Noise Agency / Felicja Blumental Center
Residency Program 2021
Alexandre Cruz Sesper
Project: “Isolated Memory Loss”
First subject: Through audio collages and drawings, “Isolated Memory Loss” explores the artist's experience of living in pandemic isolation, during the first six months of 2020, living in São Paulo (Brazil) at a time of uncertainty regarding the future of the world. And last semester of 2020, after moving with his family to Tel Aviv (Israel), closing a cycle after more than 47 years living in Brazil, and now starting over from scratch when everything is locked up.
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In my hands I have my best memories. | These ladders are my choices. | Some conscious choices and others out of obligation. | Happy memories and others I wish I had forgotten.
Choices are made to free me from ideas and attitudes I don't agree with.| Memories that illustrate what should be done and valued. | But my choices and memories are being questioned. | As if the whole past was worthless.
I was already isolated, inside my mind, believing that everything was enough. | Choices have become obsolete and memories became nostalgia and inertia, | as a locked door.
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Living in South Tel Aviv, somehow, I have the same sound impressions as when I lived in São Paulo; ambulance sirens and car horns, busy avenues and bus corridors, constant noises of construction and renovations, and some new frequencies like the garbage truck and carts that clean the sidewalk.
Still not knowing that I would be part of the residency, when I was already recording some stuff from my apartment window, just using my cell phone.
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building | memory loss
This was a case of memory loss; the building that used to be a school was demolished, and inside our apartment, it took some time to understand what was going on. I imagine how many people go in front of it every day and have some affectionate memory of the place.
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building | memory loss (field recording)
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording/ sample 1
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording / sample 2
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording / sample 3
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording / audio 10
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording / sample 15
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
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Tel Aviv field recording / sample 16
digital audio, recorded using a cell phone.
The initial set-up idea was to use cassette players with tape loops of my field recordings, along with pedals and some electronic instruments such as keyboards and synthesizers. Half of this equipment I use I got as a gift from friends or I paid a symbolic price for them from other friends, so there is already an affective memory with it, the day I moved the equipment from my studio to the space where the residency project would take place, I came across a barbecue grill and some parts of what appeared to be a chair base thrown in the garbage outside the building and then I started the process of collect and using these objects as potential instruments.
Found Objects Instruments: - Barbecue grill | - Chair stand | - Parking street sign | - Ethiopian pan |- Wood pieces | - Photograph slide frames
Equipment: - 4 Tape loops | - 6 90/60 minute length cassette tapes | - 8-channel soundboard | - Guitar amplifier | - Microphone | - Portable cassette recorder | - 2 Porta studio 4-channel cassette tape | - Stomp box / Active pickup | - Casio keyboard | - Chorus pedal | - Reverb pedal | - Delay pedal
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tape loop and tape recorder
I’ve been working with tapes and tape recorders a lot in the last years, so it was a spontaneous and natural way to use these objects as main instruments.
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tape loop #1
Contain São Paulo and Tel Aviv field recordings, made with a cell phone, -4.6s loop.
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tape loop #2
Contain São Paulo and Tel Aviv field recordings, made with a cell phone, -4.6s loop.
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tape loop #3
Contain São Paulo and Tel Aviv field recordings, made with a cell phone, -4.6s loop.
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tape loop improvisation
One of the first tape loop improvisations with field recordings.
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tape loop Improvisation
One of the first tape loop improvisations with field recordings.
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Open Score/Graphic Notation
First improvisation
Recorded live in Tel Aviv (14/03/2021) using a cell phone. Interpretation of my first graphic notation / open score ever. Using found objects, cassette tape recorders and a Casio keyboard.
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“How to do the same thing again”
Recorded live in Tel Aviv (18/03/2021) using a cell phone. Interpretation of a graphic notation and open score. Using 3 cassette tape recorders and 3 different tape loop cassettes.
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grill chord
grill chord .
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grill chord
grill chord
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grill chord | modulation test
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grill chord
grill chord
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seat cymbal | percussion test
Video filmed by Ariel Baruch / May 2021
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Drawing / Audio / Photo
dropping
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Wood drop sound over street sign
wood dropping
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Blasting my locked memories (Performance)
Video filmed by Ariel Baruch / May 2021
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Isolation Anxiety (Performance)
Video filmed by Ariel Baruch / May 2021
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Improvisation #1 (Performance)
Improvisation
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Improvisation # 1
Improvisation
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Isolated Memory Loss (Instalattion)
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Isolated Memory Loss (Instalattion)
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tape loop#1 + synth
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Alex Sesper “Isolated Memory Loss” 2021
"These recordings are improvisational compositions, using some open score graphics captured with a digital video camera, then transferred to several cassette tapes, on which I performed these compositions. By playing these tapes, I created this improvisation and recorded it again with a cell phone and, once again, I was trying to create an ambience layer. Also, I found some objects in the streets and made a few instruments to create new sounds, using them together with ambience recordings on several six-second tape loops."
Recorded and performed by Alex Cruz
Tel Aviv, May 2021
The recordings were made with a Canon video camera or mobile phone, raw audio files and without mastering, during his Noise Agency / Felicja Blumental Music Center Residency program 2021 performances.
"Access": Tascam MF-P01, Tascam Porta 07, cassette tape loops.
"Reality": wood sticks on a metal sign.
"Colliding": Doepfer DE synth, Tascam MF-P01, BBQ Grill, cassette tape loops.
"Failing": wood sticks on a metal sign.
"Isolated": Metal Sign, Chair Seat Cymbal, BBQ Grill. Tascam MF-P01.
"Breathing": Tascam MF-P01, Cassette tape loops, Casio tone keyboard.
"Disconnecting": Doepfer DE synth, Tascam MF-P01, cassette tape loops.
Alex Sesper “object : pan | nails” 2021
Soundtrack for the installation / sculpture / photography project. Recorded and performed by Alex Sesper in Tel Aviv 08/2021.
Alex Sesper: nails and pan percussion. recorded on a 4 track cassette tape porta studio.
Pan object found by Nadav.
Alex Sesper “slide frame 35mm” 2021
Soundtrack for installation / sculpture / photography project. Recorded and performed by Alex Sesper in Tel Aviv 08/2021
Alex Sesper: slide frames percussion. recorded on a TASCAM DR-40X.
Alex Sesper “object : negev rocks” 2021
Soundtrack for installation / photography project. Recorded and performed by Alex Sesper in Negev desert 11/2021
Alex Sesper: walking for over 10 minutes. recorded on a TASCAM DR-40X.
Alex Sesper “Is it cruel to keep a bird in a cage?” 2022
Surrounded by these birds in cages, this specific chant, a really beautiful loop, but unfortunately, a sad life.
Performed by Alex Sesper, using two 4 track cassette porta studio, a portable tape recorder and five cassette tape loops containing recordings of metal on wood performance, field recordings, curió singing and speech samples.
Recorded live using a digital Tascam. Tel Aviv, 08/05/2022