Entrevista ao artista Norte-Americano Steve Peters, no contexto da residência artística “Divina Sonus Ruris” organizada pela Binaural/Nodar em 2011 e dedicada aos sons do sagrado no maciço da Gralheira São Pedro do Sul.
Steve Peters, oriundo do Seattle (estado de Washington) fala do processo de trabalho que coincidiu na sua peça final, o qual envolveu a visita a cemitérios das aldeias, a igrejas e capelas locais, concebendo um género de hino contemporâneo com reminiscências ligadas cânticos dos mosteiros medievais.
00:23 [project]I don’t know this project yet…. I don’t know the name of this project yet.
00:31 [Project] [Graveyards] [Ancestors] [Chapels]There are many different layers to this project. I visited many graveyards in the local villages here and wrote down names of people who were buried there. And so there are voices reciting this names of ancestors who have been here and passed down their knowledge about this place, and then there are lists of other things that live here: trees, plants, animals, insects and birds, fish and there are other voices giving the names of all of those other people who live here, and then there are the beautiful bells that I recorded in many of the village’s chapels, and there are environmental recordings of different times of the day, the work is based on ? hours,
01:44 [Monasteries] [Hymns] [Latin]In monasteries there are certain times of day when certain hymns, songs are sang or said, so I tried to do recordings of different times of day in different places, and then there are the Latin names of the various fauna and flora being song by Manuela Barile
02:09 [Site-specific] [Installation] [Nodar]The work will be presented as a site-specific installation in the small chapel here in Nodar. The 4 channel surround piece, 4.1 sub-woofer. The very beautiful chapel very humble simple place….seems like a good place to have the work.
02:38[Church] [Latin] A couple of years ago I did a project in a beautiful church in New Mexico, in the United States, and it envolved this thing of singing the Latin names endangered species in New Mexico in that case. And it also involved people describing very great detailed places that they felt a deep personal connection to. And so when I saw the proposal .. the ? proposal to this residency I thought I could make some variations on that piece, it would be fitting,
03:22 [Latin] The whole idea of the descriptions was to crazy, it would require too much assistance with translation and I would have to have someone helping with the editing and I knew I would be impossible and so I thought well fauna and flora could work and place names, there’s a kind of poetry i people’s names certain places, not necessarily towns, you know, canyons or rivers or rock formations
03:56 [Latin] [Cemeteries]So that was kind of my proposal, that was my plan, then I got here and saw these beautiful little chapels with these beautiful bells and sweet cemeteries next to them, and i really had to ring the bells cause I am basically you know a six year old, on a certain level and when i see a bell I really want to ring it.
04:29 [Bells] [Graveyards]So, I decided the bells had to be part of the piece, and when i was there there were all these graveyards and when I was a small child I used to love to spend time in graveyards, I thing because it was quiet,
04:49 [Graveyards]So it seemed a good idea to kind of pay my respects to all the people who have lived and died in these little villages and you know it is not an easy life here, they have worked hard and gathered knowledge over the centuries and passed it down, it felt important to include them, so, I got rid of the idea of the place names and substituted the names of the people who were buried in the graveyards and I think that was the right thing to do.
05:22 [Latin] I try not to create things I try to create places, and so it was really important for me to be able to present the work in a place that would be appropriate and to create a kind of a space for a contemplative place to be. To hear these sounds and to hear these names and contemplate sort of how sacred all of that is. And that’s why I like the Latin thing to, it’s very interesting and very beautiful to me that Latin is this language of both of sacred and science, these two main ways that humans try to make sense of the world.
06:13 [Language] [Latin] And there is a common language for both of them even though in a certain level they are separate thing and in many ways they are in conflict, but they have this language, this beautiful language that ties them together, it’s sort of a language made to be song, and these names make beautiful songs, so I suppose I want to tile these different threads together, and you know think about what we were doing here in this life and what other people have done here…
07:00[Language] [Latin] [Listening] Just create a space where people can listen and think about those things.
07:08 [Project]I don’t think I wanted to to question the sense of life exactly I want to make a feeling of connection, to everything, I am not separate from all of the people who came before, i am not separate from all of the other things that live here, we are all living here together and it takes real caring and thoughtfulness make that happen there’s a lot of places in the world where that does not happen.
