This live duo performance contains 360 video, field recordings, voice and electronic voice processing. The artists will explore the art of walking, an activity central to both of their practices. The focus will be on a shared walk they took in Mexico City in 2019 around Azcapotzalco, a neighborhood on the northwest side where Amanda Gutiérrez grew up.
• DATE: July 16, 2021. TIME: 7 pm
• RUN TIME OF PERFORMANCE: 25 minutes
• LOCATION: The Workings of Media [art and artists] at the Harvestworks Art and Technology House. Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island
In 2019 Amanda Gutiérrez and Viv Corringham took a shared walk in Mexico City, through Azcapotzalco, a neighborhood on the northwest side where Amanda grew up. The walk had meaning and significance for Amanda and became part of Viv’s long-term Shadow-walks project, based on people’s special walks and her sung response to them. Amanda also created a video series of the location. Later they made a piece together based on that walk, using the 360 videos and field recordings made there, plus vocals. It was performed online in 2021 at World Through a Window Earth Day Festival and the Quarantine Concerts.
This will be the premiere of the live performance version. The duo will improvise in real time with the material, using 360 video, field recordings, voice and electronic voice processing. In performance, improvising voice and video will respond to these fragmented memories and to the psychogeography of the location, interwoven with the acoustic and visual experience of female walkers in Mexico City.
• BIOS
Viv Corringham is a composer, singer and sound artist, active since the late 1970s. Her work includes concerts, soundwalks, radio works and installations. She is interested in exploring people’s sense of place and the link with personal history and memory. She has received many awards, including two McKnight Composer Fellowships through the American Composers Forum. She studied and worked with Pauline Oliveros and holds a Certificate to teach Deep Listening. Work has been presented internationally at venues including Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico 2019; Prespa Museum Greece 2019; Shantou University China 2018; Hong Kong Arts Centre 2018; Harvestworks, New York 2016; Tempo al Tempo Festival, Brussels 2016; Borderline Festival. Athens 2016; La Collera delle Lumache Festival, Italy 2016; Ohrenhoch Sound Gallery, Berlin 2015; Vitamin S Festival, New Zealand 2015; Syros Sound Meeting, Greece 2014; SoundOut Australia 2014; Around Sound, Hong Kong 2013; Tempo Reale, Florence, Italy 2012; Soundworks, ICA, London, UK 2012.Articles about her work have appeared in publications including Leonardo Music Journal (US), In the Field (UK), Art of Immersive Soundscapes (Canada), Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), Catskill Made (US), Playing With Words (UK) The Wire (UK) and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland).
Amanda Gutiérrez (b. 1978, Mexico City) explores the experience of home, belonging, and cultural identity using a range of media such as sound, video and performance art. Approaching these questions from immigrants’ perspectives continues to be of special interest to Gutiérrez, who completed her MFA in Media and Performance Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently elaborating on the academic dimension of her work as a Ph.D. student at Concordia University, studying the field of the acoustic culture in urban studies. Accordingly, these techniques also constitute the core of the pedagogical practice Gutiérrez has developed over a decade of teaching in diverse settings ranging from high schools on Chicago’s South Side to a senior center on New York’s Upper West Side, including academic institutions such as the SAIC, Connecticut College, and Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as The Liverpool Biennale in 2012, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. A recipient of a grant from the National System of Art Creators, in Mexico, Gutiérrez is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the World Listening Project.
• PRESS QUOTES
“…Many of the images Gutierrez captured were personal. In the series Asimilación cultural o de cómo aprendí a ser ligeramente blanca 1 and 2— which translates to “Cultural assimilation or how I learned to be white”—she took a photograph of white communion and baptism gowns on mannequins in the front window of a store, and then printed them using different gradations of black and white. Some images are shaded darker, some are lighter. “I thought it captured what I’m not, and what I am, and what I’ve been pushed to be,” she told me.”
–Forbes
“Three tracks in particular are musically impressive: firstly, long, ornamented vocal notes perfectly punctuated by the stately percussion of a woodpecker’s hammering. Later, Corringham creates a chordal drone in sync with a close-up bee, accompaniment for a bird’s soliloquy. And at 3am she’s channelling an ancient crone, splitting vocal tones in some feeble but essential ritual prayer. All of this is acoustic and for real, just a singer in the woods.”
-Wire
• PRESS COVERAGE
https://www.baxterst.org/exhibitions-3/amanda-gutierrez-exhibition/
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/an-audio-introduction-to-viv-corringham
• LINK
https//www.twitch.tv/videos/1031816738?tt_medium=mobile_web_share&tt_content=vod
• WEBSITES
http://www.vivcorringham.org/
http://www.amandagutierrez.net
• CONTACT
Viv Corringham, 507-261-5045, vivcorringham@gmail.com