De Volta ao Trabalho (“Back to Work”)
“A Roda” (“The Wheel”) is the first creation of the on going project “De Volta ao Trabalho” (“Back to Work”), a collaborative reflection of Manuela Barile that has as it score rural and traditional activities such as agriculture, livestock, forest maintenance, fabric making, construction of agricultural artifacts and structures, etc. The project consists in a gathering of physical / sound / vocal performances which will be representative of the effort, ethics and techniques of rural work, enhancing the sensory relations present in the work and the landscape. In “A Roda”, there’s a lonely woman that lives between the hut, the field and the daughter-in-law, immersed in arduous, slow and circular daily rhythms. The manual labor is accompanied by sorrows and songs that bring her life closer to designs “larger than life”, which perhaps make this woman an anonymous chosen one of God. The artistic creation consists in a site-specific installation / performance (on a river shore), being that the architectonic object to construct will be permanent, allowing future vistations.
The artwork of Manuela Barile has been based on projects developed in specific contexts, taking into account aspects of the territory, tradition, memory, symbols, rituals and spiritual paths deposited in the soil as indelible marks. The art of Manuela Barile is an ongoing investigation about reality, about being in the world, about personal experience. Since 2006, the artist lives and works in the rural area of Gralheira Mountain Range (S. Pedro do Sul, PT) where she develops projects in close contact with local communities that combine sound and visual anthropology, performance art, vocal performance and video art. As a vocal performer Manuela Barile embarked in 2001 on a personal journey in the area of vocal experimentation applied to free improvisation through the use of “extended vocal techniques” focused on the relationship between voice, body sounds and acoustic properties of places.
ARTISTIC WORKS