revision COMPLETE scheduled for publication
Alexis Perepelycia
Alexis Perepelycia An artist's statement “A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained … As the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lied beyond the grasp of reason.” (C.G. Jung, ‘Man and his symbols’)
Praxis Leye Pelicae #5 (PLP#5) belongs to large polysemic piece ‘La frontera ausente’ (The absent frontier). A group of pieces of different artistic expressions explore possibilities of verbal and non‐verbal human language. PLP#5 it’s an audiovisual essay that intends to propose an approach to a concern about the possibility of existence of a unique mode of lan-
En el camino (from 'Caminos desiertos')
guage: one that would be absolute, unambiguous and irrevocable.
arranged following a taxonomy later translated
The proposal turns around the concept of noise in communication theory. In order to do so it was decided to work on video trying to achieve different noise modes in different moments of the narrative. An archive with several video excerpts and sound was obtained, classified and
a plot.
into a series of signs that were set according to
Alexis Perepelycia Rosario, Argentina, June 2014
Cicloﾌ］ (from 'La frontera ausente')
An interview with
Alexis Perepelycia Contemporary music is fundamental in your artistic research: however, it would be more appropriate in your case to say that the starting point is not music itself, but musical thinking, which is at the same time philosophical and architectonic. Could you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art? First of all: I am musician. I've started playing music early on in my childhood. Tried several instruments for a while. During elementary school I've moved to painting and drawing. By that time every afternoon when I came back from school I attended to a woodshed and worked as carpenter assistant. Later on, during secondary school I've came back to music. By that time I've began to play around with an old compact camera my dad had at home. As well, in school - the first two years attended to a technical school - I began to solder, cast metal and experiment with electronics. Then, after school I did one year of biotechnology. After that I got enrolled to the Music University. Studied drums, percussion and composition. Then studied electroacoustic music, sound art and multimedia. I’ve also done postgraduate studies in musicology. So, when I think of a new work I cannot avoid the fact of the many disciplines I've approached during my life and the many aspects you can/should/must consider when crafting a piece aimed to be perceived by more than one sensory channel. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? I think every time it's different. But one obvious thing is as you grow and gain experience you began to identify certain aspects of your own creative process. This does not means that you have to take the same path over and over again. It just means you might know how to take a shortcut. Normally I would decide to take a new unknown
Alexis Perepelycia
direction and experiment previously unexplored paths of my own production. Something that has not changed throughout my whole life is the fact of being astonished by the unexpected. Perhaps that was the fact that led me to improvisation in any of my artistic research areas (music, drawing, painting, video, sculpture, writing). Sometimes you evocate chaos in a pledge of help sometimes your idea call for as much control as you could possibly achieve. Another thing that it's almost always present in my works is a recollection of thoughts or subjects I’d like to explore that I keep writing down on paper along with graphics and diagrams on how I believe the procedure should be. You have received a scholarship by Luigi Nono Archive. Luigi Nono has been one of the most important composers of the last
Un gran amor (from 'La frontera ausente')
century: his stunning electroacoustic works like La fabbrica illuminata and A Pierre, dall'azzurro silenzio seems to have deeply influenced your musical thinking, especially in Praxis Leye Pelicae #5. When did you come across his works? Well, during university years I was exposed to some pieces by Nono and by the time the course of Nono was about to take place I was living in Padova (Italy), which is around 20’ from Venice, I was travelling once a month to study in Paris were a lecturer (Horacio Vaggione) often referred to some Nono pieces, plus I was doing a residence at ZKM (working on a piece for sax player Pedro Bittencourt - a friend who invited me to write for him at Karlsruhe, Germany) so I ended up tying everything up and taking that course on Nono’s music.
Could you describe your experience in Venice? It was magic! Every morning I got up really early took my bike, arrived to Padova train station, took the train to Venice train station, from there I run to take the Vaporetto at a certain point I had to change line so I had to take a second boat and then I was in a restored Benedictine Monastery rehearsing and discussing the philosophical aspects of a beautiful piece by Nono called La lontananza utopica, nostalgica, futura. Everyday during a whole week, after that we performed it live. It was an overwhelming experience.
Dos parejas #2 (from 'La frontera ausente')
Apart from Nono, can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? There would be hundreds but I am not quite sure it would be fair to point out any particular influence, even Luigi Nono. What about the others that one might forget? I believe everything influences you, each thing at different level and different ways. Just to mention randomly: life, death, love, war, birth, philosophy, writers (I’ve taken a whole brunch of ideas from books, any kind: poetry, essays, novels, short stories), geography, biology, engineering, cities, politics, history, chemistry, physics, medicine, nature, cooking recipes, travelling, people in general (the most unknown the better), etc.
Sometimes – mainly on live performances - I take an opposite approach to the critical/theoretical thought done when writing or conceiving a large piece: the idea of the urgent/ the immediate need of doing something that needs to be done in a second independently of the result. I mean: just focusing on the moment, being processual. Which I think has less to do with Nono’s way of crafting art and would be more related to punk and grunge movements or to action painters and improvisation in general. Could you introduce our readers to the concept of meta-language you develop in Praxis Leye Pelicae #5? I believe art in general is a meta-language. However the way I approach meta- language in my pieces – most of them multi-media or multi-
Perro negro (from 'Caminos-desiertos')
disciplinary pieces – is by referring from one language/discipline to another and from the later to the former – or from one verbal mode to another and so on – creating some sort recursive dialogue which would end up being some sort of Chinese whispers – or telephone game. Basically if I’d like to refer to something I have to build a different code first in order to avoid literalness. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Alexis. What’s next for Alexis Perepelycia? Are there any new projects on the horizon? Nowadays I am working on a piece for two performers, video and multi-channel sound system (to be premiered by Ignacio Esborraz and me on the PULSOS festival later this month); a large polysemic piece – involving photography, music, video, painting and writing
- (to be premiered next year); writing the scripts for two documentaries to be shoot throughout 2015 and 2016 respectively, writing music for a documentary (already shot), finishing the music for a short-film (already shot), working on a video-installation (to be premiered soon), rehearsing to record a new album with Navío Noche (one of my bands), about to premiere a long film (co-directed with my friend Franco Fontanarrosa) entitled Ajendra, shot last year and to be premiered on the 21 st Festival Latinoamericano de Video Rosario, plus keep co-coordinating the fourth year of a free improvisation concert series called all free! and keep touring with my partner – Alejandra Valdés - and her new dance piece Semilla del aire (I’ve written the score and play it live). Thanks for your time and the invitation. http://www.alexisperepelycia.com.ar/