International Music Seminar: Darkness and Silence.
21 to 25 March 2024
Conferences, Concerts, Exhibition, Performances and Film showcase.
PhD Candidate Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete is organising the International Music Seminar: Darkness and Silence, a cycle of concerts, exhibition, film showcase and conferences around the theme of music and art and the relationship with the visually and hearing impaired communities. Invited guests are: Colin Roche (France), Gertrud Fischbacher (Austria), Adam Ockelford (United Kingdom), Frederikke Jul Vedelsby (Denmark), Naoko Hirata (Japan), Jan Eric Olsén, Dodo Parikas, Carla Perez de Arce and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete (Sweden and LU).
PROGRAMME
THURSDAY, MARCH 21
at 14:00–17:00 – Performance: Colin Roche – Le livre des nombres (Café Area)
Diary of a journey of introspection.
The book of numbers is the trace of a performance. Writing a “register” of the solitary world of creators disrupts our relation to time as much as it does the way of recording, listing and of listening to it. The heart – in the physical sense – is invoked here. It is the articulation of an ‘imaginary’.
at 19:00 – Opening concert by Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete (Red Room)
Programme
Colin Roche (France, 1974)
L’électricité – Ambre mystérieuse
for electric guitar
Antonio de Cabezón (Spain, 1510-1566)
Tiento I en primer tono
for organ transcribed for guitar by Alberto Hortigüela
Miguel de Fuenllana (Spain, 1500-1579)
Fantasia
for vihuela
Joaquín Rodrigo (Spain, 1901-1999)
Tiento antiguo
for guitar
Francisco Tárrega (Spain, 1852-1909)
Recuerdos de la Alhambra
for guitar
at 19:30 – Vernissage (Black Room)
Works by Blandine Brière/Colin Roche, Frederikke Jul Vedelsby, Nexus of Textile and Sound (Gertrud Fischbacher & Marius Schebella) and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
FRIDAY, MARCH 22
10:00–12:30 – Performance (IAC Café Area)
Colin Roche Le livre des nombres
Diary of a journey of introspection.
The book of numbers is the trace of a performance. Writing a “register” of the solitary world of creators disrupts our relation to time as much as it does the way of recording, listing and of listening to it. The heart — in the physical sense — is invoked here. It is the articulation of an ‘imaginary’.
10:00–17:00 – Exhibition // 22–25 March (Black Room)
Works by Blandine Brière/Colin Roche, Frederikke Jul Vedelsby, Nexus of Textile and Sound (Gertrud Fischbacher & Marius Schebella) and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
at 14:00 – Conference by Colin Roche (Red Room)
/DESCRIBE
One of my dreams: writing a music score as a novel, in which every sound’s details are described so the music doesn’t even have to exist materially, but just through the imagination of the readers.
As a composer, my path has always been around description. The structure itself of my work is genetic, based on a rhetorical organization.
Music theory is a powerful tool, but it is stuck as long as it remains abstract. It is a language of signs expressing gestures, as corean alphabet is expressing tongue and throat movements, in a way. Even more, description is located in-between thoughts and sounds, where it doesn’t necessarily have to occur. This powerful energy zone, this in-between, is what we usually call silence. Macro-attention to this zone is also acknowledging the existence of alternatives to the definition of music as an ordered complex of sounds.
at 15:00 – Fika (Café Area)
at 15:30 – Conference by Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete (Red Room)
Plastic Extension of Music
Plastic Extension of Music is a creative tool for performers to deactivate the historical weight of the praxis in classical music, creating new ideas, grounds and platforms for a different kind of performance. These new metaphorical vehicles allow the performer with its hands to translate the language, gestures and embodied knowledge outside the instrument in other forms of art, rethinking the music and the performance, while emancipating classical music and its performers from our long tradition.
