‘Martinete’
DATE: 2011
MEDIA: Sound sculpture
‘Martinete’ is a sound sculpture composed of the sounds of five anvils struck in a repetitive slow rhythm. Moving across four sound channels, this immersive installation uses the acoustic nature of its surroundings to balance between sound and silence, drawing the recent industrial past into the present.
The title of this work refers to one of the oldest patterns in flamenco music traditionally sounded out by gypsy hammer-smiths striking an anvil with a hammer. The work draws on Luigi Russolo’s 1913 experiments with industrial noise that first brought sound into the realm of visual art. In the history of art, and in the history of labour, echoes of the past undergo transformations over time as the present speculates on the future by referring to what has gone before.
In Porto Alegre Brazil, where the work premiered at the Mercosul Biennial in Autumn 2011, ‘Martinete’ was installed within a 107-meter high chimney that has become a symbol within the popular imagination for the city’s industrial past. This vertical composition surrounds the viewer in sound within a dark space, the only illumination coming from the circle of light at the top of the chimney. This is a work concerned with silence as much as it is with sound.
‘Martinete’ creates a scenario to listen to the sounds of the past systems of labour, using their echo to consider the present, calling for attention to be paid to contemporary systems of labour and production. The dominance of today’s knowledge economy is facilitated by invisible industrial labour that has created new modes of slavery to serve the conveniences of technology. The sound of the anvil is an alarm to the perils of turning away from growing slowly. Unless the past is listened to, the anvils sound a requiem for the future.
Presented at:
8th Bienal del Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2011
