Interview with Alfredo Costa Monteiro

 

photo: Łukasz Głowala

Alfredo Costa Monteiro studied sculpture/installation at the Fine Arts School in Paris with Christian Boltanski.

In 1992, he moved to Barcelona. Since then, his work stands somewhere between visual arts, visual poetry and sound. His installations and sound pieces, all of a low-fi character, have in common an interest for unstable processes, raw materials and gestures, where the manipulation of objects as instruments or instruments as objects has a strong phenomenological aspect.

Ongoing sound projects: Cremaster (with Ferran Fages), i Treni inerti (with Ruth Barberán), Atolón (with Ferran Fages and Ruth Barberán), Astero (with Juan Matos Capote), 300 basses (with Jonas Kocher and Luca Venitucci) and duos with Pascal Battus, Tim Olive and Michel Doneda.

He has given workshops at Hangar (Barcelona, Spain), ESDI (Barcelona, Spain), Janácek Academy of Music and Performing Arts (Brno, Czech Republic), Arteleku (San Sebastián, Spain), Facultad de Bellas Artes, (Pontevedra, Spain), ESAD (Caldas da Rainha, Portugal), Crossroads during John Cage’s Year, (Lublin, Poland) among others.

He has toured in Canada, Japan and Europe.

I have been friends with Alfredo for almost 20 years, co-released his album and thought it is about time to ask him some questions. 

1.There is a moment in almost every musician's creative life that is and will be remembered as some sort of critical point when you move towards some area that you are able to express yourself. An inspiration that makes you think: I might want to try it and do it. What was it for you?

 

This was very clear in my case. I was living in Paris at that time, and after some technical studies that I didn't really like I decided to take a radical direction towards visual arts. I was 22 or 23 years old and had been attracted by art all my life (in fact I already had been involved in amateur bands and had started to do some experiments by myself).

So, I had an existential crisis and felt that it was the moment for a change. Although I pretty much believe in unconscious accumulative processes, that moment seemed to be a sort of inflection that would change for ever my relation to the world. I went to the university to study visual arts in order to prepare the admission to Fine Arts school in Paris.

I studied there for three years, and then moved to Barcelona. I went on working in the field of visual arts for more than a decade, but gradually my installations became less and less objectual, and in the end, they were made almost by sound. I'd got stuck by the arrogance and disproportion of the world of visual arts and decided to make a second move towards experimental practices with sound. That was exactly thirty years ago.

Sound had always been very present in my life, but that was something I discovered much later; some psychological sensations that had always been kept unexplained came gradually to the surface as I was developing my practise. They were not imposing themselves as something I could even name, but I could feel they were growing along with my practice. Many abstract links were created with my childhood, for example.

Some reminiscences of situations and contexts where sound had been absolutely primordial but mixed with other impulses that seemed to have more importance, but in fact did not. Many activities which I thought were related to visual arts were in fact related to sound; sound of language and materiality of sound. This became really clear when I started my activity in sound poetry around 2000. Text and voice could link sound to a more psychological content which today is complementary to my work with just pure sound.

 

2. How did you start your relationship with your instrument(s) and compositions? You seem to be creating your own instruments. 

 

I'm a multi-instrumentalist and use very different ways of producing sound. The etymology of the word “instrument” coming from Latin, means “tool” and it's exactly as tools that I've been using many different instruments such as the accordion, the electric guitar, some electro-acoustic devices, different sorts of synthesizers, percussion instruments, etc...

A tool is an intermediary between the hand and another object, and it's exactly what instruments are for me; rather intermediaries than finalities. This means that I have no interest in what a musical instrument is, neither in its quality nor in its craftmanship or material, except for what it can offer as a sound production source.

With such an approach, there's no fear to play against the instrument and to deconstruct it by using it in situations pushed to the limit.

It's a way to bring these instruments in new directions by transforming them with other objects and devices so that you end up by constructing a new instrument, a new source of sound production quite far away from its original form.

My relationship with these different devices is then different according to the music I want to produce. Certain things are possible with certain tools, that's why I've been creating all these devices along the years, because it reflects the need I have to create a wide range of sounds.

It all started when I was a teenager and started to play different instruments, because of my curiosity about how sound could be produced. I think I've inherited this versatility from that period. And also, because I've realized that if you want to have a certain particularity in your sound production, it's better to use your own devices that will sound the way you want; the more unstable they are, the more organic sound will be.

 

3. You are active as a solo artist and collaborate with other artists - how did it start and what lies ahead?

 

Since I started my musical activities, I've always collaborated with other artists; I've always found sound so complex that I wanted to explore it as much as possible, and I found this would be effective through collaborations, not only with musicians but also with other types of artistic forms.

My first collaborations happened in contexts that were new for me but that would expand my own relation with sound. I also wanted to experiment the idea of sharing or how could my own work fit with that of others; a kind of balance where both should contribute to a single entity.

And after some years working in different stable formations, I gradually reduced collaborations to focus more in my own work. I needed this attention to develop my own practice also because I work in many different fields so it was also a matter of responsibility. I tried to create a personal approach to different forms of sound in order to strength all the particularities that would build up and define my personality.

And after some time I started to collaborate again with other artistic forms such as experimental cinema, contemporary dance or sound art which I still do currently and will continue in the future.

