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Nakedness, fragility, vulnerability, should cause us sadness, sorrow or at least compassion. Specialy when talking not about bodies; but about the nakedness of thought. The most intimate we have, what really makes us individuals. The belly In the center of this bag of wishes and dreams that we are, where we digest, where we engender, we all have a scar. Silver gelatine on cotton paper. 65 x 170 cm. Fear My nephew Lucas, me and my uncle Luiz Simoes Platinum on cotton paper. 70x160 cm Three self-portraits for my concrete head Self-portraits in silver gelatin on concrete sculptures with my glasses from the last decades and acrylic on wood. 40x90x25 cm Three pairs of chairs One silver gelatine on coton paper and two Silver gelatine on transparent acrylic overlapped. 50x55x5 cm Nudes and Vunerable Silver gelatin in cathode ray tubes of mini TVs over acrylic on wood. 60x20x8 cm Sense cap ni peus without rhyme or reason Pigmented inkjet and acrylic varnish on canvas. 130x170 cm No body Silver gelatine on cotton paper in a bath. 70x170x13 cm Clothes Silver gelatine on cotton paper, oxidised iron framed. 105x180 cm De un polvo vienes y al polvo volverás (From a fuck you come and to dust you shall return) Terracotta, metal dust, pigmented inkjet and varnish on canvas. Oxidised iron framed. 102x197 cm Work in progress Paradigm Three vintage slide projectors, digital control unit, software, sound, and nine black and white slides Home

ViolaMe , left wall - Iron oxide and hidroxide and terracotta in acrylic medium on canvas 5,2 x 2 m. ViolaMe Someday a first human probably said, "This cave is mine". For quite a long time I‘ve been thinking about the idea that violence is not a natural characteristic of humans, as many people say, but it comes as a reaction, facing an unwanted circumstance. When philosophers Luca De Pietri and Giorgio Palma invited me to the event Il Corpo Violato (Violated Body), promoted by ArtPhilein Foundation, in Italy, I felt it was the catalyser of a long-standing project, a video installation in which a character is invaded in his space, bough physically and culturally. The relation between music and culture led me to the idea of merging the name of a musical instrument and the word violence. This was the beginning of ViolaMe (Violate me). El Cosa (The thing) is a character who doesn't matter, who represents no one. His face is white and flat, characterless, and he inhabits an environment permeated by hes presence. Like a chamber, this room is made up of three large-format paintings that represent it's walls. Using oxidized iron plates, I stamped marks and shapes onto the canvas, and with terracotta, I engraved marks of my own body on the paintings, which are then coated with iron oxide, to the point of nearly disappearing. Four people enter this space pushing a piano, creating a wall that divides the cell in two sides. Noticing the presence of El Cosa on the other side, the invaders begin piling books on top of the piano, building an even higher barrier with their culture. Then they bring in three chairs and three violas, and begin tuning their instruments. Feeling invaded, El Cosa expresses his discontent with the situation but, unable to establish a dialogue, he rejects the invasion by destroying the elements that represent it.. His aggressive behavior, in cresciendo, leading him to feelings of pain and sorrow for himself and for his aggressor, is my main concern in ViolaMe, the involuntariness and sadness contained in violence and the apathy of modern society in the face of it. Transcribed from the conference held in Italy on February 7, 2010 when Luiz Simoes was invited by Artphilein Foundation to introduce his projects ViolaMe and Music for 18 things to other artists and philosophers participating in the event Il Corpo Violato. Making of ViolaMe - video 8 minutes The composition Trío for violas and absent piano invites to reflect on the self complacency and ethnocentrism in which we sometimes fall, not only in Western culture but in all others. In the context of the installation ViolaMe, it refers to the contrast created when we shut ourselves in our own values, our own alienation and it becomes a mask that inhibits us from acting and being coherent. The piece is built on a harmonic pattern that is repeated constantly and over which draws a melodic and melancholic line. The central part of the piece allude to contrapuntal procedures that represent the search for roots in the past but, being not resolved in the present, return to the initial pattern, constant, obsessive and distant. Iván Lorenzana Composer 00:00 / 07:08 ViolaMe - complet work. Video - 7 minutes Supported by Home

