Programme:

Emergency Solos (1974/75)

With Clara Saleiro (flute)

Nine Magnetic Places (1917)

For electromagnetic sounds

Wien Landstraße (1916/17),

For string quartet and electromagnetic sounds,

with Mariana Moita (violin), Francisco Lourenço (viola), Gonçalo Lélis (cello), Jorge Paredes (double bass)

Emergency Solos, is a series of recitals created by Christina Kubisch between 1974 and 1975 after finishing her flute studies. These pieces involve, for example, playing the flute with boxing gloves, a gas mask, a condom and thimbles.

We can perceive Emergency Solos as the artist's personal break with the conventions that dictated what a composer and musician should be and produce according to the western lineage of classical music and the canons of the avant-garde departing from it. The objects used and the fact that Kubisch would play the pieces herself revealed a personal urgency to challenge the pervading male dominance. These pieces were clearly framed by conventions of music concerts to inscribe them with a critical position, and a touch of irony. Even so, Emergency Solos eludes disciplinary categorizations. If, on the one hand, they are linked to music, on the other hand, we find in them references to performance art, as well as the production of images and a sculptural approach to the instrument that points towards visual arts. This positioning between disciplines will be extensively explored by Kubisch and is also a characteristic of the heterogeneous and shifting field called Sound Art, of which Kubisch is considered a pioneer.

We can also verify that these solos present some singular traits that we can understand as embryonic of a continued exploration of performativity. From the outset, the emphasis on a sensorial and sensual dimension, which here appears linked to the approach to the instrument and listening, and which we see more deeply explored in the experience that her installations and walks offer to visitors and listeners. The integration of the audience into the work is another aspect that should be highlighted. The confrontation with the public is an integral part of Emergency Solos, as are the decisions and movements of the public in the case of installations such as The Greenhouse, which we can currently visit in Serralves.

In the 1980s, Christina Kubisch abandoned the stages to dedicate herself mainly to work with sound installations. The return to concerts happened more recently, but without going on stage. It arises from an emphasis on the musical dimension made possible by the numerous field recordings made in incursions into the world of electromagnetic waves, equipped with her special headphones that allow access, through technology she herself developed, to a world of sound created by light, wireless communication systems, radars, security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, navigation systems, ATMs, advertising neons, etc. our lives.

These sounds are more musical than one might expect. They form complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, clusters of small signals, long drones, among many other sounds difficult to describe. Some are similar all over the world. Others are city or country specific and not found elsewhere.

In addition to integrating some of Kubisch’s installations, these sounds are also the basis for compositions released on record (Five Electrical Walks (2007), Magnetic Flights (2011) or Tesla's Dream (2017), among others) and presented live in electroacoustic spatializations.

This is the case with Nine Magnetic Places and Wien Landstraße. The latter is based on electromagnetic sounds recorded by Kubisch in Vienna’s underground station of the same name. In this piece, soundscapes of this place (very different from what we hear in a subway station with just our bare ears) meet a string quartet that plays a composition based on fragments of recordings of pieces by composer Carola Bauckholt. It is a strange encounter, with tensions and harmonies that arise between these two realities: that of musical performance with acoustic string instruments and that of the electromagnetic sound world.