07:48 [Project]Where people just think they are separate from everything and what they do doesn’t matter to anyone but themselves and that’s painful, that+s suffering, so it’s just to remember that we’re all part of this, and we should respect it and take care of it,
08:24 [Project] [Piece] I don’t think I had great difficulties making the piece, I think there are parts of it that happen the way I planned or expected it ant there are other things that enter into it that were spontaneous … you know… I hadn’t planned on the bells I hadn’t planned on the names from the cemeteries.
08:48 [Project] [Piece] [Sound] But I think those just made the piece better, I didn’t what I would find here in terms of sound, that’s always a big mystery but that’s the fun part, coming and looking around and discovering what’s there in the place, I am sure a lot of the sounds that I collect and i use in the piece, they’re not unusual, people here are used to hearing them.
09:21 [Names] [Listening]But maybe people here and also used to ignoring them, maybe they don’t hear them anymore cause they are all to them, So hopefully I can present them in a way that make those sounds have kind of a new life of offers people a new appreciation for the sound scape where they are living in. I don’t know but it was a pleasure for me to come and find all those sounds and look around.
09:55[Project] [Piece] [Sound] I also made it a point to have it very clear simple idea to what I wanted to do. For me clarity in work is very important … It’s hard enough to make a project and accumulate all this material and then you have to cut a way out of it and find a piece buried in it, even in the best of the circumstances there’s a lot of work, so I find it to have a really simple elegant framework is really helpful.
10:33 [Project] [Piece] [Sound] [Liturgical]It is like putting together big ? puzzle, also the whole thing of the liturgical hours was… that happened once when i got here. That kind of gave me a structure and a form to work within, i don’t remember how i got to that I guess I was recording all of this chapel bells and everything and started to think about how I am going to make this field recordings and I could go out and make hours and hours of field recordings and then I am in a trouble cause I have too much.
11:08 [Project] [Piece] [Sound] [Liturgical]So once I remembered the liturgical hours that was king of a structure, it was like the day is structured into these certain moments of contemplation and listening, and so, if I can go out and make recordings around those certain times of the day and find sounds that somehow represent that time of the day and take that as an opportunity myself to contemplate the sound scape and really meditate while I am listening.
11:35 That would be good. So that was what happened.
11:41 [Language] [Portugal] Motivation… I really wanted to come to Portugal… My great great great grandparents came from the Azores and so every since I was a little boy I was fascinated by Portugal. In my family nobody spoke Portuguese, nobody made Portuguese food, nobody listened to Portuguese music, but it was this kind of mysterious thing to me.
12:14 [Language] [Portugal] [Ancestors]So on my way here I went to the Azores to try to find out information about my ancestors which I wasn’t particularly successful but I was very happy to go there. It was incredibly beautiful and inspiring and …so somehow coming here and making this piece and specially the whole part of the people buried in the cemiteries it was really this way the connecting with my own ancestors in a way and thinking about that and remembering them and obviously their was differently because they lived in the islands out in the middle of the Atlantic.
12:52 [Language] [Portugal] [Ancestors] But still they were Portuguese and probably lived somewhat like these, they grew grapes and olives and farmed small plots of land and worked hard. So that was really, I think, a big motivation for me, to come and think about my family history and how that brings me to this place now …and doing the work that I do.
13:28 [Portugal] [Site-Specific] [Sound]I certainly bring a real affection for Portugal, in terms of my work it’s not so different of what I do. I make site-specific work I’m completely inspired by where I am and I make the work about where I am and where I am presenting it.
13:50[Pieces] So this was not a giant departure for me. I did some things differently form what I’ve done before, in terms of how the pieces constructed, but I think mostly I just bring this appreciation for this place and kind of my ancestor relationship to it
14:22[Places] [Project] I connect with places very intuitively,i just go and look around at everything and suck it all in and see what it feels like and I don’t know how to describe it anymore reasonably than that. Sure on one level there’s this kind of systematic thing of…you know what is the name for this, what do you call that bird, what am I ? Who lives here ? There’s that, just the king of fact finding part.
