CHICOTÁS: stretches of life is a multi-sensorial exhibition
based on Seville's Holy Week that took place in London
the 30th APRIL and 1st MAY 2022
chicotá:
is a word solely used in Seville (Spain) to depict “the” journey in-between stops
CHICOTÁS: stretches of life is a multi-sensorial exhibition-space in 7 chicotás (or journeys) resulting from my personal exploration of Seville’s Holy Week and developed through the research I undertook for my dissertation on my MA Culture Industry, Goldsmiths. This journey aimed to explore the possibility of reshaping this ritual, transforming what is deeply rooted in Seville’s culture and system of beliefs into a new experience for “everyone else”. Meaning, those who are unfamiliar with that culture and that set of beliefs.
The first time I went to Seville’s Holy Week was in 2010. Even if this experience did not leave any kind of enduring imprint in me, apart from a sort of warming memory. Seville’s Holy Week has, since, remained in my life anywhere I have been, through my relationship with my parents. Who, as many others, and regardless of their non-religious practices, have become devoted to this collective ritual and the city that best epitomizes it: Seville. Ten years later, they have built a house in Triana and visited this city every single Spring.
This experience has prompted my interest in understanding how this ritual produces structures of meaning that are deeply embedded in the city’s society, affecting the ways of being, believing and living of Sevillians. But especially, an interest in looking into the reasons why religion and faith are not the only, nor the main, motivations that can cause someone (Sevillian or not) to be bewitched by this ritual. This led me to question the possibilities of producing a more universal way of experiencing it.
By recreating an abstraction of the experience of Seville’s Holy Week, I hope to produce an all-embracing “tool”, which could foster connections and cultivate community beyond beliefs. And, mostly, which could enable new forms of experiencing collective rituals beyond religion. Therefore, CHICOTÁS: stretches of life is the result of this query and a space designed based on the idea of producing a new universalized experience of Seville’s Holy Week through audio-visual installations and art objects.
The set of artworks have been produced by a group of multidisciplinary artists who are unfamiliar with this ritual themselves: Allison Tanenhau, Daniel Johns, Ella Wigfall-Gamble, Jaime Rodriguez, Kane O’Brien, Kevin Fuccillo, Myrna Marianovits, Paige Isaacson and Paulina Brosz. In an attempt to bottle the emotional collective experience that it triggers. And hence, invite you, the visitor, to get immersed in this multi-sensorial journey of (re)discovering this deeply rooted Sevillian ritual. Beyond culture, religion and religiosity.
xxxxx images London expo people
This stop invites you to step into Seville in Springtime.
A new yearly cycle has been completed and so Holy Week is about to re-start. Meanwhile, the oranges are blooming and the bakers have begun to prepare Cuaresma pastries.
As we walk across the city, awaiting for the smell of incense and the sound of the trumpets to fill every street, we can start to see El Cartel. Which announces that, once again, yet another year, we will be gathering in crowds of fraternal strangers to look at the sky. Together.
And so we start to hear the trumpets and the drums. The musical marches reminding us that we are alive yet impermanent. The ones helping us remember that we are together yet alone.
Yes! We hear them, the sound of “Amarguras” knocking on our doors, inviting us to step into the streets and join the holy march. Together.
Now that we have finally gathered, we come to Seville’s theater to listen to the poetic lyrics that El Pregonero will be reciting to us. He will be telling us the story of lives through his own. And he will remind us that, yet another year, we have completed a cycle.
And so we are here! It is Springtime, once again, and so we remember who we have been, who we are and who will be.
We continue to live and pass days while time ticks, ceaselessly. Minutes continue to fade and then, in all of the sudden, the Sunday arrives. Yes, the Sunday in which Seville gathers, in crowds, to welcome him into the city.
The first Sunday.
Once we have gathered and we are all in the streets, next to each other, awaiting, we begin to merge with each other. Moving with the music, budging with each other’s rhythm, among the crowds.
The smell of incense is wafting the air, the flashing light of the candles is illuminating the darkened night, and the flowers dance. Slowly, these fade. We blend with them, yet we are there, together.
We become – collectively.
We feel – in harmony.
We are synchronized.
But everything ends and so the last Sunday arrives. Yes, we need to go back home. Yet we do it joyfully. Celebrating that, despite the fleeting moments, which unnoticeably vanish, we will somehow go back. And we will re-start.
ARTISTS & COLLABORATORS:
ALLISON TANEHAUS - Digital Glitch Artist
Allison Tanenhaus (she/her)is a New York–born, Boston–based digital glitch artist. She specializes in bold geometrics, kaleidoscopic color fields, trippy op art, thought-provoking truisms, anachronistic tech mashups, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Her primary formats include retro futuristic GIFs, loops, and music videos; abstract public art; street art cat stickers; and large-scale video projections.She graduated from Harvard University and has studied at Emerson College, MassArt, and the School of Machines, Making, and Make Believe. She is a grantee of the 2019 Somerville Visual Art Fellowship and the 2021 City of Boston Transformative Public Art Program, and is a member of electronic music group The Square Root of Negative Two and optical installation duo bent/haus.
