«The barrier between the observer and the observed object falls.
At the same time the object looses its own defined contours,
and expands itself in all universe
to the point that it seems to contain the whole world inside,
it penetrates the observer like an entire world to the point that both the subject’s and the object’s being, of the world, fuse themselves in an all-in-one»
V. Zuckerkandl, Sound and symbol. Music and external world.
OIKOS
Site-specific vocal and sound action by Manuela Barile
Space is an indefinite and uncircumscribed extension with an unlimited capacity to contain bodies. The place is a portion of occupied space or that it’s possible to occupy physically or ideally.
The space is the abstract; the place is the concrete. The space is freedom; the place is safety. The place is memory, feeling, and thought. Our life cannot be told and represented without any reference to places. The place is a fabric weaved by relationships and experiences. For this reason, we hate and love places, while spaces are simply measured.
The archetype of the place is the bringing together while the archetype of the space is the interval, that is, the separation, the limit, the boundary and therefore the conflicts.
In which ways we think and feel a place and a space? What influences this process? In which ways is it possible to make a space become a place and a place to become a space? In which ways time and sound enter in this process and in which ways they influence us?
These questions are at the base of “Oikos”, a site-specific performance by Manuela Barile that integrates the abovementioned elements as structural parameters for this multidisciplinare work.
The house is a place; the house is a metaphor for our body and it is also our little Universe.
When we are in our house we fell protected, when we are in our empty house we feel lost. The place-house becomes space again.
In “Oikos”, the performative space is transformed into a sort of home, an empty home, an abandoned home. The action takes two levels into account: the vertical one, represented by the walls, the stairs, the building itself; and the horizontal one represented by the floor, the balcony, the landing, the terrace.
The wall is a custodian of memories to which the performer gives sound with her voice. The wall is both the friend and the enemy; prison and shelter, from itself one can be attracted or discarded.
The floor is the place where the artist moves herself, where she displaces herself, drawing paths, defined according to the physical and sound characteristics of the place, the position of the audience and the eventual acoustic barriers.
The performer’s body, approaching and moving away from the audience, her mouth approaching and moving away from the listener’s ear, who becomes a sort of a binaural microphone, and who the artist actively involves in a game of distance (near – far away) and direction (high-down/right-left).
The performance space becomes a musical instrument and its objects become sound objects for a composition in real time. The voice enters and exits from the speakers placed in front of the audience as a sound wall. Through the use of contact microphones, both the sounds of her body and the sounds from outside the hall and the building will be amplified and with which the performer will interact. Through the use of a transmitter, the performer will connect two adjacent rooms.