and to dust you shall return …and to dust you shall return is a recently started project in which I am using, as pigments for a series of paintings, earths, sands and crushed stones that I have been collecting for decades in places I have traveled throughout my life. Although it is quite advanced conceptually and formally, it is still in the initial phase of production. BPS - Sahara sand, graphite and titanium dioxide on linen. 130 x 81 cm. Wandering through this immense desert, day after day I camp wherever I am when the magic hour of twilight approaches. The deep blues give way to reds, lilacs, greys, and black. In the most profound isolation I have ever known, I prepare my dinner, listen to my music, write, and contemplate the most majestic and bewildering of all skies, which crushes me down on Earth and fills me with a deep sense of insignificance. Like every grain of sand in this vast desert, how tiny and insignificant we are in the Cosmos. Algeria, Winter solstice 1988 ETHER - audiovisual installation for 4 slide projectors, light and smoke, projected onto the painting "My plans". 5.2 x 1.95 m ETHER From Latin æthēr and Greek aithēr: sky, firmament, the pure and bright air above. In Sanskrit "akasha", the fifth element, the space in which everything exists, which does not have the firmness of the earth, the freshness of water, the heat of fire, nor the movement of air... The Luminiferous Ether, which the ancients believed to fill the entire dark cosmos and allow light to travel. The very essence of void. Void, in which I find myself, and leads me to the unanswerable question... “the primordial nothingness”, prior to matter, to energy and to everything we have understood or invented. “The nothingness” that redeems me, that places me in my condition of dust, into which everything shall return. That shows me the nonsense of the whole and the whole sense of my brief existence, at peace with our smallness, with our irrelevance, our finitude and free from the search for eternity. Khumbu, December 2024 Home

When photography loses one of its historical roles, preserving the past, and becomes a social tool for showing the present, Frozen proposes a reflection on what we have had, what we have dreamed of, what we no longer have, and what we can preserve or rescue from our ideals and our human relationships. In the early 1980s, I received samples from Kodak of a new film, developed specifically for technical and scientific purposes. I conducted several experiments, and the image definition was the best I had ever seen, but the contrast was exaggerated, and even using ultra-compensating processes, I couldn't achieve the tonal richness I was looking for. Years later, Kodak developed a specific developer for pictorial applications with this film. Trying it put an end to my chemical experiments. Everything I had always sought in sharpness and tonal richness was there. Probably, the Kodak scientists had developed their developer based on the same principles I had been experimenting with. Phenidone as developing agent, sodium sulfite as an antioxidant, and benzotriazole as an anti-fog agent, but their results were better than mine. That was a turning point in my relationship with photography and made me rethink what I was looking for in it, beyond technique and science. When Kodak discontinued this film, I bought all rolls and plates available in stores in Barcelona. Knowing that at minus 20 Celsius the aging of black and white photographic emulsions stops, I left them in my freezer, as a relic waiting for a special occasion. Although film cameras will continue to exist, I decided to build a camera myself to use these films, as a metaphor for the effort to preserve or rescue what we cherish. A decade had passed when my friend, Manoel Morgado, and I decided to live out our long-held dream of a winter trek in the Himalayas, walking on the frozen Zanzkar River. In January, the riverbed freezes over, transforming it into the winter route used by the Zanzkaris for centuries. It was time to defrost the film, thaw the old dream, and almost freeze ourselves at thirty degrees below zero inside a narrow, shadowy Himalayan canyon. The film was intact, the dream still alive, the friendship still going strong. But actually, the first time I took my relic out of the freezer was when my friend Pepe Font de Mora and I went on a bicycle trip through the Sahara. It was 2008; Pepe and I hadn't seen each other in a decade, but our friendship was alive and that old dream was bigger than ever. However, the only photograph I took on that trip was about the failure of a dream. In 1988, during my long journey through the Sahara, I met a young Nigerian man on his way to Europe. The little he carried was his family's savings, invested in the dream that he would have a better life and one day be able to help them. Twenty years later, a tiny white dot on the sand caught our attention and we left our drawn straight compass line to check it... a human body, partially decomposed, lay eternally in that vast emptiness. Around him, there was no backpack, no bag, not even a simple water bottle... just a pair of shoes left a few meters behind. The last thing he had discarded. A deep feeling of sadness washed over me, at the thought that, in the absence of news, someone might be struggling between the feeling of having been forgotten or the pain of having lost a loved one. How fortunate we are, that things and even dreams or friendships can be frozen in time and rescued again. But how small we are, knowing that life cannot be frozen. Perhaps, for that, some pretend to "freeze the moment", as they say in photography. I've never had that expectation. Frozen nº 1. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 2. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 3. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 4. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 5. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 6. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 7. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 54 cm. Frozen nº 8. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 45 cm. Frozen nº 9. Platinum on cotton paper - 80 x 54 cm. Frozen. Video 2 min. Emptiness. Silver gelatin photograph on baryt paper and Saharan sand in a wooden box. 60 x 28 cm. Home

