Enclaves of intersection

Ana Vega-Toscano

The borders dividing the different artistic disciplines lost their firmness throughout the 20th century, acquiring a flexibility broad enough to permit the appearance of numerous territories of intersection, fields of lands fertilised by the most innovative productions, of wide and proven transcendence in the artistic course of the century now past. To this was joined the emergence of new means of expression, often linked to new technologies which are rapid generators of new idioms and of innovative strategies, as elements that enrich this world of intermediate spaces and their drama of aesthetic interbreeding.

Music has been freed of its bonds in its communion with these experiences, which witnessed their first and decisive steps thanks to the historic avant-gardes. However, it was the years of the second half of the century that witnessed the most rigorous consequences of this trend towards the dissolving of the classical categories of art. Soon a line of relationship was established on this musical path1, beginning with the pioneering works of Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp and the Futurists, to be followed by John Cage and then by the artists making up that broad conglomerate known as Fluxus2. But one can obviously look further back to keep detecting attitudes anticipating the future musicians, such as Rossini and his irresistible Péchés de vieilles, to cite only one well-known example. The interrelation of artistic expressions developed in space and time has contributed to a much more free exchange of strategies than in ages past3, creating spaces of intersection which have achieved pre-eminence in the art of our time. Obviously such spaces of fusion and mixing of art have always existed, especially on the stage, whether in sacred or profane rituals, but intersection in itself was seen only as a marginal by-product, whilst today it is the centre of attention. In this context, Dick Higgins coined a term to describe that new category of art whose place of expression lies between the different media: Intermedia4. In fact, it describes an artistic category that had already taken on real forms, although they had not been categorised as such, and theses are the backbone of the joint works made by Concha Jerez and José Iges since 1989, and particularly the works discussed in this article -those that our artists have described as Conciertos Intermedia [Intermedia Concerts]5.

Concha Jerez y José Iges. Despedida que no despide. 1990

They find themselves immersed in a whole series of works which Jerez and Iges call Media Interferences: With these we aim to work from the interior of the conventions of these media (radio, city traffic, museum, concert hall) to evoke non-routine readings that question their use6. The crossroads of society and the environment thus is presented in an artistic reality whose unexpected messages cause estrangement and disorientation, by-products of some of those no-man’s lands to which on this occasion we are summoned by Iges and Jerez.

Concha Jerez y José Iges. El diario de Jonás. 1998

The concert as a media reality, both in its acceptance as a musical-stage performance event and as an arrangement of different elements, is thus presented as an ideal interference point, using all the media supplied by the artistic development of the 20th century, and especially the ones spawned in those enclaves of intersection which for a long time were lands to be colonised. Installations, radio art, all the varieties of acoustic and electro-acoustic music, as well as text in its diverse possibilities as sound art, video-art strategies, and, of course, such essential concepts for the art of our time as action and performance, conjugated with traditional stage devices such as lighting, are the elements employed in the intermedia concerts, making them not only objects to be dealt with, but also constituent gestures.

Concha Jerez y José Iges. El diario de Jonás. 1997

For the celebration of the ritual of the concert they conquer new stage spaces, which on more than one occasion have a decisive influence on the work itself. This is the case of Despedida que no despide. Requiem escénico en memoria de Agustín Millares Sall7, made specifically for the building housing the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and also of Música de circo para una catedral8, conceived expressly for the unique Cultural Tank space in Tenerife, which the artists regard as a container, a space for making visual, gestural and, above all, acoustic interventions. In both instances the buildings become another element of the works, also suggesting the possibility of concert and installation. Hence, Despedida que no despide offers the chance to attend a concrete and unrepeatable stage ritual, officiated in the auditory and visual installation created for this space, and at the same time it left open the possibility of the personal and intimate path of enjoyment of the installation in itself. As regards the second work mentioned, the artists themselves define their intermedia concert on this occasion as an installed concert, given the preponderance of that concept as a pillar of its conception.

But on more than one occasion a work can live as an intermedia concert adapted to several spaces9, and also transform itself, with the necessary adjustments, into a work suggesting another genre: this is the case of El diario de Jonás10 in its version as a piece of purely sound art (and which may thus be regarded as a radio work). In the same way the exclusively audio elements of other works, such as Préstame 88, can be used and re-adapted with the same aim. Thus the notion of a work in progress may often be applied to these intermedia concerts, with possibilities of being changed depending on space and time.

Concha Jerez y José Iges. Transparade. 2001

Also the re-use of materials at a more cellular level, which are transformed into stylistic features of our artists’ work: an example would be the sound of music boxes, of certain lithophones, or of some live-music electronic instruments, to cite only the audio aspects of the works, but in the same way some narrative resources, such as the montage of statements and testimonies of different people interviewed11, transforming into an artistic element one of the most typical strategies of radio journalism. The use of elements that are purely musical, in the most classical sense of the term, can be variable, ranging from the use of the literal quote, made into a device for disorientation or de-contextualisation, to the important presence of fragments of improvisation, used as a tissue of sound, in many instances in a dialogue or juxtaposition with electro-acoustic media. Among the latter, a wide panoply of figures with fragments of social reality or with sound objects, some of them transformed almost into the artists’ sound fetishes. For this structure, Iges and Jerez have a small number of performers/accomplices whom they deploy cleverly as a true human factor in the narrative structure12.

