São paulo Street Score

São paulo Street Score

Petersburg Art Space, Berlin 2018

Projection device, color negative for a projection on the ceiling or ground in a dark room – object trouvé, visual city noise music, city as performer, time score; Petersburg Art Space Berlin 2018

A found negative becomes a canvas of time in which the urban environment is physically imprinted on its surface. The negative shows a musical scene where musicians improvise on instruments in a public urban space. The surface is full of scars, glitches, noises, scratches. The negative was found on the streets of down town São Paulo in Brazil in 2013. The scratches over the image become a score of the image, visual music. The city acts as a body of action, a performer, inscribing itself on the negative. A city body is made of events, happenings, movements, surfaces – the tension between human bodies and the city structure, its surfaces, its asphalt, paving stones and tiles of its streets. Signs and marks are traces of events. The city imprints its score and its rhythm, its breath. Time and movement become fixed on the surface of this negative through the scars on its surface. Events are imprinted materially on the film and as memory in the image. The city, the movement of its people, weather, machines and the pavement of the streets form the body of writers of this score, which the musicians of the image seem to play. This negative enables a synaesthetic perception, creating music for the eyes, inviting us to hear with our eyes. Friction is sound, sound is friction, is action. Traces in material are rhythm, are sound, sound is trace. The material destruction becomes the construction of a score. Time is imprinted in an abstract and rhythmic way. Who knows about the history of this negative, how long it circulated the city streets under feet, heels and wheels?