PATHS OF RURAL MOBILITY
Artist Residency Program in Sound and Intermedia Arts for 2014
Montemuro, Arada and Gralheira Mountain Ranges (Portugal)
April and October 2014

An organization of Binaural/Nodar (São Pedro do Sul, Portugal)
In partnership with Audiolab.org (Basque Country, Spain) and Tramontana Network of Memory Archives from Southern Europe

[Call for creative projects open until 31 October 2013]

1. Creative proposal

Rural societies as the mountain ranges around Nodar (central Portugal) are usually understood as still being anchored in a sense of rootedness, of deep connection between communities and their landscapes of reference, in which mobility is essentially seen as being forced by extreme circumstances, as an exit from the natural flow of life (eg, emigration or military draft).

However, if one attentively analyses to the social history of these communities, we find a whole series of movement impulses since ancient times, and were probably the limitations of routes and transportation that made the radius of action more limited than the desired or needed.

On the other hand, the rapid social change of Portugal in recent decades stimulated an increase in the pace and range of geographical mobility, and people with life experiences abroad or even born elsewhere are now common in rural villages.

Binaural/Nodar’s artist resdiency program in sound and intermedia arts for 2014 will specifically focus on the ancestral and contemporary aspects of mobility in the rural areas of Montemuro, Arada and Gralheira mountains trying, by hosting artists’ field work together with communities and landscapes and innovative uses of audiovisual technologies, and interactive communication, to contribute to the debate on the new directions of rural mobility.

Below are the types of rural mobility which should be selected by each proposal (a typology for each proposal):

Commercial Mobilities: food pedestrian vendors, cattle and goats vendors, ore traders during the XX World War, traditional itinerant services (animal killers, animal castrators, blacksmiths, carpenters, basket weavers, coopers, clog makers, etc.), modern international transport drivers (TIR), smuggling, itinerant minivans selling grocery, bakery, greens and fruit, fish, etc.
Farming Mobilities: the mobility of farmers employed both within the region and to other regions, etc.. The cyclic mobility depending on the seasons and their agricultural activities.
Shepherding mobilities: the paths of transhumance, the daily mobility of shephers, etc.
Religious Mobilities: pilgrimages (to both local sites and to Fatima), promises, processions, sacred routes, etc.
Leisure Mobilities: the roaming of musicians and people from villages to traditional dance and music parties, etc., New ways of leisure and rural as weekend or vacation.
Social mobilities: Marriage, military service, war, school, university, seminary, emigration and immigration (Lisbon, Porto, France, Switzerland, Brazil, etc..). Departure and return. Traveled paths, crossing borders, etc.

2. Application

a) In the selection process the following types of artistic works will be privileged: Electroacoustic / vocal / sound art compositions; Permanent or ephemeral sound sculptures; Radio works; Free improvisation and performance works for/from the local religious phonosphere.

b) The artistic creation labs will be developed in two phases, in April and October 2014 (each artist will develop his/her project during three weeks in only one of the mentioned periods).

c) Applications are accepted only if sent by October 31th, 2013, exclusively using the online application form found at:http://www.binauralmedia.org/news/en/artist-residency/application-form.

d) The document attached to the application (a pdf, doc or zip file) should include the following information:

Art project proposal to be developed (indicating both work methodology and planned chronology);
Brief artistic biography (one paragraph) and Curriculum Vitae;
Web links to previous works from the artist(s);
Material and technical needs of the project;
Proposed time period for the artist residency.
d) For additional inquiries, please write to Manuela Barile (manuela@binauralmedia.org) or Rui Costa (rui@binauralmedia.org).

e) For additional information on the conditions of the residency, please refer to Binaural/Nodar’s website:http://www.binauralmedia.org/news/en/artist-residency/the-residency.

3. About Binaural/Nodar

Binaural – Associação Cultural de Nodar (BINAURAL/NODAR) is a Portuguese non-profit Cultural Organization founded in 2004 with the aim of promoting the exploration and research in sound and media cultures, focusing on the crossing of media and languages and on the articulation between creative production, academic research in social and environmental sciences and the surrounding rural context of Gralheira mountain range (Dão/Lafões Sub-­Region, Portugal), where the organization develops most of its activities.

BINAURAL/NODAR holds creation, production, promotion, research, documentation and teaching activities with the objective of establishing itself as a platform for experimentation and sharing of theoretical and methodological thought in the fields of technology, artistic practice and sound/visual anthropological documentation of rural areas.

BINAURAL/NODAR is managed by an international team of social researchers, cultural managers, artists and curators (with more than 10 years of activity). The board of directors is comprised of three persons with deep roots and/or living for many years in the rural area of Gralheira Mountain Range.

Underlying to the activities of the BINAURAL/NODAR is the concern of establishing connections between sound / visual arts and the anthropological and geographical environment, by supporting documentation projects, artist residencies and public events directed to diversified audiences and that deal with its capacity for generating meanings and building identity and memory.

Since March 2006, over 100 international sound and media artists and social scientists developed projects in the area in close connection with the region’s communities. Issues such as collective memory, identity, gender and age, life and death, geography, topography, music, sound heritage, landscape, vegetation, water and fire, consumption and leisure dynamics, myths and traditions, crafts, agriculture and shepherding, were used as a thematic background for many of the works produced there.

Throughout the year, the organization programs various scientific and creative residency modules in order to stimulate a collaborative environment between artists and researchers from different fields and geographic origins. During the course of the residencies several parallel activities are organized, such as conferences, lectures and educational activities (namely youth-­oriented). At the end of each residency module there is a public presentation organized in the village, in which the different projects are presented and discussed by the authors and the organization.

Nodar Rural Lab is the technological, logistical and curatorial platform by which the development of projects is carried out, by means of audiovisual technologies and languages and permanent dialogue with the various elements that shape the region. Many of the projects held at Nodar Rural Lab are of an interdisciplinary nature, i.e. crossing different artistic, scientific and traditional practices, often cancelling its borders in order to seek for a hybrid sense that can amplify their expressive and functional possibilities.