Imísí Òkun - Ocean's Breath

For 4 voices, small instrumental ensemble, dancer and electronics. Michelle Agnes Magalhaes (original music) and Luanda Siqueira (libretto and historical research) with scientific collaboration of Aline Cerqueira (eco-acoustic research), Frédéric Bevilacqua (gesture-controlled electronics), Lucas Lopes Pereira (dance).

A meeting point between different worlds, cultures, and eras : the intersecting biographies of Tituba, Nanny, and Luisa. Their stories speak of forced exile, the condition of human-as-object, and the simultaneous degradation of nature and bodies.

We aim to make these relationships explicit through the interaction between musicians and interactive objects for real-time electronic control. For this, we draw upon Afro traditions in interaction with Amerindian culture, where loop rhythms establish temporal bridges. Gestural music and dance, interacting with interactive electroacoustic instruments, embody different states of the body: sacred, relational-affective, and object-slave.

The real-time electronics, designed by Frédéric Bevilacqua (ISMM team IRCAM), is controlled by the movements of dancer Lucas Lopes Pereira, whose gestures sculpt and transform the sounds, creating an embodied dialogue between the moving body and the underwater sound recordings (Aline Cerqueira). 

Juxtaposed with biographical elements, another story takes shape: that of maritime life, explored through the vocalizations and community behaviors of migratory birds, particularly the albatross. Aline Cerqueira's eco-acoustic research on these birds' behavior and interactions with their ecosystem is integrated into the libretto, where the ecosystem itself is considered a model for designing interactions between singers and musicians.

Music fluidity. Porosity between the living and inert, material and spiritual.