San Antonino (2016-2018)

San Antonino (2016 – 2018) music for orchestras, whistles, cars and yellow boats for the port of the city of Mar del Plata

Martín Virgili

“San Antonino” is a musical composition made for the port of Mar del Plata. We intend to make a space of 640,000 square meters audible by intervening in its sound landscape with different sound sources. This work, which can be understood at the local, regional and global levels, explores the ways in which art can help denaturalize understandings of geographic spaces and recover untold histories of a region.

The project consists of two horn and whistle ensembles (located on the southern and northern breakwaters), two cars with sirens (moving along the southern breakwater) and yellow boats equipped with sirens, horns and musicians. In addition, a high-range sound system, located at the top of “the Christ” statue on the southern breakwater, will reproduce field recordings of the annual nautical pilgrimage and everyday life at the port.

Ports have always referred to the exchange of ideas, novelties, new worlds. They are unstable, dynamic, rhythmic places of business, yes, but also of solidarity, attention, care, teamwork. There is an economy, it is true, but it is an adventure economy, a constant bet that its workers make on the sea. Ports are emotional territories; in them we find joy, ambition, fear, disappointment, resignation, hope. All this great movement shelters a social and geographical sound, which we want to amplify.

Between roars and sirens, shouting and horns, San Antonino goes back to the myths that forged the construction of a local identity, such as «the nautical pilgrimage», «the feast of the fishermen», «the waters’ baptism», and asks us to think about the modes of appropriation and significance of the territory that these vernacular rituals promote. The port of the city of Mar del Plata is presented as a paradigm for the city as a source of cultural heritage and pride and social safeguard, through descriptions of aspects of the port’s history and the daily life of its workers.

Finally, this work is motivated by a desire to intervene in the decline of cultural heritage in the city and the country as a whole: the traditional yellow boats of the port of Mar del Plata are in disrepair, and symbolize the fading community awareness of the city’s assets. This situation impels us to develop a work of the highest complexity and coordination that serves as a model for the realization of a community-driven project.

Participants

Ensamble Vocal UNTREF El Recicle Ensamble Negra40 Creciente Unstable Orchestra of the Drawing Club

many artists from the city

Supporters

Negra40 Fondo Nacional de las Artes UTN – MdP UNTREF Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAR Club del Dibujo Consorcio Portuario Grupo de Composición Conservatorio Luis Gianneo Proyecto Intemperie Escuela Nacional de Pesca «Luis Piedra Buena»