SymmetroS Everything we see, everything that exists... from ourselves to a grain of dust in a faraway, galaxy... everything is formed by the same. In an infinite period of time, for us, a bit more than a hundred chemical elements had been creating in a random process of innumerable combinations, everything we know, everything we don’t yet know. The organic forms are, doubtless, the most complex of those countless creations. Life is the most extraordinary that could be created by this eternal movement of such small pieces. “A-tomos”, unsplittable we called them when we first intuited their existence. SymmetroS, from inside me to the exterior, is my conscious participation in this search. Finding the organic, the alive, the human in what forms it… in what we actually are… a simple organization of the same pieces that form all the other things around us. From me to inside me, it is the acceptation that we are so little, so insignificant, although so splendorous. Kander Silver gelatin on cotton paper sulphur toned. 100x87 cm Favaritx nº 1 Silver gelatin on cotton paper sulphur toned. 100x38 cm Favaritx nº 2 Silver gelatin on cotton paper Iron toned. 100x63 cm Karakorum Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x62 cm Darcha Sundo Silver gelatin on cotton paper sulphur toned. 100x69 cm Arenitus Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x63 cm Dolomitus Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x63 cm Pumo-Ri Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x63 cm Cho-la Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x63 cm Pang Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x65 cm Itatiaia Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x83 cm Gnozumpa Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium and gold toned. 100x87 cm Hunza Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x42 cm Tso Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x75 cm Gokyo Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x84 cm Kander . Gelatina de plata virada al sufuro. 100 x 42 cm. Khumbu Silver gelatin on cotton paper sulphur toned. 100x77 cm Body Karbu Silver gelatin on cotton paper sulphur toned. 100x62 cm Kala Patar Silver gelatin on cotton paper selenium toned. 100x55 cm SymmetroS at the Brasilea Foundation. Switzerland, May/June 2006. Excerpts from Sofia Gubaidulina's concert on the closing evening of the exhibition, with the composer present. Home

Khumbu narrates my first trip to the Himalayas, the last four months of a long journey of more than three years, in which everything I was doing represented for me a kind of learning, a preparation for reaching Khumbu; the highest, as its very meaning suggests in Sherpa. The manuscript became a book project, which was never published, but will be released soon. One hundred thousand? One million? How many years would pass before everything we had built collapsed and, slowly, the earth and weeds covered everything, forever erasing every trace of our species' fleeting presence on the planet? Zaoutallaz is a futuristic novel born from this question, which arose in my mind during my solitary bicycle journey of almost five thousand kilometers through the Algerian Sahara in 1989, when I spotted that rusty bus among a sea of brown rocks, and began to imagine a depopulated Earth and a small group of survivors and their reflections on extinct humanity. The manuscripts I wrote during my journey became, in the following years, a novel that was never published, but soon will be. Catalogue of the SymmetroS Exhibition at the Brasilea Foundation, Switzerland, 2006. 36 pages, four-color printing on semi-matte coated paper, with texts in German, English and Spanish. Available in physical and PDF format. Catalogue of the exhibition "VERTIDOS and THINGS" at the Blanca Berlín Gallery in Madrid, 2008. 44 pages, six-color printing on semi-matte coated paper, with texts in English and Spanish. Available in phisical and PDF format. Catalogue of the VERTIDOS Exhibition at the Brasilea Foundation, Switzerland, 2006. 28 pages, six-color printing on semi-matte coated paper, with texts in German, English and Spanish. Available in physical and PDF format. DVD of the project Music for 18 Things , featuring the complete work recorded live at the La Fontana Auditorium in Barcelona. It also includes video interviews and a 16-page booklet with photos and texts about the project. Available in physical and downloadable digital formats. Audio CD with the music from Eva, Adam and Things and improvisations on the theme. Includes a brochure with photos and texts. It also includes the theme from Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos and the first encounter of cellist Ivan Lorenzana with the Basuróphonos. Few copies available. 01 Eva Adan y las cosas 00:00 / 13:47 02 Improvisación sobre el tema 00:00 / 03:32 07 Primer encuentro de Ivan con los Basuróphonos 00:00 / 01:08 09 Réquiem para dos Basuróphonos 00:00 / 08:51 Home

