36’36”| Expanded cinema | 4D Sound | 2019

Electronics and voice – Jenny Berger Myhre
Video and Objects – Manuela de Laborde
Children’s voice – Tato, Lila and Luciana from -ito/-ita.

Commissioned by Borealis Festival for Experimental Music, Norway; presented in collaboration with El Nicho Festival, Mexico. Supported by the Arts Council of Norway.

Manuela and Jenny spent two weeks together in Mexico City, trying to discover the city in the present through its past – creating a psychological map via a game of un-compromised association. To do this, they started looking for sound and images left behind at flea markets in slides, tapes, films, objects… These finds lead the ‘treasure’ hunt – they revisited places, went after the ‘same’ sounds and objects found in the slides and tapes; a ‘failed’ task highlighting the difference between what is looked for, what is found, and what emerges in between.

The cinematic backbone of the project responds to the specific genre of ghost stories. In form, the thought of ghosts provided the mental construct of a void, the ghost being what is not there, surrounded by presence – it is at two places at once. The ghost is a wish to connect to something bigger than oneself, and thus it reflects the one seeking it. The ghost story is inherently chilling, curious, inexplicable.

A first presentation took place at El Nicho Experimental Music Festival in Casa Del Lago, CDMX. The work was then further developed into a site-specific performance for Borealis at Visningsrommet; again, using objects, stills, film, tape and field recordings in an attempt to manifest their own exquisite corpse or ghost of Mexico City.