Music for 18 things

 

 

 

In 2006 I presented in Switzerland my audiovisual installation Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos, for which I had built two string instruments similar to a cello and a double bass and I had also composed the music, which surprised some people, since I am neither a musician nor a luthier. But ultimately the final result was a visual work, something I had always done.

 

Years later, I decided to work on a piece that didn't have image as the final result. Something people would not expect from me. Something I knew I was not prepared to do. I decide then to compose a piece of music to be performed by an orchestra with instruments I built myself, questioning what we do with our lives, what we expect from others, or why the first thing we ask when we meet someone is what they do for a living, establishing filters for our social circles.

 

I built the instruments in an unexpected way, questioning also the way we expect things to be, not only the people. I choose to be inspired by the masterpiece of someone I consider to be one of the greatest contemporary composers, Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. In fact I dedicate the work to him, but the work is not the music, nor the instruments, but the fact that I do something I’m not expected to do.

 

As in Reich’s composition, pulse and breathing allude to time and life. The concert begins with a stethoscope with a built in microphone in my chest and my heart beats sounding live, making metronome in the initial part of the work, which is divided into eight sections: pulse, breathing, growth, torment, chaos, harmony, breathing and pulse; drawing an endless circle across being alive, growing and the torment caused by the feeling that growth generates even more questions.

 

Music for 18 things is full of significant elements in my life along the last decades. My expectations, my frustrations and achievements on what I have been doing, what I do and what I still want to do; questioning what we are, with more and more questions each second.

 

 

 

Transcript of the conference to which Luiz Simoes was invited by the Artphilein Foundation in February 2010 in Italy to present the projects Music for 18 things and ViolaMe, to the artists and philosophers participating in the event Il Corpo Violato.