OXIDE It is a beautiful yet simple reflection that a tree grows in two directions. The crown is beautiful, and the roots invisible. What we see, often comes from what is deep, dark, and hidden. The metaphor of oxidation as starting point might seem absurd. We usually associate it with aging, wear and tear, the passage of time. But oxidation should lead us to reflect on what is needed for something to oxidize, and the answer is obvious: oxygen. However, there was a long period in which our atmosphere was toxic and inhospitable to life, until the first living beings began to transform that primitive Precambrian atmosphere, filling it with oxygen through photosynthesis. Therefore, for something to oxidize, it was necessary that something to be born, to exist, in the deepest sense that the word existence can have. A rock, or even the universe as we know it, will cease to exist one day, but being aware of this finitude transforms us into restless reflective beings, full of unanswerable questions, filled with a thirst for knowledge. Óxido is a second interpretation of my most fundamental reflection, which is present throughout my work: existence. It is an extension of my previous project, “Tempo,” begun in 2006 and still unfinished. While “Tempo” is photography and deals with irreversibility, through the idea of photographing with cameras built for a specific situation and which have only a single plate of film, where there is no second chance; “Óxido” is painting, changeable throughout the entire process, from the first to the last line, brushstroke, or shape. It is the desire to believe that yes, we can and must intervene, create destiny, and make our brief existence the moment and place to be and to give our best. Everything has a beginning, everything has an end. To create is to minimize the anguish of knowing this. Perhaps it is a way of not suffering because of it, through reflection, in processes that are like dark and underground roots, invisible to others, but that nourish and shape what we make visible through our thoughts. El Bardo - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and Double Bass Strings on canvas on wood. 300 x 180 cm Paradise, heaven, hell, purgatory, bardo, these are concepts present in various cultures. The search for meaning, for destiny, a place for eternity. El Bardo is my reflection on the idea that this place is right here, in our simple and limited existence; where our dreams, our ideals, our dramas and conflicts, our questions and our lack of answers, our frustrations and achievements, our effort to be the best we can be, all reside. El Bardo is perhaps the best I've painted to date, possibly the closest result to what I'm aiming for, perhaps one of my works that best represents this moment in my life, so full of true love for what I do and for people who inhabit my life. Over it floats the feeling that much remains to be done; the eternal "And what's yet to come!" while we're here. Empathy - Iron oxide and hydroxide and iron shavings on canvas on wood with magnets. 88 x 100 cm Óxido Nº. 1 - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and oxidized iron on canvas on wood. 70 x 70 cm Óxido Nº. 2 - Iron oxide and hydroxide and oxidized wire on canvas on wood. 110 x 70 cm Óxido Nº. 3 - Iron oxide and hydroxide, bass string and oxidized iron on canvas on wood. 110 x 70 cm Popocatépetl - Volcanic ash and iron oxide on canvas on wood. 120 x 35 cm Espectróxido - Iron plates, iron oxide and hydroxide, and piano strings on canvas on wood. 150 x 97 cm Espectróxido invertido - Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 150 x 97 cm The Tightrope - Iron oxide, broken abrasive disc on canvas and piano string on iron grid. 64 x 43 cm The Box - Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings in an iron box. Sound/sensory installation 230 x 150 x 180 cm Museo Internacional del Barroco, Puebla - México. October / November 2024 Guided tour of the OXIDE exhibition, November 2024 Supported by Home

Luiz Simoes contemporary artist and to dust you shall return Oxide What are you doing the rest of your life PROST Music for 18 things ViolaMe VERTIDOS Things Tempo 10 Tríptics Frozen SymmetroS Silent escape

