Abandoned places

The Brazilian intermedia artists Sérgio Bonilha and Luciana Ohira will creatively investigate cases of extra-sensory perception and out of body experiences, related to what one might call “the mobility of the soul”; Italian sound artist Riccardo Bertan will assume his condition of tourist to work on the corresponding slow and idle mobility that contrasts with the rhythms of everyday life and work; The American (living in Berlin) sound artist Pierce Warnecke proposes to find ways that lead to nowhere and to derive creative conclusions from them; The young Portuguese artist João Farelo will establish a direct contact with current and former rhythms of shepherding and transhumance; Finally, recently the GMURDA collective (composed by Tiago Carvalho, Bruno Caracol, Aleksandra Vercauteren, Pedro Ferreira and Odair Monteiro) as been dedicated itself to the search for abandoned spaces (a perfect symbol of the mobility of life, one that can lead to emigration and even to death), in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, with the goal of activating them soundly with the development of sound and body improvisations with found materials.The exploration methodology of the places in hand is apocryphal. Applies itself, after appearing spontaneous, through the reciprocity between what the places gave and what in them we found and drew, like a child before a paper sheet and a color pencil case. The places are therefore not discovered, but inaugurated, always reappearing in a concrete meeting that occurs in that ephemeral time space, outside of the coordinates that defined and limited them, or even its functions justified them with. The interests of each one are developed in the exploration of such spaces, and its there that the faces of the cellist, the pinter, the translator-drummer, the father and the unemployed lose the categorical labels and get together in acommon ground of sound discovery.

-The pool without water or swimmers;

-The battery without guns or soldiers;

-The cistern without head quarters to kill;

-The restaurant without clients and victuals;

-The silo without cereals or mouths that might want flour;

All of these spaces remain, but no longer exist while connected to the purpose for which they were conceived. They subside, prideful in its monumental inertia, in a stone embrace everyday offered to passerby. More than deserts or sterile ruins, as a collective we believe to be pregnant territories, ready to give their reflections of what we provide them with. They’re not exhausted or broke beyond the politic-economic status that determined its shut down. The cityis still being populated, inviting a reading that is no more than the sharing of a common life. We can therefore see each place as an expression of a vocabulary of its own, which words are shrapnel, glass, plaster, tile, packages, rust and timber that we score with our presence, exposing together the details of its abandonment. Each structure breathes its own death and we recuperate the pieces of its decadence, taking them out of their silent coffins and breathing on to them a new sound life.

Parked, they hold on to the memory of a certain use of different body gestures. We bring them now to our movement through sound; a movement that is in itself profoundly rational. It speaks and expands the invisible content of the objects through the (con)tact between two surfaces. It boycotts the interior isolation of each one, and the invisible solitude of belonging that stops communication between beings. Sound is the possible and necessary bridge alive from a meet between two entities that thought themselves to be distinct. We listen to learn ao to be.

GMURDA started at RDA69, a colectivo space in Anjos, Lisboa, from where it inher it part ofits acronym. Since November of 2012, the collective visited spaces such as Piscina do Areeiro, Restaurante Panorâmico de Monsanto, Bateria Militar da Trafaria, Quartel da NATO-Costada Caparica, Escola Técnica Afonso Domingues, Complexo Industrial do Barreiro, among others.

GMURDA members:

Aleksandra Verkauteren

Born in 1987 Goik, Belgium, Aleksandra Verkauteren is a linguistic research and maestro in as amba band. She played cello in the Kajcata band, and belonged to the orchestra of the University of Gent as well of the Municipal Music School of Gooik. An artist that appreciates the culinary arts, plants, vegetable gardens and home made remedies.

Bruno Caracol

Lives in Lisbon. In 2012 participated in the event “Ora Bolas, Há Espaço, Vamos Usá-lo” with the installation “Tina”. Between 2009 and 2011, he collaborated in the production of the artistic residency “Capacete”, no Rio de Janeiro. In that time period, he participated in the meeting V:E:R, in Terra Una, Minas Gerais, included in the exhibition program CCSP, in São Paulo. Together with Maria Moreira and Marcelo Wasem, Caracol organised the cycle-Jogos de Escuta (Listen Games) – about/with several collectives of artists from Rio de Janeiro. In the last few years the artist lived in Buenos Aires, Granada and Mem-Martins

Odaír Monteiro

Is an immigrant from Cabo Verde, who was raised in the social blocks of Lisbon. He’s an artist that explores illustration, theater, and work with children while cooking in subversive environments or delivering orders by bicycle.

Pedro Ferreira

Since the Anjos, in Lisbon, Pedro Ferreira has participated in numerous performances focused on dramatic writings of Peter Handke (Públic Insult) or from the universe of heavy metal. Di(organizes) sessions of timed beat poetry set to music. Ferreira has lived in Berlin and Graça, enjoys pretending to be a rock drummer and graffiti on crosswalks.

Tiago Carvalho

Walks through Lisbon since 1981. Graduated in: a bachelor of Environmental Engineering, a Post-Grad in Regional and Urban Planning and a Master in Philosophy and Aesthetics of Nature and Environment. Collaborated with Rádio Zero until 2006. Received a scholarship on his investigation of soundscapes by the Superior Technic Institute. Participated in the artistic residency promoted by Binaural NODAR, with Luís Costa, Patrick Mckinley and Maja Lisa-Plats in 2010 within the scope of Paivascapes 2011. Tiago Carvalho, with his text “A estéticado som na paisagem e na arquitetura” he contributed for the book “Filosofia e Arquitectura da Paisagem: um Manual”, CFUL, 2012. When he’s not on walks, he’s cycling, and when he’s not cycling he writes.