Canto Llano – southwest
Cal Gras Residence, Avinyò, Catalonia.
Seventh guitar sown, southwest orientation.
Saturday, June 11, 2023
Tree: Holm oak
To Quim, Eva and Julia
The installation was made within the framework of the Residence of creation. “Cal Gras“, directed by artists Quim Moya and Eva Quintana. June 5 – 11, 2023. Avinyò, Spain.
About the project
Canto Llano is a ceremonial-sound action installed on the earth’s crust. It consists of planting a tree inside the mouth of a buried guitar. The sound installation begins with a ritual action that initiates the cycle of tree growth and guitar decomposition.
A guitar is the culmination of a handcrafted design carried out for centuries by different artisans and sound artists. It is a developing knowledge originating from a tree and its material, wood. Canto Llano presents the link between the beginning of this process and its culmination, as well as offering a poetic alliance between the development of biology and the growth in time of a work of art.
The project in Avinyò allowed this community to say goodbye to the guitar, leaving behind songs, poems and other sound forms.
En la ceremonia de la siembra Manuel recitó Guitarra del mesón de Antonio Machado:
Guitarra del mesón
Guitarra del mesón que hoy suenas jota,
mañana petenera,
según quien llega y tañe
las empolvadas cuerdas.
Guitarra del mesón de los caminos,
no fuiste nunca, ni serás, poeta.
Tú eres alma que dice su armonía
solitaria a las almas pasajeras…
Y siempre que te escucha el caminante
sueña escuchar un aire de su tierra.
Then:
What can we learn from sound if we move a little beyond aesthetics and acoustics? What can listening teach us when we try to hear the great cycles of the heavens, of the cosmos that saw us born, will see us die, and will surely die as well? What lessons does matter teach us with its rhythms, its frailties, its hardness, its ancient and future laws? Canto Llano is an open-air sound installation that feeds on these questions, on that beyond the sounds that occurs when we remain still and silent in the face of simplicity that nevertheless summons us. This installation, together with the accompanying ceremony, finally seeks the close: to remind us of our relative position in the changing universe.
Guitarras
The first guitar, oriented east, was planted in the city of Casilda, Argentina, on October 12, 2017.
The second guitar, south facing, was planted in the town of Nesodden, Norway, on June 5, 2018.
The third guitar, west oriented, was planted in the city of Lausanne arrêt Blécherette, Switzerland, on August 10.
The fourth guitar, north facing, was planted at Los Acantilados, Mar del Plata, Argentina, on April 18, 2021.
The fifth guitar, northeast facing, was planted in Prague, Czech Republic, October 8, 2022.
The sixth guitar, southeast oriented, was planted in Pasto, Colombia, on February 23, 2023.
Photographs
Quim Moya
Queralt Guinot
Martín Virgili
