WEBVTT

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JENNIFER ALLORA: Pass me the 
vacuum cleaner thing again.

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This is definitely the spot for the trombone.

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It’s going to be like that with 
that thing, with a hand here.

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GUILLERMO CALZADILLA: Yeah.

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ALLORA: And then we’re going to 
have to extend the mouthpiece

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so you can actually sit there and play it.

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CALZADILLA: That’s perfect. Cymbals.

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ALLORA: And then a trumpet over there.

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CALZADILLA: A trom...
ALLORA: It has to go like up and out like that.

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CALZADILLA: Twenty feet in diameter. 
That’s great. That’s funny.

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CALZADILLA: It looks like a gun.

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ALLORA: We’ll cut this part out so you 
can get in closer, but for now at least...

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CALZADILLA: Play...play it 
there to see. Really loud.

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CALZADILLA: That’s the tuba over there...

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ALLORA: Yeah, and then we have 
this one, an award tuba...

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CALZADILLA: How do you call this thing?

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ALLORA: Cymbal. That’s also good.

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ALLORA: What we do often with our projects is 
it’s kind of an excuse to research something.

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ALLORA: This here is the same thing, 
like see how it is like the cannons...

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CALZADILLA: Yeah.

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ALLORA: This is what the openings are for.

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It was for the weapon.

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It’s this chance to learn more 
about something in the world

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and be able to formulate some kind of response.

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ALLORA: Alright so, this was this one about the…

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the sounds for the news networks and

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what they use to represent 
the coverage of the war.

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CALZADILLA: Now we’re making 
basically an archive of music of war

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from different times and places in the world.

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It’s called CLAMOR.

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It’s about music of war, music as a…

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as a sound weapon.

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CALZADILLA: So for example, there you 
have a trumpet from the American Civil War

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mixed up with a Japanese tuba,

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basically sounds of all different 
eras until today making this montage

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that is going to be part of two things.

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One is going to be part of a sculpture,

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in which basically is gonna be a concert 
but the band is going to be live musicians,

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are going to be inside this 
object, this sculpture.

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ALLORA: From the very 
beginning of our work together,

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we’re interested in materials.

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What are the meanings are connoted 
by the use of certain materials.

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CALZADILLA: Certain materials 
talk or speak of their usage

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and have like a practical function.

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But you know there’s also this 
symbolic dimension that a material has.

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ALLORA: In the case of CHALK we were 
just interested in the matter-of-factness

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of what chalk is.

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It is at once an ideological...

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CALZADILLA: Tool.

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ALLORA: ...something that 
you find in the classroom.

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CALZADILLA: That is ideological.

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ALLORA: But it’s also a geological substance.

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It’s...chalk is something that’s 
found naturally in the earth,

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and because of its nature 
it is ephemeral and fragile.

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CALZADILLA: This idea of 
making these gigantic chalks,

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you can write big words, physically, 
but perhaps also symbolically.

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ALLORA: Our idea was to place the chalks

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where the governmental 
buildings of Peru are located.

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Every day if they would allow for protestors to go

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and make a kind of lap around the plaza,

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and that’s your opportunity to publicly 
voice whatever demands you might have.

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ALLORA: The protestors, they realize 
it was like another way to vocalize

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and to make visible their demands.

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People were writing they’re 
for this political party,

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and then someone would cross it 
out and write something else.

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CALZADILLA: People writing declarations of love.

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ALLORA: And it really became 
a complex sort of forum

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that was all being registered on this floor.

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CALZADILLA: It’s not like a 
sculpture that has one end

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or is only used in one particular way.

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You have all this multiplicity of positions.

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ALLORA: That piece has the potential 
to actively disrupt what are

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the norms of a particular setting.

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CALZADILLA: A police squad, 
they arrested the sculpture.

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They took all the chalk, they 
put them in a military truck …

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ALLORA: (INTERRUPTING) They 
put them in a paddy wagon.

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CALZADILLA: … and they took them away.

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It shows the limits of free speech 
in a so-called democratic society,

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but also talks about sculpture 
and about historical references,

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about poetic dimension.

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ALLORA: This thing that comes 
from...from Ottoman music.

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It’s like this...we argued,

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this is I think probably what 
it made most close to each other

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and really defines our relationship 
as a collaborative and as…

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personally is our fighting.

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We just like have…

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make it an art form to argue with 
each other, about everything.

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But in a way that’s good because 
it’s kind of like going to battle

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because finally at the end 
of the day when we both have,

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you know, gave it our best with each other,
we settle on something,

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what’s left over is what we both truly 
agree with and truly find in common.

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CALZADILLA: Ah, but it’s more questioning.

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It’s this endless...endless questioning 
of anything but why this and not that.

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ALLORA: Exactly. I mean it’s 
not...not trivial or childlike.

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But it’s constantly arguing.

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ALLORA: Okay, let’s just try things out now.

