2024
– “SCORE-SKETCH-MAPS” AND LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS: ABSTRACTIONS ON SENSIBLE INTELLIGENCE, SONIC RESPONSIBILITY AND INDISCIPLINARITY.
ART & RESEARCH PROJECT (Supported by Orangeries de Bierbais, Pro Arte Atelier and The Global Music Program at the Sibelius Academy-Helsinki University of The Arts).
This experimental practice-based research was commissioned by the PhD in one night collective , to work around the topics of SENSIBLE INTELLIGENCE, SONIC RESPONSIBILITY and INDISCIPLINARITY, within the program of art residencies in Orangeries de Bierbais in Belgium. The project focuses on two main topics: 1) “SCORE-SKETCH-MAP”, and 2) LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS.
“SCORE-SKETCH-MAP”, is explored here as an idea for experimental notation in two open-score pieces for solo piano, and acts as a guide for the performers to create different versions of the piece everytime it is performed. Hence, the everchanging creative processes and performative results, are seen more as remote duo collaborations between composer and performer, instead of merely a piece composed by a composer and performed by a performer, where a certain version of the piece is expected. The “SCORE-SKETCH” is a “MAP”, that indicates certain territories within the piece. Like in a map, there is an idea of places and locations. The one who looks at the map could find different ways to get to different locations. Therefore, the performer is the one who decides where and how to go (somewhere?) within the map everytime the piece is performed, analysed, practiced, etc. Also, this project invites the two performers to explore, through the “SCORE-SKETCH-MAP”, the learning experience/process and the performance of the pieces, a personal territory. And most importantly, to reflect about what is one’s territory. SKETCH here is presented as a vehicle to question and explore notions of mistake, novelty, quality and uniqueness.
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS in this project refers to observe, react (interact) sonically and physically to any space, location or situation, through improvisation in solo and group settings, including artists from different disciplines. Here, both visual and sonic elements existing in, or passing by the space/location/situation, serve as multidimensional scores. Hence, by intervening a space/location/situation, with performative-physical and/or sonical presence the LAND(SOUND)SCAPE is modified, displaced. For the first experimental part of this project, I explored and intervened different spaces, locations and situations during the end of the summer, around the Brussels area in Belgium, interacting in solo and duo formats. These interventions were registered in VIDEO- SKETCHES. Again, SKETCH here is presented as a vehicle to question and explore notions of mistake, novelty, quality and uniqueness. The second part of the research, is to analyse each interaction and examine what kind of modifications appear in every space/location/situation, naturally or by intervening them in different settings. Also how the multidimensional score that appears in every space/location/situation, suggests certain directions to the performative experience. Finally, after these analyses and findings, the next goal of this project is to produce a series of performative experiences in outdoor spaces, locations and situations, where incidental and accidental LAND(SOUND)SCAPES, serve not only as multidimensional scores but also are part of the performance in itself. The production of the series of these performative experiences called LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS, is conceived as an ongoing project without any determined termination date. It is a long-life project.
Both the “SCORE-SKETCH-MAPS” and the LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS act as paradigms and studies on SENSIBLE INTELLIGENCE and SONIC RESPONSIBILITY, enhancing how through abstraction we can find alternative and personal ways of making sense in a context of INDISCIPLINARITY. Also the “SCORE-SKETCH-MAPS” and the LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS documented in VIDEO- SKETCHES, represent an idea of experimental practice-based research, where artistic experiments bring already in their processes the findings of the research. Like in experimental music tradition, the experiment is the actual piece.
This research has been developed in constant resonance with the thinking of Jacques Rancière and the encouragement of Ivana Momčilović.
RESEARCH MATERIALS/DOCUMENTATION/RESULTS:
“SCORE-SKETCH-MAPS” (PDF)
MUSCLE MEMORY for solo piano (PDF) Dedicated to Kosta Jakic.
(HEAR) MEMORY for solo piano (PDF) Dedicated to Jaak Siikk.
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTIONS. (VIDEO- SKETCHES, photos)
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTION I
Cello: Sergio Castrillón
“VIDEO- SKETCH” by: Charley Case.
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTION II
Cello: Sergio Castrillón
“VIDEO- SKETCH” by: Martin Van der Belen (Filmed at “Par ASAR” Anderlecht, Brussels)
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTION III
Duo piece for violin and cello at the Kitchen Garden in Orangeries de Bierbais. (“VIDEO-SKETCH“)
Violin: Barbara Udovcic, Cello: Sergio Castrillón.
