03 Apr 2014

José Valente at EMPTY CUBE project

For the 32nd edition of EMPTY CUBE, which will be held at the premises of the Appleton Square gallery (Lisbon, Portugal) on 4 April 2014, musician José Valente will perform a musical piece inspired by the Cube as the material container of the curatorial project EMPTY CUBE. This piece, entitled 'Sonata para Viola d'arco e Cubo Vazio' (Sonata for Viola and Empty Cube) will be played in collaboration with another musician (Manuel Brásio), who will lend the Cube a voice, in a musical dialogue that seems to turn the Cube into the piece's second player.
In a text specifically written for this project (which will be published in the EMPTY CUBE website), António Olaio* describes this collaboration in the following words:
'Musician José Valente engages the challenge of working in the visual arts field as if it were a duet, perhaps not exactly between himself and the visual arts, but at least between himself and EMPTY CUBE, the object/location that manifests here in its full materiality, being used as a percussion instrument. The percussion, however, is performed from inside it, as if generated by the cube itself.
Having considered what the rules of this game presuppose, as well as the fact that things are expected to happen within the cube's space, the musician has opted to strategically place himself off the field.'

This performance, focused on a music-generated relationship between spaces, comes close to achieving plastic and visual qualities because that relationship with the 'other' takes the form of a geometry of sound, in a single, unrepeatable presentation that is also the piece's public premiere.

*António Olaio is a musician and visual artist.