Things We have accumulated knowledge, formulated theories, and found possible explanations for some of the fundamental questions. We have even created gods in our own image and likeness, but we still think and act homocentrically, believing that the entire universe, with its billions of galaxies made up of their billions or trillions of stars, circles around us. As if everything belonged to us, as if we could do anything with everything, as if we were the greatest thing. But... above all, many things or few things is not a big deal. Something strange is that anything or something has something to do with an other thing. There’s nothing else to think, that’s life... kid’s stuff, grown-up stuff, and if not, well, on to something else. But, would you believe it! In something like a minute ago, I had never seen anything like this. Everything in its place; home things, the public thing, things we share... everything or few things. As if nothing happened, what a pointless thing... Don’t we have anything more important to do? It's a matter of patience, but that's a different thing. Craze thing! Oh, isn't that something! What a thing! What? What a weird idea! Well... that's my business. Luiz Simoes, 2009 By Diana Gort - 10th Havana Biennial Every story is contained within language*1 , within the word; that which constructs for us an entire symbolic imaginary in which we exist: we do not create language, language creates us*2 . We exist to the extent that we are named, to the extent that we construct, more fully and effectively, the space of narrative: time. Babylon, with its brick buildings and temples that rose like unfinished pyramids *3, saw in a single language a first step toward world domination. One of its legends says that there the gods were frightened by the arrogance of men, who threatened them even in their celestial homes. And indeed, our relationship with the world has always been bipolar. Good-bad, ugly-beautiful, subject and object, us and the other, us and things. Things . This is the title of the exhibition that Luiz Simoes presents at the 10th Havana Biennial. Born in Brazil and a naturalized Spanish, he abandoned his biology studies to pursue photography. He currently uses diverse techniques and works on conceptual projects that take years to conceive and realize, ultimately resulting in tangible objects. Everything I do is a reflection on existence, on how fragile and irreversible everything is. This is my primary question and is present throughout my work *4. Things, moreover, is the fruit of the artist's years of travel and his commitment to understanding the world holistically, perhaps due to his scientific background*5 . In this series of four pieces, Plasticosa, Electronicosa, Eve, Adam and Things, and What Thing? , the artist questions our relevance in the universe: we are so arrogant and anthropocentric that we create God in our own image and likeness*6. Things is a bird's-eye view, but one that includes himself, where Simoes sees us as small components of a great machine, as in the work Electronicosa . It is a narrative told through language, from a concept developed over years, of the history of humankind, which not only refers us to Babel as a metaphor for homocentrism but also to the Know thyself that the Oracle of Delphi told Aristotle or Gauguin's Who are we, where do we come from, and where are we going? Things questions humanity, the human who is also a thing. From the moment we name ourselves, from the moment we ask ourselves who we are, where we come from, and where we are going, we are also an object, another thing among things. The human being, what thing? 1 - Alberto Abreu Arcia. The Games of Writing or the (Re)writing of History. Casa de las Américas Prize 2007, artistic-literary essay. Havana 2 - Martin Heidegger. Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry. University of Havana 3 - Introduction to Exodus. Latin American Bible 4 - Luiz Simoes. Dossier Tempo 5 - Pepe Font de Mora. About Luiz Simoes 6 - Luiz Simoes. Interview during the 10th Havana Biennial For English Para Español Para português Per l'Italiano Für Deutsch En français 日本語で聞く場合は、 ¿Qué cosa? (What?) 36 telephones that belonged to a police station, 36 images stolen on the streets with a phone and mounted on plexiglass, acrylic ink, voice and electronic circuitry, in a oxidized iron box. 14x95x185 cm Electronicosa Duratrans on Plexiglas over electronic circuit boards in light box. 21x120x234 cm Plasticosa Duratrans on plexiglass over my plastic waste from a year and acrylic paint in a light box. 13x90x234 cm Eve, Adam and Things Video of a choreographed dance with music for Basuróphonos, female vocals, a handsaw, and percussion, on a 32-inch screen with a oxidizaed iron frame. 10 minutes on a loop. 13x90x120 cm Making of Eva Adán y las cosas - video 2 min. Dialogue between spermatozoa and egg Musical performance for balloon with microphone, 2 string instruments and pre-recorded voices. 5:15 min. 00:00 / 05:15 Intruder Zone. Things Curated by Andrea Aguado The Zona intrusa project aims to bring contemporary art closer to the educational community, through works by guest artists created in collaboration with students from various schools. The project's curator, Andrea Aguado, wanted to explore the world of things, the objects that surround us, arguing that today we have forgotten how to engage with them because, mesmerized by screens and the universe of information and communication, we no longer see things and have simply found a way to assimilate them. Things are just things and there are things in life that aren't just things, things I wouldn't trade for anything. Front: Silver gelatin print on canvas / Back: Polyurethane, iron pigments, and broken bicycle frame. 90x146 cm Kid's stuff Toy guns, polyurethane, iron oxide and hydroxide on canvas. 90x146x19 cm Banana gelatin on plate urine toned Silver gelatin on paper gold toned. 49x59 cm Tenth Havana Biennial, 2009 Blanca Berlin Gallery. Madrid, 2008 Making of Las cosas - video 2 min. Home