DANIEL JOHNS - Furniture Designer
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ELLA WIGFALL-GAMBLE - Graphic Designer and Illustrator
Ella Wigfall-Gamble is a Graphic Design student at Leeds Beckett University due to graduate in May 2022. She has always loved creativity and tries to express it through different mediums. Her work mainly focuses on printmaking, collage and illustration.
GUADALUPE FERRÁNDEZ - Creative Director
Guadalupe Ferrández is a graduate from an MA in Culture Industry at Goldsmiths based in London. She is interested in the intersections between different media to create experiential spaces and forms of art that can tell stories by engaging audiences in new ways. She has created this project in collaboration with a multidisciplinary group of artists and collaborators as a result of her MA's dissertation auto-ethnographic research exploring Seville's Holy Week from a sociological perspective.
KASOMA IBRAHIM - Website Developer
Kasoma is a Software Developer able to build a Web presence from the ground up - from concept, navigation, Responsive layout and programming. He is skilled at writing well-designed, testable and efficient code using current best practices in Web development.
JAIME RODRIGUEZ - Photographer
Jaime is a photographer based in Seville, whose work focuses on creating black and white photography that depicts people and the streets, almost as photo documentary. However, his work mostly focuses on Seville, its people and its images (Holy Week). He is the main photographer of the Sevillian publication about Holy Week "Revista Nazarenos", being the responsible for creative the images and layout of the magazine.
KANE O'BRIEN - Artist and filmmaker
Kane O'Brien is a graduate from the Music & Sound Design Ba (Hons) at Ravensbourne University London. At his core he is an observer. Having moved between border all his life, he has always made sure to never waste a good goodbye, always looking for that poignant moment. Specializing in telling stories and stirring emotions, he approaches the creative process from many different moral perspectives, artistic disciplines and aesthetics. While working to portray his ideas in ways that encourage thought and introspection. Often asked; "So, what do you do... specifically?" ... "Whatever I can get away with!" which seems to be the joyful battlecry of the artist. Kane has worked in the industry for less than a year, but his work has been displayed in Coal Drop's Yard, he has worked in feature films and TV, has had his radio drama Joe Walsh & The Weight of Despair published, has worked on art installations and screenplays, and has co-hosted a series of successfully poetry nights in London. Kane has never thought of himself as a newcomer nor a competitor -- just ready to work.
KEVIN FUCCILLO - Multi-instrumentalist and Composer
Kevin is a versatile multi-instrumentalist and composer based in London, UK. His adolescent years were spent at The BRIT School, enhancing his skills in music performance, business, theory and production. He later studied film music at Leeds Conservatoire, honing in on film & TV composition. He now works with an array of filmmakers and production companies creating bespoke music and sound design. In November 2020, he won Jury's Choice Best Music at the FFTG Awards for his original score in the short film 'No Internet'.
MYRNA MARIANOVITS - Designer
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PAIGE ISAACSON - PhD Researcher and Multidisciplinary artist
Paige Isaacson is a PhD researcher and multidisciplinary artist working predominantly in music and sound design. Her work focuses on the intersections between art and technology and how both can push each other forward and open new possibilities for knowledge and creative expression. Her reworking of the classic Sevillan Holy Week song Amarguras for instance, uses an AI model trained to separate frequencies typically associated with certain instruments. These instruments, partially re-imagined by the software, are then altered—sometimes heavily, sometimes not at all—with audio effects and layered together to create a new and immersive soundscape. Like the connection between music and technology, her PhD research looks to the ways digital media, particularly social media, influence our experiences of the world and can be used, and mis-used by nefarious actors and bots, to influence our individual and collective experiences and lead to certain outcomes.
PAULINA BROSZ - 3D Artist
Paulina Brosz is a graduate in a BA(Hons) in Interior Design and an MSc in Serious Games and VR from the Glasgow School of Art. Her work focuses on digital spaces, building them in ways that can help her explore the future or other imaginary worlds. To do so, she works with different mediums: from 3d visualization to conceptual design work. Her areas of expertise are: 3d visualisation, 3d animation, architectural visualisation, interior visualsiaton, product visualisation, product animation.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
All the artists and collaborators: Allison Tanenhaus, Daniel Johns, Ella Wigfall-Gamble, Ibrahim Kasoma, Jaime Rodriguez, Kane O’Brien, Kevin Fuccillo, Myrna Marianovits, Paige Isaacson, Paulina Brosz
Everyone in my life who have helped me make this happen:
Clara Wickasono, Jospeh Muleba, Ernesto Ferrández, Guadalupe Tarí
And the companies who have supported the project, in a way or another:
