Topolovo
PROPOSAL
HARMONY OF TWIN LOCATIONS is an idea for a sonoric workshop resulting in an audio-visual installation as its final accomplishment. It is a response to the statement that »…there exists a logic regarding the choice of our means in estabilishing our relations to space, relations between places, to understand how these relations are born and how they change, how they perish and are reborn« (Piero Zanini, architect and university professor, Topolovo 2005).
The purpose of the workshop is to explore the emotional archetypes of a nation and its long isolated minority living in the town of Topolovo on the Italian side. These archetypes manifest through the pronounciation, evocation and particular stress marks of certain words, which are strongly connected with emotions, and through various relationships within the sonic environment.
The places chosen for the purposes of HARMONY OF TWIN LOCATIONS are the specific environment of the Network of Temporary Artists in the Rog Factory in Ljubljana, and the town of Topolovo during the annual festival Stazione di Topolo (July 2nd-17th).
The workshop is a response to an invitation by the Institute for Topology from Topolovo, which invites to artistic cooperation using the following words: »… let them come and express (through words, images or sounds)… when and in what manner the places they lived in (one or more of them, imaginary or real) made marks on their lives and the lives of others.« (Piero Zanini, architect and university professor, Topolovo 2005).
REALIZATION
The team consists of a pair of artists, a photographer and a sound designer. The work takes place in the field.
10 inhabitants of the Rog factory in Ljubljana and 10 inhabitants of Topolovo (of various age, gender and vocation) utter particular words, connected with strong emotional states, into a microphone using their natural diction and dialect.
The sound designer records these words. The photographer takes pictures of their lips during the utterances, focusing on the abstract in the facial details.
Each of the inhabitants produces a sound using a requisite which has a special meaning to them and is connected with their life in either Ljubljana or Topolovo.
The sound designer records these sounds. The photographer takes pictures of the object, focusing on the abstract in the object.
In Ljubljana and in Topolovo, a sonic composition is created from the recorded sounds by the sound designer following the input given by the participants. The artistic initiative remains under the workshop participants' control.
The photographer creates a visual composition following the input given by the participants.
EXPLANATION
The purpose of the workshop and the audio-visual installation as its result, is the exploration, actualisation and artistic manipulation of the subcoscious emotional responses stored within the sound of language and its environment.
Each separate installation functions as an independant work of art, while the confrontation between them can be used as a foundation for analysis and research.
The participants of the workshop become authors themselves.
INSTALLATION
Two very different locations in two states, inhabited by the same nation, are connected through artistic co-operation. The outcome is a unique work of art, a gift given by one community to another and vice-versa. The result of the workshop are two audio-visual installations named »Harmony of Twin Locations«. A series of abstract photographs is, in the gallery, connected with the sonic environment created by the composition. The gallery thus becomes a tiny excerpt of the emotional, visual and aural landscape of one location realized inside another one.
The forceful emotional charge of the installations is born from the exchange of emotional patterns, patterns which originated from the same roots, were transfigured by spatial and temporal distance, and are now again brought together through means of art.
The differences between the installations are differences between the experiences, lives and surroundings shaping these people – the installations' instruments. These diferrences can be seen and heard, just like the differences between the locations themselves. Thus, the gallery's visitor experiences a passage from the reality of his environment into an alternate space.
Hanna Preuss
Nejc Saje
Jana Wilcoxen