PROST Kunsthalle Museumsquartier , Vienna. March 2012 Joan Miró Foundation , Barcelona. March/June 2015 By Luiz Simoes and Sabina Simón Still flowing through the Universe, the 160.2GHz electromagnetic wave called the Cosmic Background Radiation is supposedly the echo of the Big Bang. We usually associate the idea of echo with the aftermath of something, but we rarely conceive of it as something prior, as the cause of a new drama that evokes a new reverberation, producing, perhaps, another state and so on. An expanding universe on its way to a new collapse is part of an "evolutionary freedom" that perhaps only in the Downfall will find a way to reborn. Kunsthalle - Museumsquartier . Vienna, March 2012 Joan Miró Foundation . Barcelona, March/June 2015 At a vernissage, guests are drinking glasses of wine (the glass as metaphor for celebration, climax, happiness). In the centre of the room, a glass table with four speakers positioned at the corners is suspended by four steel cables. The speakers reproduce the pleasant sound of resonating glasses. This harmonious sound begins to increase in volume, disturbing the guests. At this point, a warning is heard over the loudspeaker. Your attention please. We inform you that your glass may explode in your hand at any moment. We suggest you leave it on the table. Keeping holding it is up to you and at your own risk. No one will take any responsibility on this. People begin placing their glasses on the table, and the sound shatters some glasses near the speakers. The table, loaded with glasses, slowly begins to rise, pulled by the steel cables. The sound intensifies, and high above, the glass plate, unable to withstand, breaks down. The enormous cascade of broken glasses onto a black wooden board coated with polyester resin, positioned at the impact point. As the resin solidifies, the bright glass fragments stick to the black surface, a metaphor for a new universe, containing order and entropy. PROST Vienna , 2012 - Polyester resin, glass and wine glasses on black stained wood. 210 x 130 cm PROST Barcelona, 2015 - Polyester resin, glass and wine glasses on black stained wood. 260 x 160 cm Small-scale technical rehearsal Support Home

Joan Miró Foundation . Barcelona, 2019 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. Interview, 8 minute video Complete work, video 24 minutes Basuróphonos Basso, Mezzo and da Gamba 00:00 / 00:30 Basso and Baritone Tubophonos 00:00 / 00:38 The Crappycordio 00:00 / 00:27 The Hammer 00:00 / 00:08 Maracalata 00:00 / 00:36 Violoca Vidriáphono 00:00 / 00:08 The voice Tormentophone 00:00 / 00:16 The Wheel 00:00 / 00:19 My heart 00:00 / 00:22 Recording session. La Fontana Auditorium. Barcelona, June 2011 Premiere at the Espace Theater. Italy, 2010 International Museum Day. ARTIUM Museum, Vitoria 2011 Excerpts from essays and the presentation at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, on November 16, 2019, in the context of the exhibition Sound Art? - Video 6 minutes Supported by Home

Barcelona +34 619333724 Calle Santa Madrona, 15 Local 9 - Barcelona Rio +5521 974555159 Rua 16, nº28 / 2 Praia de Itaipuaçu. Maricá - Rio de Janeiro luiz@luizsimoes.com www.luizsimoes.com Home