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David Ole is a Portuguese musician and craftsman, born in Braga in 1991. Having been initiated in the realm of musical mysteries at the early age of 6, he’s been sharing his art on stage since 2009, turning matter, energy and intelligence into compositions and live performances using saxophone, percussion, custom software and a wealth of hyperinstruments. His work maneuvers sound, music and action to explore relationships between real and unreal things, magic and technology, lucidity and schizophrenia. He’s a member of several band and musical projects in the north of Portugal ranging an uncommon diversity of genres.

In this artistic residency, stemming from the Open Call we launched earlier in the year, David worked on an instrumental music piece which aims to represent and interpret Castro Marim’s identity and context as a border territory via a “martial music” composition imagined as a utopic performance throughout the Guadiana International Bridge; the work attempts to mimic the seismic effects of such an enterprise, and some of its excerpts were presented and interpreted by the local Banda Musical Castromarinense, at the Municipal Library on May 13th.

Norwegian composer Knut Olaf Sunde, whose work revolves around notions of place, duration and immersion, was in residence in the Castro Marim Municipality, as part of the Particular Universal project.

Between April 23rd and May 7th of 2022, he undertook the task of “observing, learning and trying to understand the different cultural and landscape logics” of the region, through sound and video recordings, as well as in conversation with the locals, with the aim of establishing a narrative, presented April 29th, at the Armazém do Sal.

Therese Næss Diesen is a Norwegian sound designer and sound artist. With a background in visual design and cinema, her work includes sound recording, foley and sound design for short and feature films, as well as various collaborations in the universe of performative arts and multimedia.

During her artistic residence in Castro Marim (the final one curated by our partner NyMusikk), the premise was to compose a piece consisting of sounds captured in the municipality, and presented on the 5th of May, at 9PM, as part of the Meeting on Art and Agroecology organized by Associação Catavento, at Quinta da Fornalha.

We talked to Therese about her academic and musical formation, musique concrète, and how she uses sounds to tell stories.

Antonina Nowacka is a vocalist, composer and a sound poet from Warsaw, Poland. Her main interests as an artist oscillate around subjects such as organic sound synthesis, abstract narration, minimalism, symbolism and surrealism, soundscapes and reverberation, the nature of sound, particularly how the sound can influence the nervous system and the ways that music can put the performer and audience in a specific, dream-like mindset. She uses the voice as the most organic synthesizer and a primary tool of creation, involving extended vocal techniques, folk and eastern culture influenced vocal practices, space resonances as well as various forms of sound processing and synthesis in creating minimalistic, imaginative soundscapes.

In her residency in Castro Marim, to which she applied via the Open Call we launched in January, Antonina interpreted the poetry of the region’s birds’ “dreams”, by imagining a sound and musical language capable of translating those unknown, oneiric worlds. She presented her work in the shape of a walking show at Quinta da Fornalha (where she resided), on April 28th. We had the chance to talk to Antonina about her artistic path, the traits that unite her musical influences and the intentions behind her project.

Jiska Huizing is a Dutch artist, musician and DJ living and working in Oslo, Norway.

Their artistic practice is a reflection on the world’s coexisting realities; how everything is relative and in constant change. Working with media such as sound, photography, books, drawing, text and hikes, they create work that contains a sense of searching and of wandering, and that questions how we perceive our surroundings. Walking is important in their practice, both as a concept and a working method.

For the culmination of their residency, Huizing held a workshop in soundmap making, on April 22nd at the Moinho das Pernadas (Pernadas watermill) in Odeleite. We had the chance to talk to Jiska about their work, sound maps and the importance of searching.

The Portuguese artists Mestre André, João Polido, Adriana João and Rita Santos will spend a week in Magerøya / Máhkarávju, in the far north of Norway, for a residency.

Through the project Particular Universal nyMusikk has curated a series of six artist residences for Norwegian artists in Castro Marim in Portugal. Now four Portuguese artists are invited to Magerøya/Máhkarávju for the period of 3 - 9 July. The artists will work with their own practices related to place, identity and memories, with the island as their starting point.

Towards the end of their stay the artists will present themselves and their work to the community of Honningsvåg/Honnesváhki, on July 8, at the North Cape Museum.

Hosts, curators and producers for the residency are artists Eirik Blekesaune and Emma Gunnarsson.

Learn more at www.nymusikk.no 

The Teatro do Vestido team, one of Particular Universal’s partners, are also currently undertaking an artistic residency in the Castro Marim territory. Within the ample span of initiatives that seek to artistically explore a territory of low population density, this project by Teatro do Vestido is titled “As Vozes da Memória” (The Voices of Memory). From this vast territory of memories of places and people, filled with senses and layers to be discovered, the artistic collective has been dedicated in searching, acknowledging and mapping these treasures, as a way of contributing to a future community archive.

“thinking of the poetics of field work

organizing the archive

seeking to draw the map

meeting with the voices”

are the objectives of this residency in June.