Text by CLOT Magazine
Modos de Oír: Prácticas de Arte y Sonido en México (Ways to Listen: Art and Sound Practices in Mexico) explores the sound inspiration for artistic production, focusing on the last 30 years of a practice that, while always present in art and design, is becoming increasingly popular. The exhibition has been simultaneously held at Ex Teresa Arte Actual and Laboratorio Arte Alameda, wo Mexican institutions pioneering in art research and development.
The exhibition constitutes an audio-visual, architectural and sensory experience where sonic phenomena are explored as a centre-point of art production. It brings together over 670 pieces of artwork by more than 170 artists of various eras and artistic styles, exploring coupled topics such as sound and politics, sound and sculpture and audio-visual immersive experiences. In conjunction, Modos de Oír offers a glimpse of the topic over the last hundred years within the country.
The undeniable masterpiece of the exhibition is Pabellón Fonográfico (phonographic pavilion), a spiralling, wooden installation by architect Mauricio Rocha Iturbide, which includes a total of seventeen speakers embedded into its unfinished-looking structure. Built specifically for ‘Modos de Oír’, it curates sound fragments of historical value to sound production in Mexican history from Tito Rivas’s phonographic reconstruction of a student massacre to Felipe Ehrenberg’s and Juan José Gurrola’s experimental music production. Simultaneously, Laboratorio Arte Alameda is showcasing a collection of pieces that argue the relation between sound, art and science, with further artists’ workshops and experiences also being held at the premises. The exhibition has been curated by field experts in the various disciplines that have evolved around sound research, diffusion and production within this project.
Modos de Oír: Prácticas de Arte y Sonido en México is open to the public until March 31, 2019, in both Ex Teresa Arte Actual and Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, Mexico City.
