Primpilipansa – Video Music | Acousmatic

negra40 presents

Primpilipansa video music | acousmatic piano and fractal images

Works by Elsa Justel and Mariano Losi

Thursday, October 30, 8:30 pm Sala negra40, Buenos Aires (Palermo) Admission: $40.- Reservations at [email protected]

Program

First part

Meseta Tenaz (2008), for piano and fractal images Piano and composition: Mariano Losi

Intermission

Second part

Elsa Justel retrospective

• Primpilipansa (2002) (butterfly) — commissioned by Imeb-Bourges
• Rouilles (2010/12)
• Mâts (1999) — commissioned by the French State and the GRM
• Destellos (2001)

About the works

Meseta Tenaz (2008)

I once deeply understood that the passing of a life is just one more link in the infinite unfolding of time, in that unstoppable process called the cosmos, the Great Mystery.

We are the result of those who came before us and dreamed us. We are a speck of dust within this All that never stops flowing, in constant vibration.

This energy, this manifestation we happen to be, forms a totality in itself, a center of the universe, and at the same time an infinitesimal part of this all-encompassing superdesign. Every constituent part of the All is a whole in itself.

In this minimalist sonic journey that I set out to tell today through the images gathered here, I find a possible interpretation of the strange phenomenon of being part of life — a visual expression of beauty, of chaos, of the complex order found in nature, in all existence, which I try today to render through the computer as a tool and fractal mathematics as the triggering engine.

Primpilipansa (2002)

(butterfly) (commissioned by Imeb-Bourges)

Butterfly, you exhale the sigh of a flower each time you land. A perfume accompanies your flight, like a memory caressed by remembrance, filling the body with lightness.

Rouilles (2010/12)

In the Port of Mar del Plata, for many years boats accumulated — abandoned by their owners, they languished and slowly corroded into a mass of rust. Fortunately, that dishonorable metal graveyard is being dismantled, restoring the area’s natural balance and returning it to the function for which it was created.

Yet in the memory of those of us who lived through that era, a very particular resonance remains: the images and memories transform and become other images, reflecting the immanent beauty of materials degraded by time. Metal, wood, rust, and flaking paint resonate to give shape to a polyphony of timbres that accompanies the rhythm of those images.

Mâts (1999)

Commissioned by the French State and the GRM.

Like the pulleys of masts swayed by the wind, the rigging of an imaginary ballet lets its limbs vibrate in a frenzied dance. The voice of the erkencho grew hoarse and raw. It is no longer its throat that sings, nor its guts that shudder: it is its bone that screams. Submerged in the liquid world of the rainstick, the horn emerges again and again, dancing and mocking, letting out an acid song that will never end.

Bastet (2004)

Commissioned by the French State and Aprem (Nevers, France)

Bastet, that mischievous cat goddess, has slipped inside the piano. Confused by the otherworldly appearance of her surroundings, she tries to find her way out by scratching at the strings.

Destellos (2001)

Destellos is an abstract look at matter through its subtlest details of texture and luminosity. The inert forms of everyday objects give off reflections that escape their bodies to take on a life of their own. And so, as in a dream state, objects shed their function to become poetry.

Elsa Justel

Franco-Argentine composer and video artist, born in Mar del Plata. She holds a doctorate in Aesthetics, Sciences, and Technologies of the Arts from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Member of the Doctoral College of the University of Paris-Nord, of CICM (Center for Computing and Musical Creation), and of AFIM (French Association for Musical Computing).

Her music and videos have won awards in numerous international competitions, including the International Electroacoustic Music Competition of Bourges (1989 and 2001), the Prix Ton Bruynel (Netherlands, 2005), the Phonurgia-France Culture Prize (2001), the Stipendienpreis in Darmstadt (Germany, 1990), the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria, 1992), Video Evento d’Arte (Italy, 2002), and the Tribunas de Música Contemporánea y Electroacústica in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2000, 1989, 1987). Her musical and audiovisual production has been broadcast and screened at the most important international electronic art festivals, and released by labels such as Empreintes DIGITALes of Canada (electrocd.com), J&W (Canada), 00Discs (EU), Acousmatica (France), Organised Sound (UK), and La Muse en Circuit / Radio France / WDR3. She has received numerous commissions from the French State and various European studios.