TAGS

artist, square, o-grivo.

BIOGRAPHY

O Grivo was created in 1990 by Marcos Moreira Marcos & Nelson Soares, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Based in Belo Horizonte 2005 Música Precária, Hiper, Porto Alegre, Brazil 2000 Formations, dLux Media Arts, Sound Art Work, Sydney Film Festival 1997 25º Salão de Artes de BHZ, Centro Cultural da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, Belo Horizonte 1996 Antarctica Artes com a Folha, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo Selected Bibliography Antarctica Artes (cat.), São Paulo, Cosac & Naify,1998; 25º Salão de Artes de Belo Horizonte, Belo Horizonte, Centro Cultural da UFMG & Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte, 1998.

INTERVIEW

José Augusto Ribeiro: The work you are presenting in the 28th Bienal de São Paulo contains, in its different segments, certain characteristics of O Grivo’s body of work to date. I am referring to interests and procedures underpinning specific productions in your trajectory that do not always or necessarily appear interrelated or interdependent in previous works: for example, the creation of instruments and sound-producing devices from materials marked by uselessness in their original function, made to work by means of electrical and mechanical systems; your exploration of the physical properties of sound, in both its production and reproduction; the domestic appearance of almost robot-like devices; the acoustic spatialization and electronic treatment of sounds that do not have the musical intention of a “composition” per se, etc. I’d like to know if your intention here was a summing up of your acoustic and visual research since you started in 1990, or if it signposts a moment in which seeing and hearing O Grivo’s things is, more than ever, a unified experience – now with a range of gadgets to confound perception.

O Grivo: We don’t think of this work as a summary of our acoustic and visual research since 1990. Our previous works have distinct characteristics and each of our musical pieces has its own particular setup. It is precisely the discovery of this type of setup that characterizes each piece. By recording and listening to our improvisations, we arrive at a way of dealing with the acoustic material, which, in turn, structures and defines our approach when faced with a limitless range of formal procedures. What has characterized O Grivo’s musical research all these years is an attempt to, with each new piece, find an approach. This procedure leads to diverse kinds of musical structuring, regardless of the aesthetic concept we want to deal with in each period. When you speak of a summary, we can remember a whole host of structural types and sound combinations, even sound qualities, which we have already used but are not in this work. Obviously, with this clarification, the question remains: “What about the image? You only mentioned the sound!” The image is a consequence of the way the acoustics and music work, although at times we have to opt for solutions that privilege a certain consistency with the image. When we use an old can, it’s not because we find it visually attractive, but because the sound of the can is interesting – although we do seek balanced visuality. In our opinion, two things signpost what you said about the moment in which “seeing and hearing is, more than ever, a unified experience.” Firstly, people make their own way between the objects and speakers; they can move in closer or stand back. Each point has its own acoustic and visual characteristics, and visitors can choose how long they want to listen to each musical piece, or they can simply not pay attention to the sounds. In addition to a new way of listening (much more limited within the confines of a stage), these paths create a new way of seeing the mechanisms of production of sound. The spectators’ proximity can afford them much more detailed observation. The visual information of our work thus takes on a larger dimension. Secondly, there is an aspect of our work that is potentialized by the installation space: the fact that four different sound extracts coexist in the same time and place. Within these extracts, a series of different musical pieces can coexist. Separated spatially and structurally, they dialogue with one another through timbre, rhythm, intensity, etc. This dialogue is as important as each piece. What we get is a setup that enables several works to coexist in a very large physical space.


José Augusto Ribeiro is an art critic and lives in São Paulo.

PROJECTS - 28TH SAO PAULO BIENAL

Projects with updated content