[MUSIC] So this idea of artist, composers, musicians using silence as a political dimension is also something that has been used very specifically by visual artists as well. One example is Sonny Assu work from 2012 called Ellipsis. And what Ellipsis consists of is 136 records that are cast in copper. And the material is very specific for him because copper has ceremonial dimension within northwest coast indigenous people where Sonny Assu comes from. But there's another dimension to that as well, because we all know of the history of the golden record, which was the record that was used as an archive in case we wanted to communicate with people outside of Earth or outside of our world. And in this case, what he's talking about is the point in time when his great grandfather Chief Biliasu was in fact silenced. The reason he was silenced and the reason his community was silenced, because for 67 years under the Canadian government there was a ban on traditional indigenous ceremonies called the Potlatch ban. And so what he wanted to do was to in a way resurrect this voice of Chief Billy Assu through this casting of the copper records. And to talk about that political dimension of silence where people in fact have been silenced. And then through that to think about the potential of the voice of as way of rupturing those moments of silence. >> So how did he find those recordings? >> That's a great question. So how he found those recordings was, they were distributed through an ethnomusicologist named Ida Halprin, who was the first woman at the ethnomusicologist to be practicing in Canada. And she was very interested in the songs of native people. And so she had recordings of over 500 people including Chief Bily Assu. But what the artist was interested in is at that point in time in fact Chief Billy Assu wasn't allowed to sing those songs in his community, in fact, it was illegal. But in the name of science, or in the name of ethnomusicology, this was perfectly okay. And then those were, in fact, pressed into records that are now widely available through Smithsonian folk ways. And through that I think Sonny Assu was really interested in how silence has a political dimension. So you have to think, I think, over various points in history, whose voices do you hear, whose voices have been silenced, and why? Improvised music has a very particular history, a lot of people mark the origins of improvised music to in fact 1945. Because between 1945 and 1950, musicians in fact were challenging the way that music was notated. Up until that point in time in western music, there was the use of classical notation. And then it was realized that in fact classical notation can't embody all of the sounds that musicians were making. And so there was a rupture that happened, and with that rupture was the beginnings of graphic notation with composers like John Cage and many others. However, the history of improvised music has different origins. And with this we can count on scholars like George Lewis, who was very interested in these other kinds of origins. So at that same period in time, with African American music in 1945, with young radical improvisers in the 1940s were developing a kind of music called bebop. And they were mixing bebop with improvised jazz, and with that creating a new musical form. So George Lewis was interested in what he was seeing as two different traditions of improvised music. One he calls Afrological, and one he calls Eurological. And with this, he's defining two different sets of logic. And he says the logic for Afrological music is coming from the history of segregation, from slavery. And this creates different, not only political dimensions, but also social dimensions for the production of music. But within those dimensions there's always the possibility of resistance. And I think for George Lewis, this improvisation offers that possibility of speaking back, of resisting. And with that speaking back, he's also trying to create a redefinition of what we consider to be improvised music within musical history. So one of our questions is, not only what is improvisation, but how is improvisation used beyond musical dimensions? So with this we are interested in a book called Noise and Capitalism. So noise might imply dissidents, but it also, again, implies a different kind of rupture. And with this we wanted to put forward the work of the noise musician called Mattin, which is looking at copy left and how improvisation, in fact, offers the possibility of thinking about different economic potential. And different ways of not only understanding capitalism, but thinking about how we might have alternate economic systems through improvisation. >> And what better place to think about this stuff, like capitalism, globalism, than a physical border between two nations. In terms of improvisation going far outside of music but also far outside of the conventional context of art, there is a fantastic piece happening at the US, Mexico border by Gustavo Artigas. He produced this work in the year 2000 for the exhibition insight, which is a great series of exhibitions. All of them happened at the US, Mexico border. The piece is called Rules of the Game. And just from the very title, it can gives you a sense of how improvisational techniques have heavily relied on rules, but rules that are not restrictive. In fact, the rules allow for an openness for participants to play themselves into the piece. And for this particular project, what Artigas did was incredibly playful. He invited two high school teams that played indoor soccer, and two basketball teams to play all together at the same time in one high school court. And the parents were there, there were trophies, art audiences were there. And you would think that this turns out into a chaotic event. But in fact, what the rules of the game allow is for a perfectly harmonious simultaneous game, people barely even bump into each other. And so for me, this is one of my favorite examples of improvisation played outside of art. The previous elements of sound that we have talked about have been somewhat abstract. They are concepts, they are immaterial, they do have an impact in our hearing. But we thought we would end this first segment of lectures with something that becomes much more physical. In all kinds of musical traditions throughout history, different periods of civilizations and cultures, one element seems to be crucial to the production of sound, and that is the instrument. Whether it's musical instruments or every day objects that get used to produce sound, we still think of these objects as instruments. And of course, in these difference cultures and civilizations, artists and practitioners have paid a huge amount of attention on how they build these instruments, how they designed them. They've evolved over centuries to produce the sounds they're supposed to produce. But also, the instrument itself has become an artwork in its own terms. And so we thought we would start with a project that brings together some of the macro political things we've been discussing, with this object of the instrument. Beginning in 2013, the artist, Guillermo Galindo, began producing a work called Border Cantos, like songs of the border. And what Galindo has been doing is collecting objects, what some people call relics, of border crossing, and he finds these objects at the US Mexico border. As some of you know, this border is quite a tragic sight, it's also a sight of hope. People leave in very tough conditions from Mexico and actually Central America, South America, and other parts of the world to enter the United States with the hopes of a better life. In that process, many of them lose objects, these objects speak for those people. And so, Galindo has been collecting them to produce musical instruments with them. And Candice, you've been working quite a bit with Guillermo in the recent period on this project particularly, can you say a little bit more about it? >> Yeah, so Border Cantos is a collaboration between Guillermo Galindo and the American photographer Richard Misrach. And with Guillermo instruments, he started quite modestly. He was making small instruments out of things like you can imagine you find a plastic comb in the desert, or the fragment of a book, or a piece of clothing. And he was interested in how these relics, in fact, create a way of entry into these people's lives. These people's lives who are going through a great deal of hardship moving from the south to the north. And not only was he creating instruments, but he was also producing scores at the same time. And the scores that he's making are printed on a very particular fabric. In the desert there are certain markers which show you by flags where you can get fresh water. And water in the desert, as you know, is also a life and death situation. So then these scores become scores for border crossers, which again I think enacts this idea of not only voicing those whose voices might be silenced. But also offering the possibility of hope in this movement. And so in 2016 Guillermo Galindo was invited to participate in Documenta 14 to produce a new set of scores for border crossers as well as a new set of instruments. And with those instruments, he was finding things on the shores of an island in Greece called Lesbos. As well as things that are left over from different areas where refugees were temporarily held in the north in Germany, and making instruments. Some of these instruments include wind instruments, which you can imagine to be a flute. Some are percussive, some are string instruments. And with that, you want it to call attention to the fact that border crossing is not just something that is very localized. In fact, now, there is a global movement. So in 2017, we are witnessing the greatest mass migration of people in the world. And these are happening for different reasons, whether it's because of economic turmoil or even war. And through these instruments, again, these songs that are created and the way that they're performed with other musicians as well as Guillermo himself as a composer is to provide a voice to those who have been silenced.
