Sonic Borders 2 is a sonic ritual performance using sonic devices made from both, items found in the U.S./Mexico Border and personal items obtained from refugee camps in Germany.
The piece was originally composed for the touring exhibit Border Cantos Exhibit (a collaboration between Guillermo Galindo and Richard Misrach).
Educated in the contemporary classical aesthetics of European and American “Avant grade” composers such as Karlheiz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Harry Partch and John Cage among others and influenced by experimental music and ritual practices, most of Galindo’s recent work is based on his personal reinterpretation of classic and contemporary Western musical aesthetics and sociopolitical commentary based on his own Mexican and Mesoamerican heritage.
Commenting on the idea of French concrete composer Pierre Schaffer who suggests that a sound should be listened isolated from its physical source, Galindo’s sonic devices stem from the pre-Columbian notion that a “sonorous body” can become the medium through which the spiritual, animistic world expresses itself and that there’s an intimate connection between an sonic device, the material from which it is made and the person it belongs to.
Guillermo Galindo: Sonic Borders 2 / Documenta 14 Kassel. Documenta-Halle, June 8, 2017.
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Complete video (30:10 min.):