“VIDEO– SKETCH” by: Martin Van der Belen (Filmed at Orangeries de Bierbais)
LAND(SOUND)SCAPE INTERVENTION IV
Dance: Erdem Gunduz, Cello: Sergio Castrillón.
“VIDEO- SKETCH” by: Martin Van der Belen (Filmed at Orangeries de Bierbais)
The editorial version of this research will be published in 2025. So, stay tuned!
2023
– Between the volcano and the slope
ART & RESEARCH COLLABORATION with Natalia Castañeda. (Supported by the Colombian Ministry of Culture, Guasch Coranty Foundation, and The Global Music program at the Sibelius Academy-Helsinki University of the Arts).
Between the volcano and the slope, is an experimental video-essay where a conversation with the mountain is established . It is an immersion in the territory, which with camera in hand, envelops the viewer in the humid and abrasive texture of the moors and glaciers. The work offers a look that inverts perspective to experience the vertigo of the summit, roll down the slope and escape in detail from a territory sensitive to climate change: the snow-capped volcanoes of Ruiz, Santa Isabel and Tolima. The documentation was recorded for 7 years in this territory of central Colombia. It is a film that is nourished by an artistic practice, where the pictorial, cartographic and poetic gaze converges in a narrative guided by light, a chromatic transit from dawn to dusk, a life cycle of exhaustion and extinction. The montage goes through nine chapters: volcano, spring, bodies of water, lunar desert, finite cave, páramo garden, ancestral water tit, glacier relict, and forested basin. An ontological tour of each element where the changes in light drive the narrative in a plot of atmospheres, heights and bodies of water. The film traces a comparative temporality through the document, between the time of the mountain of billions of years and human transience. These absurdly differentiated durations intersect in the experience of the trip where the body is pulse and breath to hold our gaze and stop in the conflict that our progress implies. Thus, the film allows a performativity where the body gives rhythm to the fiction.
http://territorioscomunes.com/es/entre-el-volcan-y-la-vertiente/
– RED FOREST
ART & RESEARCH COLLABORATION with Oleksiy Radynski, David Muñoz-Alcántara, Diana McCarty and Mijke van der Drift. (Supported by Helsinki Biennial 2023).
Red Forest is a research constellation activated by Oleksiy Radynski, David Muñoz-Alcántara, Diana McCarty and Mijke van der Drift. The name emerged during a research visit to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station in spring 2021. The reaction of the forest to Chornobyl’s eco-disaster turned green trees red and the living to not–dead. Mindful of the response of the environment at a variety of scales, including the atomic, Red Forest alludes to this entanglement and resilience, reminding us of the responsibility to face the layers of life in our surroundings, whatever the circumstances. The constellation of Red Forest is not confined to a single discipline, but their work spans media theory, philosophy, anti-colonial praxis, queer theory, feminism, and contemporary critical theory, and they shared practices comprise architecture, radio, film, and performance. Red Forest is also part of the Red Power movement advancing the collective growth of eco-social dignity, recovery of insurgent-indigenous bonds and trans-futurisms. On the Loss of Energy continues Red Forest’s investigation into how infrastructural operations are key to contemporary forms of hybrid warfare. By speculating on energy matters in the context of war, this research (in)filtrates a contestation of fossil fascism, environmental racism, and financial colonialism. The Radiogram is Red Forest’s sonic and poetic compositional method of electromagnetic transmissions that links documentary research, speculative history, musical improvisation, and science fiction. The sound piece is streamed online, but it also connects to specific sites of access on the biennial route.
