AS VOZES DAS SUAS HISTÓRIAS (The Voices of their Stories) is the product of the artistic and creative residency by BINAURAL NODAR, in 2021.

For this commission, interviews were conducted with women in the village of ALVA, in the region of Castro Daire, in the north of Portugal. The interviewees, with a willingness to dialogue, lent their voices and recounted their experiences of being “women” in a place like Alva. At the same time, they shared their daily chores and proudly exhibited their skills, not only domestic.

The interviews were segmented into small fragments that make up a semantic core of given information. These audio fragments were placed in random order for their reproduction, being able to “make” an “A la Carte” discourse, which goes from these small stories to soundscapes in binaural format of each place visited for the interviews. Here, the protagonists are the stories of these women themselves, with their voices.

The first week was used to collect the necessary information and the following week was used for the composition of the soundscapes and the synthesis of the interviews.

The most interesting thing about the artistic residencies is perhaps not the results of the works, but the radical thing, if it is well used in a residency, is the feedback from the artists with whom it is linked. To observe other work processes, to receive feedback from other perspectives, to understand that the result of your work is perhaps the process of arriving at what you are doing and not the mere result in itself. In this case, working with large audio cakes, with voices that transmit linear, passionate experiences, diverse approaches to tasks that one considers everyday, is the experimental part of the process and the risky part of the decision making process to give an end to a work that will surely remain unfinished.

This is the particular case of AS VOZES DAS SUAS HISTÓRIAS, here perhaps we do not contemplate an experimental work according to the canon, we contemplate processes in the decision making at the time of presenting a final cut, the exhibition of the work and the subsequent returns from the curators.