052 Urban Songline (Lusophonic Storyboard), 2017 – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon, Portugal

The ceramic tiles of the facade of the newly constructed MAAT building in Lisbon played as an instrument with mallets to a score designed in collaboration with local musicians with roots from Mozambique, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, India, Angola and Portugal discussing the musical cross-cultural heritage within the Lusophonic sphere; the territories where Portuguese is spoken.

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As this is the spot where the original Portuguese explorers set off to discover new cultures the building becomes an echo of the influences that were unveiled and included in Portugal’s rich musical history. The music designed in collaboration with Lusophonic musicians is performed live and directly on the tiles of the building’s facade creating a score to incorporate musical influences from Fado to Candomblé and Angolan and Mozambican musical themes to Cape Verdean timbres; a back and forth in musical space and time.

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Part of the project Urban Songlines, a utopian/dystopian series of collaborative translations of buildings, urban structures and public spaces into music through site-specific sound-generation. These performances are a way of connecting to places by listening to them as well as a research into how we use and experience the public domain and to what degree we can claim ownership over it, discussing notions of inclusion, becoming and belonging.

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Curatorship:

Pedro Gadanho
João Laia
Susana Ventura

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Player of the building:

Max Bassin

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Collaborating musicians:

Bruno Humberto
Márcio Pinto
Azak Okena
Joseph Djuzé Lino
Andre Rodrigues Soares
Gueladjo Sané
Antonio Duarte
La Mélinite
Isabél Martins Zuaa Mutange
Elisabete Almeida
Prashant Jayprakash Paradkar