Emergency Exit Installation by Jose Camejo with music by Javier Hernandez-Miyares. This fragment is from an event that took place at the INTAR in New York City in March 2000. The following is an example of how to musicalise a poem: Sonya (Emergency Exit)
The following is another poem from the exhibit: Salida De Emergencia
The following segment of music includes the voice of John Cage: The Telephone Rang (Emergency Exit)
Composing music for an art installation is a challenge, because the expectation is that the audience will be drifting in and out of the proscenium. Therefore, i utilized a theme and revelation compositional style, so that at every moment there is a repetition of a musical figure that later appears in a new context. Jose Camejo described this as Psycho-Symphonic Music.
Postscript:
i did not know at the time that jose camejo had cancer, and he died a few years after this. the first bit that i wrote was an offertorium for sonya’s poem, and i appropriated a segment of audio from a polish mass, which appears throughout the composition. in this segment, i was alluding to mankinds first escape hatch, which is through the birth canal. In the Catholic Mass the offertory is the experience of god inhabiting the inanimate; this is known as transubstantiation. after Jose died i realized that he was contemplating the emergency exit that is beyond the reach of our mortality.
i just happened to record jose laughing, while we were recording a poem, and i used it as a motif, which appears throughout the sonic landscape.
This is a fragment of music that i composed for the installation: Sindrome de Angola by Barbaro Martinez Ruiz. The exhibition was presented at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1999.
The following is an interview that i conducted eleven years ago of a veteran of the Panama invasion. This testimonial by a soldier who was an eyewitness, is a riveting chronicle of the evils of war, and a condemnation of yanqui imperialism. This interview has never been published before.
This jewel from my archive of demos needs some polish. i have written many more songs than i have used, and this is one that was languishing, so i put it up here now for fresh air. The lyrics are based on a poem by Mario Benedetti. I recorded this live and added some harmonies. This is a sketch of a song about our struggle for humanity. The jagged rhythms come from Bartok and The Clash.
Biografía visual de Ho Chi Minh que refleja la lucha del heroico pueblo vietnamita, del director cubano Santiago Álvarez.
Observations by WTPF:
Director Santiago Alvarez developed his “nervous montage” technique of using “found materials,” such as Hollywood movie clips, cartoons, and photographs, and his style is considered a precursor to the modern video clip.
“Inna Gadda Da Vida”, by Iron Butterfly is mashed up into the soundtrack of this film. This is an early example of sampling, the use of previously recorded music, to create a new hybrid composition.
Footage from this film, and others that Santiago Alvarez shot or acquired in Vietnam, have rarely been broadcast in the U.S. mainstream media.