The creative criticism inside Plastic Extension creates infinite and autopoietic methodologies to approach the performance of classical music, allowing an expansion of the music outside the instrument, deepening the practice and creating new knowledge from a different perspective: the plasticity and embodied knowledge of the musical gesture.
at 16:30 – Fika (Café Area)
at 17:00 – Film screening and discussion (Red Room)
Blind kind (NL, 1964 · 25 min)
Director: Johan Van der Keuken
Language: Dutch (with English subtitles)
With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children’s unique perspective of the world. (Source: MUBI)
SATURDAY, MARCH 23
10:00–12:30 – Performance (Café Area)
Colin Roche “Le livre des nombres”
Diary of a journey of introspection.
The book of numbers is the trace of a performance. Writing a “register” of the solitary world of creators disrupts our relation to time as much as it does the way of recording, listing and of listening to it. The heart — in the physical sense — is invoked here. It is the articulation of an ‘imaginary’.
10:00–17:00 – Exhibition // 22–25 March (Black Room)
Works by Blandine Brière/Colin Roche, Frederikke Jul Vedelsby, Nexus of Textile and Sound (Gertrud Fischbacher & Marius Schebella) and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
at 14:00 – Presentation by Frederikke Jul Vedelsby (Red Room)
Frederikke Jul Vedelsby (born in Copenhagen, DK) is working across drawing, text, and time-based media. In her work, she is experiencing access to expanded states of consciousness, suggesting irregularity, and addressing the limitations of understanding itself. With and without a camera, she is in conversation with the blind South African-born, San Francisco-based singer, Suzanna Holland, with whom she, whenever possible and daily via text messages, investigates extraordinary vision and connections between things.
at 15:00 – Fika (Café Area)
at 15:30 – Conference by Gertrud Fischbacher (Red Room)
Textile and Sound (www.textileandsound.org)
Gertrud Fischbacher, University Mozarteum Salzburg
Marius Schebella University of Applied Sciences
Reinhard Gupfinger, University Mozarteum Salzburg
The Nexus of Textile and Sound is a strategic and fully monitored exploration of the creative potential of textile/sound interdisciplinarity.
It is funded by the Austrian Science Fund, Arts-Based Research Programme (PEEK).
How can we make sound tangible and textiles audible?
Especially in learning the different “languages” of textiles and sound, we are trying to find aspects which unite the two worlds. For example, what is an acoustic curtain, what is the textile analogy to the frequency response of a room?
What is a rough, itchy sound and what is a loud, screaming fabric?
How can we best create the conditions for the interaction of textile and sound to be of new and unexpected insights and knowledge? How can we best encourage interdisciplinary learning and changing perspectives?
How far can we go in questioning and stretching not only the artistic potential but also the very nature of the of the materials and media we use in our artworks?
Tobias Klettner, a former student and now a teacher at the Josef Rehrl School in Salzburg, had the idea of bringing textiles and sound to his hearing-impaired students, giving them the opportunity to change perspectives and gain insight into other people’s sensory experiences. Somatic sensitivity is the conscious perception of bodily sensations. Textiles, as and in physical contact, are indeed an important, if somewhat neglected, part of our communication. In the combination of textile and auditory art practice, we transform tactile, haptic experiences into sound and make touch audible.
What is the body perception of deaf children, how can parents/teachers convey sound perception to their children/students?
Conversely, how can children of deaf parents make sensory perception tangible for their parents? Will I be able to find a new way of communicating my sensory impressions? Will the project significantly change the way I deal with my own senses?
How can I best relearn and retrain my senses?
at 16:30 – Fika (Café Area)
at 17:00 – Concert by Naoko Hirata (Red Room)
9 Préludes by Gabriel Fauré (France, 1845-1924)
SUNDAY, MARCH 24
at 13:00–18:00 – Exhibition (Café Area)
Colin Roche Le livre des nombres
Diary of a journey of introspection.
