JORDI MITJÀ

A virtuoso violinist with a 1713 Stradivarius plays 43 minutes of Classical music amid the passive indifference of the commuters on the subway in Washington DC, few if any of whom display any specific interest in the performance, or recognize the remarkably complicated pieces by J. S. Bach, or the instrument, or the musician in question. The experiment, set up by The Washington Post, came up with some appalling figures, above all for the conductor of Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, who had literally staked money on his man, as if he were a racehorse. What is absurd about the experiment is the attempt to establish the cultural level of the general public. Yes, absurd. The operation -unfortunate, to say the least- tells us something that we all know: namely, that music is categorized according to the place it is played, where it is heard, and no one, not even the finest soloist in the world, can change that fact.

Momu & No es. "Registro sonoro del día que Momu pasó a ser No es", 2007

I ask myself, though, if the conventional exhibition space takes account of these categorizations.

Only very rarely is what is heard the main element of an exhibition. Sounds are used as a support, as the soundtrack to the montage, or as something residual, subordinated to the image. These sound works have a fierce competitor where we normally see an ally. Music is exhibited in many ways, and most of the time, like the gallery attendants, it goes largely unnoticed and is scarcely retained.

What place should music occupy in an art space? The functions of the art centres, museums and galleries have become very diffuse, and it is far from clear what the margins and the parameters of actuation are for presenting the music made by artists and the sound pieces that are part of the most radical contemporary work. How do we incorporate exhibition programmes that do justice to sound works? Do art venues need a specific space for music? A minimalization of the auditorium? The public in general, given the opportunity of getting to know certain kinds of pieces, would welcome the gesture. Isn't the white cube adapted when it comes to screening a film? Concerts and performances in these spaces are a different matter, one that is even more confusing. The majority of performances in art spaces are at openings, closings and festivals.

Carles Guerra, in a 1996 essay, asked himself the same question I am asking now:“How many reviews would we have to find and read in order to get a rough idea of the frequency with which music is introduced into the gallery? It seems evident that there is not the same sense of posterity behind a music performance as there is supposed to be in an objectual work of art, whatever its coefficient of physical materiality may be”1*. But artists are not easily discouraged, and constantly come up with works in which they re-interpret all kinds of musical behaviours, adapt, rework or vampirize an infinity of conducts that are intrinsically connected to the musical phenomenon, to mass culture and its constant mutations.

Let me give as a example some works by up-and-coming artists who are interested in productions of this kind which manifest approaches to the sound phenomenon and music. Mariona Muncunill and Dídac Punyet do versions of songs already fixed in our imaginary with two or three rather irrelevant instruments. Listening to 'Breadmàn and the one called Juan (Sweet Dreams i Smooth Criminal)' we feel absolutely sure that they have blurred the originals even while following certain standards of fidelity in performing them, that the collective imaginary is powerfully inexhaustible, and that it grows exponentially on each new reading.

Only very rarely is what is heard the main element of an exhibition. Sounds are used as a support, as the soundtrack to the montage, or as something residual, subordinated to the image.

How do we incorporate exhibition programmes that do justice to sound works? Do art venues need a specific space for music? A minimalization of the auditorium?

In a similar vein, Marc Vives takes on the role of the producer with 'Jingles. Sound waves travel faster underwater'. He put together twenty or so phrases with a very catchy tune and got various musicians from the indie scene to finalize the song. The jingles can be found on MySpace, and probably on a disc with songs by Tu madre, Le Pianc, Sybil Vane, Chimo Bayo, Za and Telemathicos, among others, and open up the initial proposal of a jingle in infinite directions.

“Registro sonoro del día que Momu pasó a ser No es”, is a sound piece by Momu & No es that consists in recording on a hidden mini-DVD camera the switch of powers between one group member and the other and the signing of a proper notarial contract certifying this exchange of roles. With this ultra-ironic gesture they also declare their intentions as a group to engage different strata of social reality and art and in passing rethink the question of authorship within the group. I can attest to the fact that the recording is well worth seeing and that the notary does what they ask, and charges them 70 euros for witnessing the document.

Bram de Jong, Jaume Ferrete and Rubén Grilo worked together on the action 'La audiencia disponible', staged at CaixaForum. They hired a professional television director to act as MC and manage an audience of about 300 people, getting them to make a range of different sounds in unison according to a script; the sounds were recorded live and posted on the website of the Freesound project, a database with high-quality sound files under licence from Creative Commons. The sounds recorded that day include: 'CaixaForum es un zoologico', 'Intento para grabar a la multitud pestañeando', 'Cientos de borregos', 'Cientos de ovejas-zombie', 'Jugar a la guerra', 'La audiencia bosteza de aburrimiento' and 'La audiencia se divide en dos grupos. Se organiza un combate verbal entre ellos'. Over and above the funny and absurd nature of the recordings, the exercise transferred the critical dimension onto the audience: fully aware of what they were doing, they did not refuse to play their part even though they knew that the sound material would be in the public domain.

Projects such as Sound and Me, by Martí Manen and David Armengol (Butlletí no. 5 and no. 7), are radically innovative because they turn logic upside down while at the same time incorporating this kind of work into conventional exhibition structures. For all that a majority of artists devote their talents to conceiving sound works, the spaces in which these can be presented seem to be in a state of permanent conflict, a sense of inferiority with regard to these sound spectres.

1* Guerra, Carles. “Jugendstil, ahora. Música de consumo y artes Visuales”. Acción Paralela. N2. February 1996. ISBN 84-605-4699-3.