14:54 [Places] [Project]Than there’s also this kind of emotional resonance to a place that is much more mysterious and I have no idea how it works, it doesn’t matter how it feels.
15:08 [Places] [Project]Not so much about people at first, people are good but it’s more about the place itself and just how it looks and how it feels, I look at my window in the morning and there’s beautiful mountains and trees and rivers, ? farm, fields, birds, insects and cows …that’s how I connect to a place.
15:39 [Project]The call for proposals ..wanting projects to do with the voice was really really interesting to me, I king of was keeping my eye in the Binaural Residency for a few years and waiting for one that made sense for me to apply for, and I’ve done so much work with the voice previously through people making pieces where they describe places and their connection to them or … I’ve done all kind of projects with voice.
16:14 [Project] [Voices] and it’s interesting cause I think a lot of sound artist don’t like human voices, i don’t know what it is they just don’t like them, I adore human voices and I always listening people talk and I make notes, that person has a great voice and I call them later and ask them to do things because I love the qualities of different people’s voices and the tone.
16:45 [Voices] [Sound]And specially in this piece where I’m having people whisper and talk very softly, to spend hours on the headphones working with that material is incredible intimate and kind of sexy in his great way, all this beautiful Portuguese voices whispering in my ears … it’s lovely, can’t complin about it… and the singing part was interesting to me cause I’m interested on how people sing…
17:21[Project] [Sound] in a very spontaneous way without too much frame work, maybe a slight frame work but no specific notes, maybe one not as a pitch reference but I don’t write out notes for people ever.
17:40[Project] [Sound] [Latin] [Words] I am curious .. like if I say here’s this drone note for your pitch reference and here’s this Latin words, how do you sing them ? Working with Manuela this time …she had her way of singing and I’ve worked with people in the past who were early music singers or who were jazz singers, everybody approaches it differently and usually I’m pretty happy with the way they do it.
18:07 [Sound] [Project]If I see them making it sound to contrive i might try to create obstacles for them to encourage them do it a little bit more like this or less like this but it’s very gentle direction I don’t try to push people around too much, I find people’s voices, they generally know what to do with them themselves. It’s just a pleasure to be able to listen that way ..this kind of really intimate part of people.
18:45[Song] [Latin] [Sound] [Project] When I ask people to sing these Latin names a lot of times they think they’re suppose to interpret it ..like if it’s a bird they are suppose to make a sound like a bird or if it’s… I don’t know what they think. But no! I don’t want people to to try to mimic what it is they’re singing,I just want them to sing spontaneously, whatever that means. I mean in a way it’s like an animal call or a bird call.Not that they are supposed to repeat themselves but I’m also trying to get them away from… I think people have a tendency to do like church singing …once you give them Latin and they know the church is going to be in a church then they want to sing like this and I completely don’t encourage that from people. Some people if that’s what they really want to do I let them do it but I am more interested in the king of spontaneous melodic line that that just emerges as a surprise to everybody. That’s always better for me.
[/hide] Steve Peters propõe um trabalho sonoro combinando os seguintes elementos: gravações de campo de sons ambientais e do toque dos sinos das capelas, ambos captados na freguesia de São Martinho das Moitas; processamentos electrónicos de alguns desses sons; textos falados por habitantes que evocam a paisagem regional, constituídos por nomes de habitantes falecidos e nomes de plantas e animais locais, alguns cantados em latim. Esses vários elementos serão tecidos em conjunto para criar um retrato sonoro sugestivo da paisagem regional e da relação humana colectiva a esses lugares através da linguagem.Steve Peters (n. 1959) faz música e som para uma grande variedade de contextos e ocasiões usando gravações de campo, objectos naturais e encontrados, electrónica, vários instrumentos musicais, e texto falado. Atento às nuances subtis da percepção e dos lugares, o seu trabalho muitas vezes é site-specific e tende a ser contemplativo. Steve Peters participa em projectos como membro da Seattle Phonographers Union, e também trabalha como produtor freelance, escritor e curador. Desde 1989 tem sido director de Nonsequitur, uma organização sem fins lucrativos que realiza eventos de música experimental e arte sonora, actualmente através do Ciclo de Música Wayward no Chapel Performance Space, em Seattle.