The book of numbers is the trace of a performance. Writing a “register” of the solitary world of creators disrupts our relation to time as much as it does the way of recording, listing and of listening to it. The heart — in the physical sense — is invoked here. It is the articulation of an ‘imaginary’.
at 13:00–18:00 – Exhibition // 22-25 March (Black Room)
Works by Blandine Brière/Colin Roche, Frederikke Jul Vedelsby, Nexus of Textile and Sound (Gertrud Fischbacher & Marius Schebella) and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
at 15:00 – Conference by Jan Eric Olsén (Red Room)
at 16:00 – Fika (Café Area)
at 16:30 – Presentation by Carla Pérez de Arce (Red Room)
Skånes Taltidning
at 17:30 – Fika (Café Area)
at 18:00 – Film screening and discussion (Red Room)
Land of darkness and silence (DE, 1971 · 1h25 min)
Director: Werner Herzog
Language: German (with English subtitles)
Fini Straubinger, a woman who has been deaf and blind since adolescence, embarks on a journey to communicate with others who share her condition. This film offers an inspiring exploration of how the deaf and blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly isolated. (Source: MUBI)
MONDAY, MARCH 25
10:00–17:00 – Exhibition (Café Area)
Colin Roche “Le livre des nombres”
Diary of a journey of introspection.
The book of numbers is the trace of a performance. Writing a “register” of the solitary world of creators disrupts our relation to time as much as it does the way of recording, listing and of listening to it. The heart — in the physical sense — is invoked here. It is the articulation of an ‘imaginary’.
10:00–17:00 – Exhibition // 22-25 March (Black Room)
Works by Blandine Brière/Colin Roche, Frederikke Jul Vedelsby, Nexus of Textile and Sound (Gertrud Fischbacher & Marius Schebella) and Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete
at 11:00 – Presentation and film screening by Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete (Red Room)
Guided by the blind to play for the deaf
Guided by the blind to play for the deaf is an artistic research project aimed to learn tactile and “visual” perspectives of tuned sound from the blind and the visually impaired, and to measure this knowledge against the scientific and pedagogical history of blindness. The objective is to unveil the physical and (in)visible form of music, to use these forms in the development of new methodologies of music transcription through the plasticity of music. The result will be a new music language conceived for the hearing-impaired and the deaf.
The project is carried out by a series of interviews, workshops and a specially designed test, “The Kléndinsky test”.
Unveiling the invisible (SE, 2022 · 17 min.)
Directors: Bertrand Chavarria-Aldrete & Gonçalo Duarte
Language: English and Spanish (with English subtitles)
How does sound look like ? Ana and Carla, both visually impaired, tell us how they “see” and feel sound. This short documentary is a fragment of how sound seems to unveil its mysterious form through the hands and “visions” of the visually impaired.
at 14:00 – Conference by Adam Ockelford (Red Room)
Focus on Music: the impact of severe visual impairment on early musical development
This talk considers the impact of having little or no vision from birth on the development of musical skills and interests. It examines in particular the effect of two syndromes – ‘retinopathy of prematurity’ and ‘septo optic dysplasia’ – on early auditory development, and the importance of this for teachers. A number of short case studies are presented, and the work of The Amber Trust – a UK charity devoted to supporting blind and partially sighted children in their pursuit of music – is described.
Adam Ockelford is Professor of Music at the University of Roehampton in London. He was worked with visually impaired children through music for over 40 years. His most celebrated student is Derek Paravicini – see https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_paravicini_and_adam_ockelford_in_the_ke…
at 15:00 – Fika (Café Area)
at 15:30 – Film screening and discussion (Red Room)
The stories of Aaron, Alice, Drew, Felix and Jack, a film about teaching children and young people with visual impairment and complex needs (UK, 2019 · 13 min)
Film by : Evans Woolfe Media
Language: English
Music is a potential source of fun and wellbeing for those who are visually impaired and have complex needs.
Each of the five children in the video shows real pleasure in engaging musically with other people; music appears to be unique in its capacity to evoke happiness and a sense of fun.
at 16:15 – Closure (Red Room)
Read more about PhD Candidate Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete here.