8-channel Sound Installation.
Dimensions: variable.
Duration: variable.
8-channel audio work. Commissioned by Conaculta for the Library of the Blind at Ciudadela: The City of Books. bajo [tu] clara sombra explores the evocative elements of language as a detonator of experiences and fantasies. Far from the repetition, the piece seeks, through certain words, that the listener, which is inherent characteristic is blindness, find these items as highly verbally evocative. The notion of a sound work consisting of words, appealing to a non-cochlear sonic art practice, is at the center of bajo [tu] clara sombra. Seth Kim-Cohen defines it as noise that works linguistically and therefore is read as much as heard, specially in the sense that the non-cochlear sonic art seeks to replace the strength of the sound object, with the discourse of conceptual sonic practice (Kim-Cohen, 2009: 156, 217). The deconstruction of Octavio Paz’s poem Bajo tu clara sombra (1935-1944) is the origin of this 8-channel sound piece. In which nouns were selected, extracted from the original poem, and later on, in a different order, they all were recorded and randomly reproduced. Every noun was numbered, and each number-from a total of 294-substantives, taken at random, were re-organized in a set of 74 nouns for each of the first two channels, and 73 for each of the two second channels, a 4-channel sound piece that duplicates, the same as the space, in the second floor, as a sonic mirror. Thanks to Taller de Arquitectura/Mauricio Rocha, for the documentation of the space at Ciudadela.
Luz María Sánchez
Transdisciplinary artist exploring the political sphere of violence and power relations through multimedia constructs.