Veronica Anne Salinas & Clara de Asìs Residency
After a series of online exchanges, first spread informally throughout the first half of the year, then concentrated in the months of September and early October, Veronica Anne Salinas and I met in Chicago to pursue our collaborative work during ten days at Experimental Sound Studio, as part of the Outer Ear residency program.
The discussions that we had over the course of the initial phase of our collaboration informed our creative process and set a conceptual and aesthetic frame within which we could operate. The recording room became our atelier for the whole period of our residency at ESS. We were granted full access to it, able to settle our respective instruments and materials in the space and position an array of four speakers, setting the aural architecture of a particular landscape made out of waveforms.
Not only the technical conditions at ESS facilitated our process and rendered its materialization possible, but also the social and symbolic space at the studio, where the atmosphere was supportive, enthusiastic, inclusive. The eager generosity of all those who were involved in this residency mobilized interactions, encounters and dialogues with a diverse community of people coming from different backgrounds engaged in a variety of sound-based practices. I could experience the vibrant experimental music scene in Chicago, its insightful openness, idiosyncrasy and passionate curiosity, which felt remarkably specific to the city and bear witness of the vivid creative collective energy that circulates in town. In only ten days I attended a multitude of outstanding concerts and created exciting alliances to be developed certainly in the near future.
Our music-making process was interwoven with trips around town, which became the scene of many conversations around listening, art, identity, life. A reminder that music exists beyond production, and so one can approach music-making from an oblique angle, such as going for a walk along the lake or talking about the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, Daniela Cascella, Brandon Labelle, Julia Eckhardt, Bell Hooks.
We also visited the sound department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with Alex Inglizian, who took us through the most inspiring electronic instruments, including the legendary Emu synthesizer.
Our residency culminated in a public rendition of our collaborative piece in the form of a sound performance at the green house of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, incorporating electronics, wind whistles and shakers. Among ferns and towering palms, we invited the audience to experience the environment by means of a sonic agency in interaction with the aural entities already present in the green house, as well as other sensorial realities such as the infinite shades of green and brown, the concurrence of textures and the substantial humidity in this extraordinary ecosystem.
In parallel to this residency at ESS, two of my compositions were premiered in Chicago by the ensemble a·pe·ri·od·ic, led by Nomi Epstein, as part of a double-portrait concert also featuring works by Argentinian composer Gabriela Areal. For this occasion at Elastic Arts, I performed my piece Pillar of Salt, involving modular synthesizer and percussion, as an opening solo set.
Following this concert, I was given the opportunity to deliver a lecture to the composition students at DePaul University upon the invitation of Dr. Osnat Nezer, focusing on the main aesthetic and philosophical concepts that drive my creative practice.
Thank you to the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in the US, Experimental Sound Studio, a·pe·ri·od·ic, Elastic Arts, the Musicianship & Composition faculty at DePaul University School of Music, the Lincoln Park Conservatory. And especially Veronica Anne Salinas, Ernesto Coro Morán, Adam Vida, Alex Inglizian, Olivia Junell, Ralph Loza, Nomi Epstein, Osnat Netzer, and all the ears and friends who made this experience so fantastic and fruitful.
—Clara de Asis
This October ESS partnered with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain for a residency exchange with Spanish artists Clara de Asìs and Chicago artist Veronica Anne Salinas. For the culmination of their residency Clara and Veronica performed ‘tiny sounds’ which incorporated processed organic and electronic sounds and frequencies inspired by the wildness and infinitesimal sensualities floating within Lincoln Park Conservatory’s Fern Room.
This residency was a part of ESS's ongoing Outer Ear Residency Program, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This residency was in partnership with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain.
