ViolaMe - Pared izquierda. Óxido de Hierro y terracota en medio acrílico sobre tela. 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.
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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 it inhabits an environment permeated by its 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, 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 his aggressor, is my main concern in Viola-Me, the involuntariness and sadness contained in violence and the apathy of modern society in the face of it.
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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 minutos
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.
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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.
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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
ViolaMe - obra completa. Video - 7 minutos
Apoyo
