Since 2009 the Orquestina de Pigmeos (Pygmy Band), a group formed by musician Nilo Gallego and audiovisual creator Chus Domínguez, alongside various members who collaborate on each new presentation, has been invited by national and international festivals in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Portugal to turn everyday situations into extraordinary artistic experiences that are deployed into the environment: on a stretch of river, along the path of a shepherd with a flock, on top of a volcano at sunrise or on a wharf when the tide is rising. Their creations use elements from different artistic disciplines (sound art, performance, video, music) and require the cooperation of local residents and public participation.
Direct link here to Jonas Mekas video-diary talking about Orquestina de Pigmeos:
Interview with Orquestina de Pigmeos
CONTEXT (Editorial design and coordination: hablarenarte)
Your work has been described as “site specific” in the sense that it is carried out in specific contexts. But the term also suggests certain formal characteristics that condition the practice to some extent. What does the term site specific mean to you? Would you define it differently? How do you work in relation to it? How do you enrich or how are you enriched by those “sites”?
We started using the term site specific quite innocently at first, as a label that allowed us to refer to ourselves without using too many words. But since then we have had many interesting discussions on the subject, among ourselves and also with other colleagues. To put it simply, in each project we like to work for and with the specific context in which the piece is going to be presented, and that includes the human aspects as well as the landscape and spatial elements. Therefore, we always make several visits to the place where we are going to work, trying to understand it and its people over time, and looking for collaborators, ideas, and elements that would never be part of the piece if it were presented somewhere else. This way of working comes naturally to us: integrate the local, explore and learn with the place, generate real exchange and collaboration. And we have been able to make room for this approach even when we work in theatrical contexts where it is usually more difficult for the “site” to make itself felt. The term is not important to us, it actually makes us uncomfortable now, but the work of the Orquestina is always going to be situated in a specific context.
In many cases, your pieces are staged only one time. What is the value of those performances and of the experience of the people who witness them? How is all that material turned into experience? Would repetition destroy that link to context?
Our work in relation to audiences is essentially experiential. We approach the development of the pieces with the idea of bringing about potentially transformative experiences. This may sound a bit pretentious, but it can be as simple as giving you the opportunity to pay attention to the space that you move through each day. In the end, our work consists of causing a slight shift in our frame of observation and listening, allowing us to perceive everyday life as if we were encountering it for the first time.
The Orquestina de Pigmeos is now at a point where we can envisage a transition from ephemeral pieces to works that could potentially be repeated. One of our foundational, pre-Orquestina works was Felipe vuelve a casa con las ovejas sonando—the normal concert of a shepherd and his flock of sheep returning home from the fields each day. This piece was picked up by the media and we considered repeating it, but in this case repetition would have meant a change of format that would basically have turned it into a commodity. At the same time, the Orquestina is strongly influenced by action and performance art of the 1960s, with its emphasis on the essentiality of the moment, almost like a dogma. But whether as a result of our natural evolution or of external elements related to programming, the fact is that we now find ourselves working in theatrical contexts in which repetition—gigs, a tour—is an option. And we are starting to think: Why not? We have always enjoyed experiencing new places, so why not give it a go and see how we function outside our ephemeral comfort zone.
During the process of getting to know the environment in which you are going to work, how do you decide what stays and what goes? How do you create a particular imaginary? Does your methodology change according to whether you work with specific third-party projects or your own ideas?
We do a maximum of one project per year and we try to draw out the process as much as possible, six months if we can. We know that the final stretch will be intensive and increasingly stressful, so we try to strike a balance by starting out slowly, enjoying ourselves, discovering, experimenting… We let intuition guide us and we don’t think about the final format, only about avoiding repetition and finding something new that attracts us because it is unfamiliar. We walk around, talk to a lot of people, get carried along, until at some point we begin to get an idea of what we would like to do. Then, little by little, with our new collaborators, we create a kind of constellation that starts out chaotic and will somehow have to come together. We develop our own ideas, in collaboration with the host organization or venue, which usually provides broad guidelines and enough room to move freely.
Your works usually revolve around everyday life or seemingly inconsequential subjects. Commenting on your piece Ningún Lugar (Nowhere to Go), which takes its name from his book I Had Nowhere to Go, Jonas Mekas talked about the significance of the personal, the small, the real. Why do you think it is important to work on that scale?
We think it’s important to open channels rather than close them, to let time leave its mark, to fail math class, to do things we have no idea about, to allow contradictions in which the big is small and vice versa. Jonas Mekas taught us to appreciate the small and seemingly insignificant aspects of life. He stumbled across this subject matter almost by accident, when he started putting together the footage of everyday moments that he filmed on weekends while he waited to have the time and money to make a “real” film. But it was all there, in the amateur gesture of capturing the small moments that make up films in which “nothing happens.” His experience paved the way for many of us, showing us that this “nothing happening” can have experiential and artistic value.
How important is sound in the construction and structure of your works?
Sound is crucial to our performances, as a structuring element and a unifying thread. They are pieces that you could simply listen to. The music, rhythm, silence, and noise run through the whole piece, always from a direct, non-sophisticated point of view. There are contrasting and clashing atmospheres, detail and drama, the choir and the soloist. You could say that we stage operas; our work has been described as “landscape opera,” but we prefer “opera of the small,” in homage to Jonas Mekas.
Contact:
Nilo Gallego
Chus Domínguez
Noemí Fidalgo
Raul Alaejos
Varis Fuertes
Pedro Sousa (Coias)
Ana Cortés (Campanilla)
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