 

photo: Łukasz Głowala

4. What are your inspirations when it comes to style and creative process in your own work? Music wise and beyond.

 

I don't like much the word inspiration, because its first meaning has to do with something divine, and even nowadays we still think of it as a very special moment when you suddenly feel something inhabits you as if it

was by magic. I pretty much believe things come gradually, as I said before, by accumulation. An idea gets nourished by others and then they are slowly processed, sometimes for months or years until they come out. Sometimes I'm surprised by how ideas can get stuck in my mind for such a long time that I thought I had forgotten them. But little by little they come to the surface and finally get into something possible. I'm a very curious person, so I try to absorb as much information as I can, and my points of interest are very

diverse; but two of the most important are literature and cinema; literature for any kind of narrative (even if abstract) and cinema for montage.

My sound pieces are almost always made of fragments interconnected in sequences with sounds that follow an inner structure. In some cases, this methodology is more apparent than in others. And in some of them this kind of narrative is clearly assumed as a composition strategy.

Another important element comes from cinema and is the montage; but what interests me more than its rhythmical aspect is the emotional one; it's what evolves the psychological sense of a piece. This may not always be apparent, but it's something that lies under the apparent minimalism of most of my pieces. The organic nature of sound is always present and is absolutely fundamental for me.

 

5. How are the musical interactions between you and others in collaborative work?

 

These interactions variate depending on if it's a stable collaboration or not. In stable collaborations a relationship is constructed with time, so that affinities (and differences) can come out easily. It's the perfect context for very special things to happen, a kind of maturity in the music made together. Sometimes there are moments where things seem to have been preselected in a common agreement; things that you know would

never happen without a certain complicity. You gradually build an ecosystem where each element has its own place and is (almost) never out of context. And also, there is a long term planification, even if it's tacit. At least it's how it has always been for me; but of course, to build such an intricate link a sort of empathy is needed,

otherwise it's just a mere juxtaposition. In the end, it's never totally improvised.

With punctual collaborations, it's different, because there's no time to construct a common entity, it's more like discovering new contexts. It can be fine only if it's with artists that I've chosen due to their personalities; I'm doing less and less ad hoc meetings for these reasons and also because improvisation has always been a means and not a goal.

After so many years of activity, I'm much more demanding than just a combination where everyone just play their thing and are happy with it. I'm not talking about interaction, because there would be a cause and effect link; no, it's not that. I'm talking about something much more difficult to define and that happens in stable collaborations; you know it's there, in the music. Roland Barthes talks about something similar in literature, when suddenly things “curdle” all together. If one is not able to detect it, I think it's because of a lack of

experience.

And trying to avoid the so-called skills has always been mandatory for me, as experimental and improvised music has this pretty much in its essence; the skill first (even when it seems to be an inability) and the music after. That's why I've been ”constructing” my own devices because I think it's a way to avoid virtuosity.

 

6. Where is the line between your own prose and theory of what you do and academic pursuits? How does your own academic education affect what you do artistically? What and who influenced you at different stages of your life?

 

I couldn't say that my studies at Fine Art school in Paris were academic, as the ambient at that moment (end of the 80's) was precisely that of an anti-academicism. And I had previously studied at the University of Paris VIII St Denis, which was the continuity of the University of Vincennes where May 68 had started. Just to contextualize

my studies and the degree of intellectual liberalism implied in them.

My influences were multiple, as I said before, not only musical. They were more in terms of finding structures of thinking than trying to adapt a form previously idealized and most of all questioning dogmas. So, when I started working with sound I had a whole conceptual background that was awaiting to be used; and it's what I did, I guess all these different approaches are still present in my current work.

I have no academic training in music, that's why my production is so versatile. I think that if I had studied music, I would have some models to dismantle or eradicate, whereas having studied sculpture, I'm more aware of what is the inner matter of sound. For me it's just a question of materiality and space, how to construct a kind of narrative, even if abstract. I know very little about the scientific part of sound and I'm not really interested in knowing more; I'm much more sensitive to its dramaturgy and psychological effects than to its intrinsic properties.

 

photo: Łukasz Głowala

7. How do you feel in an ever changing world of musical distribution? How difficult is it at the moment to promote your own music?

 

It's difficult as it has always been. I don't know if more or less, but what I know is that we have to assume the consequences of our choices. I knew it would be a tough path if i wanted to be an artist that would never be

submitted to capital. It's not an ideal posture, it's just how reality is, very reflective to any kind of creative art that is not related to money. I think that certain mechanisms end up by being repeated even if the context is different; productivity can survive without art, but we know a society can't survive without culture. So, it's always this never ending fight: resistance versus assimilation.

Some forms of art have to be sacrificed to capital, even if they're quite creative in fact, but when being absorbed, they lose any kind of aura and subversion, whereas the others that remain in the margins are constantly being fed by the strength of resilience.

And in fact, margins are great spaces to work in, avoiding the centre where everything is obviously obvious. As I said before, I've always been attracted by what is behind things, but what is around them is also exciting; just a way to avoid the centre which is what everybody notices.

 

8. Plans for the future?

 

I have no specific plans, except continuing my whole activity as it is now. I work in quite different directions so there's a lot to keep doing.

costamonteiro(at)yahoo(dot)fr

http://www.costamonteiro.net