STITCHOMYTHIA - NADIA LAURO & ZEENA PARKINS
Auditório de Serralves
16 DEZ 2018
Guests performers: Volmir Cordeiro, Latifa Laâbissi and Stephen Thompson
The convergence of interests and respective research on the question of the motif and the ways in which it is perceived have led Zeena Parkins and the scenographer Nadia Lauro to jointly develop the visual installation and musical performance ‘Stitchomythia’.‘Stitchomythia’ is an anamorphic carpet designed for performers, whose optical motifs, the topography in anamorphosis - and the perceptual disorder that emanates from them - constitute a musical score unfolded at the scale of the space.
On one hand, ‘Stitchomythia’ follows the paths of ‘Anamorphic Rug’, a visual installation created by Nadia Lauro and inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Shining’, a film in which the Hotel Overlook, the film's main character, becomes a landscape, a threat, an organism. Lauro snatches the famous geometric carpet from the film’s original fiction and re-thinks it in a space even more constrained than that of the corridors of the hotel. A fictional shift that builds a trompe-l'oeil topography. The two-dimensional carpet gives the uncanny illusion of folds, hollows, waves, hills and ground movements. An anamorphic fiction, this carpet constitutes an optical device governed by the laws of "the art of the secret perspective". Lauro created two versions of this device, first for ‘Augures’ of E.Huynh and then for ‘Chut’ of F. de Chaillé, resulting in a perceptive ambiguity for the viewer, between the visual illusion of a landscape in relief and the bi-dimensional reality on which the performers evolve.
On the other hand, ‘Stitchomythia’ relates to ‘Lace’, an ongoing project that Zeena Parkins begun in 2008, based on a collection of lace fragments from, to date: Scotland, Turkey, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France. It is a multi-movement composition for improvisers, that proposes lace as a score which viewed from varied distances is perceived as picture, with patterns flip-flopping between near and far illusionary points of view. The result is a multitude of readings suggested by the shapes of the patterns e by the patterns of the shapes - here juxtaposed, layered, overlapped, adjacencies side stepped; actions forming and re-forming, with the supreme joy and possible grounding orientation of the groove. Here is a loop/in a loop/in a loop, a picture of itself, within itself, mise en abyme; shapes to gesture, a gossamer web sounding.
‘Stitchomythia’ offers a space / partition disquiet in its extreme visibility, oscillating between dangerous obsession and bewitchment.
Image: Stitchomythia © Nadia Lauro
Nadia Lauro Zeena Parkins As a visual artist and set designer, Nadia Lauro has been developing her work for several decades in various contexts (scenic spaces, landscape architectures, museums). She has conceived set designs, environments, and visual installations with strong dramaturgical power, thus generating new ways of seeing and being together.Nadia Lauro has collaborated with the following international choreographers and performers: Vera Mantero, Benoît Lachambre, Frans Poelstra, Barbara Kraus, Emmanuelle Huynh, Fanny de Chaillé, Alain Buffard, Antonija Livingstone, Latifa Laabissi, Jonathan Capdevielle, Laeticia Dosh, and with Jennifer Lacey with whom she co-authored numerous projects. She recieved a New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessie) for her visual installation in $Shot (Lacey/Lauro/Parkins/Cornell). In 1998 she founded Squash Cake Bureau with the architect Laurence Cremel to develop landscape design and urban furniture projects. She also designed concerts (Cocorosie, Gaspard Yurkévitch, Dani Siciliano)She has conceived the installations / performances: "Tu montes", "As Atletas", "I hear voices", and has developed scripted environments in museums, theater houses, and art galleries in Europe, Japan, and Korea.For the 4th edition of the New Festival at the Centre Pompidou, she has presented "La Clairière" (Fanny de Chaillé / Nadia Lauro), an immersive visual environment designed to hear "Khhhhhhh", Imaginary and Invented Languages. Since 2014, Nadia Lauro is associate artist to the Extension Sauvage Festival (Latifa Laabissi / Figure Project).
Zeena Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer, improviser and pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance. Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity often within multi-channel environments: architectural, emotional, topographical, and social.Commissions include: Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Sudwestrundfunk, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, 3 Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance, DAAD Fellowship, Shifting Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA Fellowship, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. Residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Rauschenberg Residency, Civitella Ranieri/Umbertide, Montalvo, Oxford University/The Ruskin School.Collaborations on performances/recordings include: Bjork, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, William Winant, Nate Wooley, Nels Cline, Bobby Previte, Mick Barr, Mary Halvorson, Brian Chase, Leila Bourdreuil, Yuka C. Honda, Okkyung Lee, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone, Pauline Oliveros, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Myra Melford, and Miya Masaoka.Parkins is Distinguished Visiting Artist at Mills College in Oakland, California.
The convergence of interests and respective research on the question of the motif and the ways in which it is perceived have led Zeena Parkins and the scenographer Nadia Lauro to jointly develop the visual installation and musical performance ‘Stitchomythia’.‘Stitchomythia’ is an anamorphic carpet designed for performers, whose optical motifs, the topography in anamorphosis - and the perceptual disorder that emanates from them - constitute a musical score unfolded at the scale of the space.
On one hand, ‘Stitchomythia’ follows the paths of ‘Anamorphic Rug’, a visual installation created by Nadia Lauro and inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Shining’, a film in which the Hotel Overlook, the film's main character, becomes a landscape, a threat, an organism. Lauro snatches the famous geometric carpet from the film’s original fiction and re-thinks it in a space even more constrained than that of the corridors of the hotel. A fictional shift that builds a trompe-l'oeil topography. The two-dimensional carpet gives the uncanny illusion of folds, hollows, waves, hills and ground movements. An anamorphic fiction, this carpet constitutes an optical device governed by the laws of "the art of the secret perspective". Lauro created two versions of this device, first for ‘Augures’ of E.Huynh and then for ‘Chut’ of F. de Chaillé, resulting in a perceptive ambiguity for the viewer, between the visual illusion of a landscape in relief and the bi-dimensional reality on which the performers evolve.
On the other hand, ‘Stitchomythia’ relates to ‘Lace’, an ongoing project that Zeena Parkins begun in 2008, based on a collection of lace fragments from, to date: Scotland, Turkey, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and France. It is a multi-movement composition for improvisers, that proposes lace as a score which viewed from varied distances is perceived as picture, with patterns flip-flopping between near and far illusionary points of view. The result is a multitude of readings suggested by the shapes of the patterns e by the patterns of the shapes - here juxtaposed, layered, overlapped, adjacencies side stepped; actions forming and re-forming, with the supreme joy and possible grounding orientation of the groove. Here is a loop/in a loop/in a loop, a picture of itself, within itself, mise en abyme; shapes to gesture, a gossamer web sounding.
‘Stitchomythia’ offers a space / partition disquiet in its extreme visibility, oscillating between dangerous obsession and bewitchment.
Image: Stitchomythia © Nadia Lauro
Nadia Lauro Zeena Parkins As a visual artist and set designer, Nadia Lauro has been developing her work for several decades in various contexts (scenic spaces, landscape architectures, museums). She has conceived set designs, environments, and visual installations with strong dramaturgical power, thus generating new ways of seeing and being together.Nadia Lauro has collaborated with the following international choreographers and performers: Vera Mantero, Benoît Lachambre, Frans Poelstra, Barbara Kraus, Emmanuelle Huynh, Fanny de Chaillé, Alain Buffard, Antonija Livingstone, Latifa Laabissi, Jonathan Capdevielle, Laeticia Dosh, and with Jennifer Lacey with whom she co-authored numerous projects. She recieved a New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessie) for her visual installation in $Shot (Lacey/Lauro/Parkins/Cornell). In 1998 she founded Squash Cake Bureau with the architect Laurence Cremel to develop landscape design and urban furniture projects. She also designed concerts (Cocorosie, Gaspard Yurkévitch, Dani Siciliano)She has conceived the installations / performances: "Tu montes", "As Atletas", "I hear voices", and has developed scripted environments in museums, theater houses, and art galleries in Europe, Japan, and Korea.For the 4th edition of the New Festival at the Centre Pompidou, she has presented "La Clairière" (Fanny de Chaillé / Nadia Lauro), an immersive visual environment designed to hear "Khhhhhhh", Imaginary and Invented Languages. Since 2014, Nadia Lauro is associate artist to the Extension Sauvage Festival (Latifa Laabissi / Figure Project).
Zeena Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer, improviser and pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance. Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity often within multi-channel environments: architectural, emotional, topographical, and social.Commissions include: Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Sudwestrundfunk, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, 3 Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance, DAAD Fellowship, Shifting Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA Fellowship, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. Residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Rauschenberg Residency, Civitella Ranieri/Umbertide, Montalvo, Oxford University/The Ruskin School.Collaborations on performances/recordings include: Bjork, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, William Winant, Nate Wooley, Nels Cline, Bobby Previte, Mick Barr, Mary Halvorson, Brian Chase, Leila Bourdreuil, Yuka C. Honda, Okkyung Lee, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone, Pauline Oliveros, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Myra Melford, and Miya Masaoka.Parkins is Distinguished Visiting Artist at Mills College in Oakland, California.