In this category of sound it is worth noting the treatments of the text with the possibilities that audio arts have developed, in works such as Despedida que no despide13 or El diario de Jonás.

The glance towards the more or less recent history of art was a constant feature of the century just over, with disparate results in terms of aesthetics and messages. A personal approach to the debt our times owe to the historic avant-gardes is a notable feature of TransParade14, which takes as its departure point the ballet Parade, a privileged intersection that brought together some of the most influential artists of the past century, such as Picasso, Satie, and Cocteau. They worked with the Futurists on this emblematic work, a forerunner in its crossing of destinies of the art of the crossroads that we are addressing here. The gaze of TransParade is a gaze through –in this instance through the glass of a new century, but it also seeks, as did the work it refers to, the world of the circus and the masks of the most emblematic characters of the Comedia dell’Arte, where appearance conceal as a stage set the instability of alienation.

Other historical references in Préstame 88, where one finds the traces of the action, music, and visual arts of the 20th century which converge as on a cruise of the three atmospheres in the piano, an objet trouvé for the artists of the avant-garde15. In this way, musical gestures and the numerous elements of action and of audio testimonies join in reflection around the piano, a sounding board, a sculpture in sound, a symbol of social realities, a dethroned king. The structure chosen for this narrative confesses its debt to the technique of the collage, just as in other intermedia concerts the work progresses in a modular form, as with El diario de Jonás, for we by no means find in them the traditional idea of tension/resolution thate rules a good part of the European musical discourse, nor yet the search for contrasts or the discovery of hypnotic extensions of time.

Many doors open, then, in this privileged space of intersection that the concert stage medium offer to the intermedia interferences of Concha Jerez and José Iges, who create enclaves in their real acceptance of a territory or group immersed in a differentiated environment, and at the same time in the play on words of the key like a musical key that opens new artistic meanings and expressions.

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1 Thus it was expressed by René Block in Música Fluxus: el acontecimiento cotidiano [Fluxus Music: The Everyday Event], a lecture given on 12th December, 1994 at the Fundació Tàpies in Barcelona, in the framework of the exhibition entitled En l’esperit de Fluxus. Published in: http://www.uclm.es/artesonoro/olobofluxus.html

2 In fact a genuine tide of aesthetic liberation, impermeable to delimitation and classification, and hence to the strict adherence to a term, although the name “Fluxus”, chosen by the man who wanted to be its spiritual mentor, Georges Maciunas, reflects better than any other that idea of movement and liberty which characterises these artists.

3 Illuminating in this respect is the title El espacio del sonido. El tiempo de la mirada [The Space of Sound. The Time of a Look], given to the exhibition curated by José Iges in 1999 at the Koldo Mitxelena in San Sebastián.

4 Higgins, a member of Fluxus, formulated his neologism in the mid-1960’s.

5 It is a term not previously used as such, even though there were manifestations which really evinced its characteristics, such as José Iges’ Vostell y la música, a lecture given at the Museo Vostell Malpartida on 27th November, 1998. Published by the Asociación de Amigos del Museo Vostell Malpartida, 1999. Iges points out as such Vostell´s Fluxus concerts.

6 Concha Jerez and José Iges: Préstame 88. Concierto Intermedia. Programme notes to the concert in the series Encuentros. Música y Tecnología. Centro de Difusión de la música Contemporánea. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 19th May, 1996.

7 Despedida que no despide. Réquiem escénico en memoria de Agustín Millares Sall [Goodbye that is not a Goodbye; Stage Requiem in Memory of Agustín Millares Sal]. Authors: Esperanza Abad, José Iges, Concha Jerez. Performed on 31st May and 1st and 3rd June, 1990 in the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Information and articles, as well as technical details, in the programme-catalogue published for the occasion by the CAAM.

8 Música de circo para una catedral [Circus Music for a Cathedral]. Intermedia concert staged on 27th and 28th April, 2001 in a former oil storage tank known as the Espacio cultural El Tanque, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

9 Spaces which, although not forming a part of the work, are always reflected in some way in it, seeking in this way the adaptation to each stage media, with some non-essential transformation.

10 El diario de Jonás [Jonah’s Diary]. Concha Jerez/José Iges. Performed by: Belma Martín, Pilar Subirá and Pedro López. UM /Unió Musics, 1997. CD-32.

11 This is an important resource in the structure of Préstame 88 and Despedida que no despide.

12 In this aspect we might mention the names of Pedro López, Belma Martín, Pilar Subirá or the author of this article.

13 In co-authorship with Esperanza Abad, a key figure in Spanish music in the second half of the 20th century, from her privileged position at the intersection between music and theatre, who has worked with José Iges in such projects as Ritual or Para la galería.

14 TransParade, debuted on 24th October, 2001, at the Teatro Cervantes in Málaga.

15 José Iges himself alludes to this special position and consideration of the piano in Fluxus y la música: un vasto territorio por explorar [Fluxus and Music, a Vast Territory to be Explored], in an article in the catalogue of Fluxfilms, published by MNCARS, Madrid, 2002.