs by Liliana Silva, produced by Binaural Nodar in partnership with the Várzea de Calde Linen Museum, the Calde Parish Council and the Sound Map of Uruguay.
2023
Podcast series
Portuguese in Uruguay
In 2023, the Binaural Radio Rural podcast broadcast a series of three episodes based on a series of interviews conducted by anthropologist Ana Rodríguez in 2022 with Portuguese and Portuguese descendants who live or have lived in urban or rural areas of the Department of Montevideo in Uruguay.
Audiovisual creation
Sweet Water, Salted Water
In the context of three artist residencies held in September and October 2023, Luís Costa and Ana Rodríguez created an audiovisual work that relates the uses of water in three regions of the Atlantic and Mediterranean: riverside villages in the municipality of Castro Daire in Portugal, the town of Rincón de Paiva, located in northeastern Uruguay (near the border with Brazil) and the island of Salina, part of the Aeolian Islands archipelago in the Italian region of Sicily.
2024
Mixed-media exhibition
Echoes of the Gift
On November 30th, 2024, the exhibition “Echoes of the Gift: Practices of care and health in rural areas of Portugal and Uruguay” opened to the public, which brings together written reflections and audio testimonials selected by Ana Rodríguez and a set of photographs by María Puppo (Uruguay) and Liliana Silva (Portugal).
Podcast series
The Recordings are not to Blame
The podcast Binaural Radio Rural commissioned a series of three episodes to Uruguayan anthropologist and sound artist Ana Rodríguez, suggesting a simple challenge: to use archived sound recordings, especially those that have never previously been included in processes of creation and restitution.
Bilingual book (Portuguese and Spanish)
Echoes of the Gift
The book “Echoes of the Gift: Traditional community health practices in rural areas of Portugal and Uruguay” by Ana Rodríguez was published in December 2024. It contains 176 pages divided into eleven chapters and hundreds of photographs by Lliliana Silva, María Puppo and Ana Rodríguez herself.
