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Passage to Crystallization

Passage to Crystallization is a piece that mixes performance, sound and image. A meta-score that seeks to reflect on the relationship between music, noise, design, movement and musical notation.
Through a percussion exercise with markers on paper, whose base is sounded through amplification and signal processing in a series of frantic and repetitive movements, this piece is marked by the abrasiveness and intensity of sound through the use of piezzo microphones and effects pedals, as well as a strong visual component, whose marks accumulate as the performance unfolds.
Where the sound usually fades without leaving a visible trace, a kind of pneumatic landscape appears, a memory of the gesture recorded in real time, translated to paper with each impact between the tool and action, thus crystallizing a memory of the performance, which addresses issues related to the notions of archive, graphic record, gesture, rhythm, time and sound.

2020, Xavier Paes, Passage to Crystallization, Porto.

Xavier Paes

Xavier Paes is a transdisciplinary artist based in Porto. He divides his practice between visual arts, sound, performance, improvisation and multi-instrumentalism, focusing on ideas such as acoustic phenomena, repetition, resonant and sympathetic bodies, semiotics, echo and ecology. He has presented at institutions, galleries, festivals, kiosks, raves and after-parties, the Serralves Foundation, Estrela Decadente, Centro de Arte Oliva, Maus Hábitos, Cave do Gon, SMUP Parede, MIEC – Santo Tirso, OV/ Art Gallery, Zaratan, Galeria Abysmo, PENHA SCO, and abroad, Bétun (Tuy), Stichting Centrum (The Hague), OCCII and Vondelbunker (Amsterdam), La Pointe Lafayette and L'international (Paris), STUK (Louvain) and Overtoon (Brussels). (readymag.com/xavierpaes/todayistoday)