Linda and Isabel.

 

In July 2018 I travelled to Brazil to work with the sound artists and professor of ethnomusicology, Dr Isabel Nogueira. We began a discussion in October 2017 about what it would be like to collaborate on multiple levels, from working as feminists engaging with communities of women to explore sound and technology, to working together as artists to transform our practice.

The details of our extensive community outreach work, which is part of the Women in Sound Women on Sound long term project, will be uploaded shortly. 

Since the 9th of July we have created a number of new performance based works, which focus on movement, sound, technology and space. We have performed these works in Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Additionally, we have focused on gesture and interaction as a process of embodied performance working in collaboration with the composer Tony Doyle to develop works in SuperCollider using the Wii remote controller. This has been quite a transformative process to engage so intimately with technology, while collectively exploring feminism in the arts, in space, with women.

We have a number of performance projects still to come, on the 18th of August we presented a collaboration with the dance group Pesquisa Qualitativa em Cena called If I Were Me at Espaço Núcleo in São Paulo. Myself and Isabel began developing the sound for this work in 2017, starting with texts, images, video and sounds. We have since created a series of performance pieces based on the concept of If I Were Me, based on the titular poem by acclaimed Brazilian writer and poet Clarice Lispector. We have drawn on this text as a philosophical basis for the beginnings of a feminist ethnography and pedagogical study.

While in Porto Alegre I have continued to develop my visual arts practice through graphic score compositions. I have become increasingly interested in the invisibility of female bodies in public spaces, particularly homeless, black and native South American women and children. As a sociologist it is impossible to work or walk through a space and not be aware of certain social conditions. Impossible to ignore them when everyday they lie or sit on the streets. Conversations with Brazilian women have been incredibly eye opening about the extreme divisions of class and ethnicity in this country. I was aware through media and literature of some of these conditions but not the extent.  I began an artist in residency with Isabel in La Foto Galeria in Porto Alegre and will continue to work there till I leave on the 12th of September, working on these graphic scores as well as our collaborative projects. This is my first time working with acrylic in the creation of scores and it is a very exciting process.

Myself, Isabel and Rebecca Collins will host the Gender Symposium at La Foto Galeria on the 6th of September, this promises to be an amazing event.

At Audio Rebel in Rio de Janeiro with my Wii

Graphic Scores in Progress

Prepping with some amazing women before a gig at Lugar, Porto Alegre.