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That’s the...that’s the point.

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CALZADILLA: All right.

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ALLORA: At the end those things that we 
both can’t argue with each other about,

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are the things that we tend to then, you know,

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use as starting points to move 
forward in some project of ours.

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CALZADILLA: Humor can be beautiful, 
can be horrific, can be political…

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can be poetic, can be transformative.

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ALLORA: It can be transformative 
. . . and it can be critical.

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CALZADILLA: But what I like is that physically,

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it’s a physiological transformation that 
this thing there still has affected you.

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We finding each other laughing at the same thing

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was a recognition that we 
both identify with this thing.

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ALLORA: And that became a way for us to find 
things in common and identify with each other.

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(SOUND OF HORN)

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ALLORA: Sometimes, though, we see 
things that aren’t like a joke,

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but it’s rather just this sort of incredible,

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absurd, unusual juxtaposition 
of something that just seems

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totally out of place but at the same 
time seems perfectly sensible and right.

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ALLORA: We were interested in the activity 
that was happening in the Island of Vieques

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which is off the mainland of Puerto 
Rico used as this bomb testing site.

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CALZADILLA: This was filmed the 
week that they opened the land

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that was previously occupied for sixty 
years by the military to the population.

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You have people who their entire 
lives that have never been able to

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go around the entire island.

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So this is the first time 
that this entire land is open.

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ALLORA: And it felt like some sort of 
commemorative sound should accompany that,

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be emblematic of that popular struggle

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which in common terms is 
usually understood as an anthem.

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CALZADILLA: So we looked into 
the etymology of the word anthem

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and we find something that we like much more,

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which is the sounding in answer.

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And so we call it RETURNING A SOUND.

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CALZADILLA: The acceleration of the 
motorcycle and all the accidents in the roads,

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the bumps, generated a score,

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a musical composition that 
was completely accidental.

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ALLORA: It was really interesting 
to see the reaction of that work,

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and I remember there was one person who,

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he was like screaming when the land came open

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and he liked the fact that the 
trumpet in a way was like a scream.

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ALLORA: In Vieques in fact, 
while there were so many people

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who had one thing in common,

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get the military out of Vieques,

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the majority of them are in complete disagreement 
about every other aspect of the island.

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CALZADILLA: So we somehow wanted 
to mobilize this discussion.

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ALLORA: Through the metaphor 
of the discussion table

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we arrived at this work which 
we call UNDER DISCUSSION.

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(SOUND OF OUTBOARD MOTOR)

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ALLORA: We used this person 
to take the discussion table

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into the areas whose fate is uncertain.

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There is something in that antagonism or tension

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that could be understood anywhere in the world.

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While their actions are absurd,

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like taking the discussion table 
of the island and making it a boat,

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it’s like a way to confront something which

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may seem in general overwhelming

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and finding a way to own it 
and then contribute something.

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ALLORA: You know that’s kind 
of the nature of making art,

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is to do that, is to kind of 
turn something upside down

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and then when you see it upside down,

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then you start to see it completely differently

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and new meanings come out of it.

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ALLORA: Both of our backgrounds was 
informed by studies in the sciences.

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Forms like geology, biology, light, we 
look at through the lens of an artist.

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CALZADILLA: Our scientific 
interest comes in filter,

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I think, through absurdity or pure nonsense.

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ALLORA: SWEAT GLANDS, SWEAT LANDS was one of 
the more complicated video projects.

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CALZADILLA: Come Christmastime, 
everyone fries their pork,

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you have to fry that pork 
for hours with your hands.

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CALZADILLA: That piece of metal 
in which the pork is fried,

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we had welded to the back wheel of a car

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when you accelerate and the pork rotates.

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ALLORA: And understanding the logic 
of the spit as a kind of connection

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between these two systems...

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CALZADILLA: They had a symbolic dimension.

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ALLORA: The guy, he’s not really doing anything,

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he’s just sitting there kind of overseeing this…

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this activity.

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He’s smoking himself so he’s being 
smoked while the pork is being smoked.

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CALZADILLA: This is a very violent image.

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ALLORA: I’m interested in that violence of it.

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I’m interested in the 
grotesque and vulgarity of it

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because I think it speaks to a kind of 
excessive overheating of society and violence.

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ALLORA: So just to reiterate, 
they were the first thing was

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to use your instruments to 
make a kind of abstract sounds

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that are very strong and loud,

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like a siren or an ambulance

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or any other kind of reference 
you want to think about.

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CALZADILLA: For us it’s very important,

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the idea of having a work that have 
all these contradictions in itself.

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How can you put all these things that 
have nothing to do with the other one?

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Well, you use glue.

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You use an ideological glue.

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(LIVE MUSIC)

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CALZADILLA: This frustration, this absurdity,

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this nonsense, this paradox,

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all these things constitute 
part of the meaning of the work.

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(LIVE MUSIC)