Rivers

Opening of Il Terzo Paradiso center by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy September 2015

Vocal crowd of refugees and loudspeakers

"They are immobile. Absorbed. African women and men, who fled from the war, continue their walk immersed in the sound of the river. Extrapolated from the flow of migrants - involved in the sound performance by Yuval Avital in the new headquarters of the Third Paradise by Michelangelo Pistoletto in Biella - have become artwork. The atmosphere of suspension, before the rising of the birds chirping in a score of aquatic sounds studied by Avital, changes the ordinary perception we have of them ( …) Every now they pronounce a word or are launching a scream, in deep concentration. Circumnavigate the work of Pistoletto to form in turn another work. Through art their presence acquires a different dignity. And in this case everything is clear: art is but a sleek instrument for interpreting reality. The idea of that reality is condensed into minutes of the Rivers performance abstraction."
(Manuela Gandini, Alphbeta2 magazine)

Sample score

Rivers is a performance composition, designed to be presented in museums, art centers and galleries, avoiding stages or theatres and allowing the public to walk freely next to the performers.

The two elements of RIVERS are a Crowd Music ensemble (an anti-choir of sound composed of non-musicians using their voice as an instrument of beauty) and loudspeakers.

The Vocal Crowd, composed of refugees and asylum seekers, doesn’t need to know how to read music or to have any previous musical experience. The performers have 10 elements to perform both with gesture and with voice. Some elements could be done walking, some should be done standing, some sitting, some lying down.

The loudspeakers play elaborated sound recordings of local flowing waters, joined to the original 4 tracks of the flowing waters of Biella, Italy, where this work was premiered. There should be used a minimum of four channel looped tracks (duration 27,20”) which should be disposed in a large mostly empty space in which, according to the space or the amount of new sonic material, could be multiplied (8, 12, 16 etc.).