Pólvora, cos, so

Pólvora, cos, so

IVAM / Generalitat Valenciana / Spook / Falla Arrancapins / 2024
curatorship

VAL/CAS/ENG

'Pólvora, cos, so' explores one of the most deeply rooted and characteristic sound manifestations of the Valencian festive territory, the mascletà, with the intention of establishing connections and bridges with other disciplines of sound art in order to exploit all its applicable and applied possibilities.

Noise, as theorized by philosopher and composer John Cage, is or can be a sonic phenomenon with aesthetic value. In fact, pyrotechnician Vicente Caballer defined the mascletà as a symphony of noise. This parallelism serves the project to blur traditional categories of musical compositions and instruments, expanding the boundaries of sound art through a close look at an event like the mascletà, which is part of what composer and theorist Murray Schafer would define as the soundscape of a place. A landscape that is, in this case, a kind of electrical storm of thunder and lightning; A poetry realized through the discourse of fire in a square transformed into a sound chamber, where bodies become an inseparable part of the collective performance.

Thus, based on a sound bank recorded at Pirotecnia Hnos. Caballer with the sounds of the firecrackers that make up this unique composition, a series of meetings are held in different locations throughout Valencia that allow for reflection on sound art and its ritual and popular dimension. These meetings take place at the Spook Disco, at the Falla Arrancapins, and at the IVAM (Valencian National Museum of Art and Culture), and include a series of musical and sound performances, roundtable discussions, and the presentation of a documentary that captures a set of very different perspectives on the subject. To this end, we collaborated with pyrotechnicians, rocket makers, gunpowder artists, sound artists, musicians, DJs, sociologists, and historians.

Performance and production collaborators
Llorenç Barber, Berta Cortina, Martí, Tusa + Revendless, Lucía Gea, Polifeme, Atisbo, Finalversion3

Documentary
Andreu Signes

Graphic design
Fausto Furioso

Documentary collaborators
José Caballer, Iván Llopis, Llorenç Barber, Nuria Martí, Pedro G. Romero, Atisbo, Reyes Martí, Vicente Pla, Vicente Pizcueta, Mª José Lora, Lucía Gea, Sou Allen, Juan García Estellés, José Bravo, Alberto Haller, Beatriu Traver, Finalversion3, Ibán Ramón, Toni Coin, Miguel Molina, Mikel Pagola, Reyes Martí, Edu Comelles

“El futuro de la música: credo.
Creo que el uso del ruido. Dondequiera que estemos, lo que oímos más frecuentemente es ruido. Cuando lo ignoramos, no molesta. Cuando lo escuchamos, lo encontramos fascinante. El sonido de un camión a cincuenta millas por hora. La estática entre emisoras. La lluvia. Queremos capturar y controlar estos sonidos, y usarlos no como efectos sonoros sino como instrumentos musicales. Todo estudio cinematográfico tiene una biblioteca de “efectos sonoros” grabados en cinta. Con un fonógrafo de cinta ahora es posible controlar la amplitud y la frecuencia de cada uno de estos sonidos y darles ritmos dentro o más allá del alcance de la imaginación. Con cuatro fonógrafos de cinta podemos componer e interpretar un cuarteto para motor de explosión, viento, latido del corazón y corrimiento de tierras.”
John Cage, 1937_composer and music theorist

“Una mascletà es una sinfonía de ruido. Es saber hacer del ruido un arte”.
Vicente Caballer_Valencian pyrotechnician

IVAM-SPOOK
Meeting held at the legendary Pinedo nightclub. This venue, opened in 1984, was one of the essential stops on the clubbing circuit of the so-called Ruta Destroy and is part of the clubs located in the Poblats del Sud neighborhoods, which are intertwined along the CV-500 highway along the Albufera coastline. Currently, the club is a benchmark for techno music programming, a genre with a long Valencian tradition in which, like traca popular, rhythm and power predominate. Thus, the sound meeting took place in different parts of the Spook facilities and was divided into a round table discussion with the participation of Mikel Pagola, Reyes Martí, Nuria Martí, Miquel Molina, Edu Comelles and Iván Llopis, as well as listening to sound productions by Finalversion3 and Atisbo and performances by Lucía Gea, all of them made using the sound bank recorded at the Pirotecnia Hnos. Caballer

IVAM-ARRANCAPINS
A sound event held during the Fallas festival at two o'clock in the afternoon at the Falla Arrancapins festival. This Fallas commission has been characterized by its critical nature and social commitment, hosting the local product consumer group and performing acid fallas that stir thought and debate. The sound event was a dialogue between artists Llorenç Barber and Martí, featuring cymbals, bells, smoke, firecrackers, and the digital sound of firecrackers. This popular and performative activity took place directly in the public space as an experimental mascletà produced, in part, using the sound bank recorded at the Pirotecnia Hnos.

IVAM
The project's final sound event took place in the IVAM's Carmen Alborch Auditorium. The documentary directed by Andreu Signes was presented, followed by a performance by the artist Polifeme. This sound artist aims to explore the different paths of musical creation through the combination of electromagnetic waves. Her main line of research has taken on multiple facets, from electromagnetism and the radio waves that surround us. Her creation has evolved to look toward "inner space," at the biological rhythm that moves us and is as primitive as the origin of life. Through the use of electrocardiographs and fetal monitors, she extracts, amplifies, and prints the body's pulse, demonstrating that we are rhythm and exploring the use of the heartbeat as a source for controlling rhythmic devices.