Sombras en Alzuza (exhibition by Misha Bies) + Altzuza (Performance by IbonRG in Museo Oteiza)

Sombras en Alzuza. Exhibition by Misha Bies

The image this year is the work of visual artist Misha Bies Golas.The photographs of which it is made up are part of a set of around a hundred shots taken, like a catalogue, of offcuts collected among the waste from a leather goods workshop. As a continuation of previous tests carried out in the author's workshop and in the monastery of the Immaculate Conception of Loeches, Misha Bies Golas has designed a specific installation for one of the spaces of the Oteiza Museum. A montage in which the parchments together with light, sound and other constructive materials enter into dialogue with the architecture and other existing elements in the space of Oteiza's house-workshop.

Altzuza. Performance by IbonRG in Museo Oteiza

Walls, windows, floors, ceilings, skylights, stairs, handrails, walkways, pedestals and fences resound. The voices that ring against these things spread out in all directions, through space, and fade. But there are echoes that don't quite fade out, come what may.

Gogoaren durunda apaltzen saiatu arren, ozen dirau

The absence of an echo can make us tremble, even feel terror and anxiety; or -why not?- it can calm and pacify us. In the absence of an echo, the voice has to work harder. And the hearing too. A capella singing comes about as it comes up against things, and this is when its appearance is shaped, one feels conditioned and takes decisions.

In the past I've mentioned that we are afraid to hear our own voice, and this fear grows when our voice explodes, naked, and fuses with our inner ear, before coming up against nothing else. I could explain the reasons in acoustic terms, but I doubt that our trembling comes from this alone.

... lurra izigarri oro ikharaturik,
zuhamuiek dakartela odolezko izerdi
tenpestatez, igortziriz, aire oro samurrik
mendi eta harri oro elgar zatikaturik
mundu oro jarriren da suiak arrasaturik

And maybe it's just this panic that pushes me to choose. Bunkers, stables, caves, hermitages, garages, enormous water tanks, tunnels, churches. In them I've recorded my voice, I've altered my songs. Always on the pretext of seeking the truth.

hotsa doilorra, merkea zen

Churches were built to heal fear, to heal the soul and the hearing, with the hope of finding the truth in the heavens. The light that Sáenz de Oiza let into the Oteiza Museum also dresses up everything it finds in its path as a lie, for us, starting out from its truths, to build our own. Fortunately I'll also lie, improvising and composing, in or out of sight, whispering or shouting, tonally or atonally.

kaperen zimenduak dardararaziko badituzte nire otoitzen orpoek, dantzatu bitez

IbonRG. Ever since I was small I've played Basque traditional instruments, and in 1999 I started to sing and play the guitar in the group Eten. From 2006 onwards, under the name IbonRG (b. Sestao, 1978), I wrote experimental pieces in my bedroom with all kinds of instruments and objects, and distributed them on CDs full of mp3s. By the time of my first solo live show, the voice had become the only instrument. In 2016 the double album Hil zara came out: some twenty songs recorded in caves, hermitages and bunkers. I have worked on many joint projects, in both improvised and composed music, in productions, music for film and theatre and reports for the radio and print media. The album oMOrruMU baMAt, released together with Enrike Hurtado in 2021, sets out from some words by Joxean Artze and his contribution to the txalaparta.