In their collaboration as @c, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais developed several installations, often site-specific and ephemeral works. This series of releases in Crónica is dedicated to revisiting these installation works, occasionally with situ recordings, but also further exploring the computational systems developed for the works, archival materials, and other assets, presenting new compositions that unfold from each installation. This series is accompanied by the book Installations / Instalações also published by Crónica.
The fifth release in this series is (Re)Verso/Flexo, after the 2018 installation in the Museum of Aveiro, at the Santa Joana Convent. This piece was created to a 15th-century dining room, an austere yet richly decorated utilitarian space destined to nourish bodies while giving spiritual sustenance through listening to sacred texts read during the meals. The room has a functional layout with several tables, a bell mounted near the entrance, and walls covered in tiles, creating a very reflective acoustic space. We tried to explore the room’s spiritual resonances, working from ideas such as introspection and hierarchy. The installation was developed along with the tabletops, mounting lights, loudspeakers, and mirrors that reflected sounds and light to the tabletops. Visual reflections, much as echoes, contribute to creating strange relationships in the experience of the installation. They reveal the space in unexpected ways bringing us impressions of something we are not consciously looking at, and almost inevitably distorting these images as well as the spaces where they are found. The sound objects used include readings of numbers, an evocation of the seating assignments carved on the tables, and the numbers of the scriptures read during meals.
Installations: (Re)Verso/Flexo (2018) is now available for download or stream via the usual channels.