Mértola – Artist in the Community

artistic walk at vascão river

On 13 April 2024, on a public walk with stories, music and acoustic surprises, various places along the Vascão River were revisited, including two old mills and their memories. The participatory stories, collected previously by the organisation boa Criação in contact with people from the surrounding area, talked about mills and millers, valorising oral tradition and creating an intimate link between imagination and reality.

On this basis, I created various sound interventions for the event – by collecting and re-contextualising sounds and soundscapes from the place itself, and through the collaboration with saxophonist Jan Michálek, whose improvised interactions with the natural environment were led by me. Thus, along the route, participants were exposed to and invited to explore different sound events, many of them playing with elements such as imagination, the improbable, surprise and spatiality, and always associated with a playful and challenging approach.

Audio Samples

These are excerpts from some of the audio samples that were part of the event. The participants were confronted with them at a certain point of the walk and listened to several sound sources simultaneously, which combined with the natural soundscape in a spatial relationship. To simulate the experience, the samples can be listened to simultaneously, creating individual “compositions” and soundscapes.