2021-2022
– ON THE EDGE OF THE CONTOUR: A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTAL-MULTI-SONIC PERFORMANCES AND ANALYSIS-BASED TEXTS CREATED BY MEANS OF COMPROVISATION
ART & RESEARCH PROJECT (Supported by Kone Foundation, Calliope International Conference 2021, Centro Colombo Americano, Interkult RY, and Marginale Festival 2022)
On the Edge of the contour is a two-year art project that integrates research. The main convergent point between the artistic part (4 experimental-multi-sonic performances) and research (4 analytical texts based on the art works) is comprovisation. According to composer S. Bhagwati, comprovisation appears as a practice that allows score-base notated pieces the inclusion of improvisational elements, generating the coexistence between a contingent moment of performance, and a context-independent system of rules. Here I propose to use comprovisation as: 1) An experimental creative process, 2) A tool for using non-traditional notation or scoring, and 3) An analysis method for experimental-multi-sonic pieces. Namely, the core of its compositional-performative aim is expanded into a multifunctional tool that can be applied to different creative and analytical processes. Due to my role as a multidisciplinary sonic-based-artist/researcher and my transcultural identity, within this project I plan to develop ideas of experimental cross-genre creativity, multi-sonic performance, and instrumental deconstruction. Reassess soundscape composition, and the use of electronic devices and noise. Delve into physical approaches to sound performance, as well as gestuality in sound and music theater, using as study material Charlotte Moorman’s, Nam June Paik’s, Mauricio Cagel’s, and some of my own works. Finally, I propose to integrate the concepts of displacement and geocultural identity by philosophers J. Rancière and R. Kusch respectively. The works are all created and performed by myself and registered live in different scopes in Helsinki, in order to avoid traveling. Also to foster a more ecological awareness in art making, I plan to only use equipment found at hand, aiming to accomplish a sort of domestic and self-sustainable set up for each piece. On the other hand, all the registrations and texts will be published in online art platforms that promote mainly experimentalism.
PROJECT
YEAR 1 (2021)
“On the Edge of Experimental and Traditional”
1. The Guts of The Atlas for traditional and modified cello and electronics.
Cellos and electronics: Sergio Castrillón.
RECORD (Arts First Records. Helsinki, Finland 2021)
TEXT
Imperial Histories-decolonized exchanges: researching with and through music/ Siirtomaavalta-Ajan Historiat – Dekolonisoudut Vuoropuhelut: Tutkimusta Musiikin Avulla ja Sen Kautta ARTICLE (Musiikinsuunta. Helsinki, Finland 2022)
Read here (in English) Read here (in Finnish)
2. Global Soundscapes for solo modified-amplified cello and voice.
Modified-amplified cello and voice: Sergio Castrillón.
RECORD (Eclipse Music. Helsinki, Finland 2021)
Watch here (Second performance at Unfinished Festival 2021)
NOTE: This piece has been performed 14 times in different spaces around the globe since its premier.
TEXT
Global Soundscapes, A Comprovised-Sonic piece for solo modified amplified cello: A Displacement, Imagery and Unlearning Paradigm. (Apparatus journal. Belgrade, Serbia 2021. Pp. 22–23.)
YEAR 2 (2022)
“The Contour of Music and Sound Art”
3. Killing The Beat II: An experimental multi-sonic performance/Installation created by means of comprovisation, for two amplified cellos, tuner table and soundscapes. Sergio Castrillón and the Rainforest Soundscapes Ensemble.
VIDEO TEASER (Produced by Interkult RY)
TEXT
(To be published in 2023 by Art and Research Collective PhD in One Night)
4. Skillo A sonic theater piece for skillo and Serge ´79.
Skillo and action performance: Sergio Castrillón.
Serge ’79, sound design, skillo design and action performance: Andrew Bentley.
VIDEO (Premiered at Marginalen Festival, 15th September 2022. Helsinki, Finland)
TEXT
(To be published in 2023)
2012-2013
– Sounds for the City/Otro sonido para la ciudad
ART & RESEARCH COLLABORATION with filmmaker Stina Lundkvist. (Funded by Castrillón-Lundkvist productions)
In the summer of 2012 in Stockholm, Sergio Castrillón (cellist and composer) began to search for unconventional places to make them worthy stages for contemporary music. There, he met the Swedish film maker Stina Lundkvist, and together they made
the documentary Sounds for the city. This documentary looks at issues that contemporary music audiences face and displays the encounter and interaction of Sergio Castrillón with local musicians. Also, the documentary describes how the streets and other unconventional venues become perfect stages where music styles and different people get together. Sounds for the city was premiered the 10th of July 2013 at House of Radon, Stockholm, Sweden, and has been selected for the Cinemaissi – Latin American film festival 2013 – Helsinki, shown at Feria de Manizales 2013, Colombia and Holistic Urbanism Film night, Stockholm, Sweden in 2014.
Photo: Riikka Karjalainen
Sergio Castrillon 