Three Years in Nodar
Context-Specific Art Practices in Rural Portugal

315 pages full color catalogue, 1.000 copies
Accompanying double CD with 20 sound compositions made in Nodar, 1.000 copies

The Lafões Rural Art Lab, coordinated by Binaural Nodar, operating in Portuguese rural mountainous communities, organizes and produces multidisciplinary artistic projects (mainly in the areas of sound, video and intermedia arts) from both local and international artists, followed by public presentations in the region. During their stay, the resident artists are encouraged to establish interactions with the place, its inhabitants, geographic space and social memory.

The decision to initiate an artist residency programme was motivated by the desire of the members of Binaural Nodar to deepen the investigation on the possibilities of an exploratory artistic practice in close interaction with a specific rural context and to lay the foundations of a platform for regular exchange of ideas and practices with artists and international organizations acting in the same area. These motivations were possible to implement by the coincidence that two of the founding members of Binaural are from the village of Nodar.

Since March 2006, dozens of international contemporary artists developed projects in Nodar in close connection with the local communities. Issues such as collective memory, identity, gender and age, life and death, geography, topography, music, sound heritage, landscape, vegetation, water and fire, consumption and leisure dynamics, myths and traditions, crafts, agriculture and shepherding, were used as a thematic background for many of the art pieces created there.

The catalogue includes essays, critical texts, field diaries, photographs and drawings of more than 40 artists who developed art projects in the rural village of Nodar (municipality of São Pedro do Sul) between 2007 and 2009.

The idea for this catalogue arose from the need to close a cycle, the first three years of regular artist residencies between 2007 and 2009, years where the hosted projects were mainly developed in Nodar. From 2010 onwards it is chosen an unifying theme for all projects and the residencies are more geographically expanded.

The Accompanying double CD, “Nodar Location-Specific Sound 2007-2009?, includes twenty sound compositions created in Nodar or composed from material collected there by many sound artists, contemporary composers and vocal performers. This CD is also a necessary embodiment of all sounds that filled the landscape of Nodar and had to be shared with a wider audience.

Texts by:

Aaron Ximm (USA), Alicja Rogalska (Poland), Amaya González (Spain), Andrea Brandão (Portugal), Antonio Pedro (Portugal), Arnold Haberl (Austria), Ben Owen (USA), Cédric Anglaret (France), Christine Niehoff (Germany), Dennis Báthory-Kitsz (USA), Duncan Whitley (England), Evelyn Müürsepp (Estonia), Francisco Janes (Portugal), Ignacio Martinez (Spain), Jason Kahn (USA), Joana Nascimento (Portugal), John Grzinich (USA), Jurate Jarulyte (Lithuania), Keiko Uenishi (Japan), Lezli Rubin-Kunda (Israel), Luciana Ohira (Brazil), Maile Colbert (USA), Maksims Shentelevs (Latvia), Manuela Barile (Italy), Maria Idília Martins (Portugal), Marta Bernardes (Portugal), Martin Clarke (England), Melanie Velarde (Australia), Nilo Gallego (Spain), Noemi Fidalgo (Spain), Pali Meursault (France), Peeter Laurits (Estonia), Rui Costa ( Portugal), Rui Silveira (Portugal), Satoshi Morita (Japan), Sergio Bonilha (Brazil) Sergio Cruz (Portugal), Stevie Balch (USA), Suzanne Caines (Canada), Svetlana Bogomolova (Russia), Toomas Thetloff (Estonia) , Vered Dror (Israel), Viv Corringham (England), Wolfgang Dorninger (Austria), Xesús Valle (Spain).

Track list of accompanying double CD “Nodar Location-Specific Sound 2007-2009”:

CD#1

1 -Jason Kahn: Windline [10:02] 2 -Satoshi Morita: .: :: – / – / – :. [2:55] 3 – Aaron Ximm: The Stone Giant, or, a millstone breathing in Nodar [9:56] 4 -John Grzinich: Flowlines [10:10] 5 – Maksims Shentelevs: Ghost of Nodar [10:00] 6 – Ben Owen: Resounding Nodar – Edit [4:56] 7 – Wolfgang Dorninger: in the water [8:00] 8 – Rui Costa: Traces of a Place [5:21] 9 – Xesús Valle: Tactile Processes [7:40] 10 – Samuel Ripault (Pali Meursault): Pleine Lune [9:15]

CD#2

1 – Martin Clarke: Mountain Quiet [8:21] 2 – Arnold Haberl (Noid): Music for Five Instruments and a Gun [19:08] 3 – Manuela Barile: Moroloja [4:14] 4 – Duncan Whitley: Joga, Isso! [9:40] 5 – Keiko Uenishi (o.blaat): Serpentines and Chestnuts (several scenes for Nodar Social Composition) [7:41] 6 – Dennis Báthory-Kitsz: Three Songs for Manuela [4:33] 7 – Marta Bernardes & Ignacio Martínez: Coro de Noé [3:00] 8 – Viv Corringham: Where You Are [4:28] 9 – Melanie Velarde: Untitled [9:08] 10 – Maile Colbert: Over the Eyes [9:01]

(p) & (c) by the artists, 2011