Maria Chavez is an artist who I have used as a research point within previous works, as she is a turntablist, like myself. Once discovering Maria’s work, I was opened up to the sonic possibilities availiable to myself if I were to use the turntable in more abstract ways. However, I aleways felt as though her art in itself, whilst interesting and thought evoking, did not speak to me on an emotional or enjoyment level, which is how I usually like to consume art.
This makes one wonder, what is art and must it always be enjoyable? We do not need to be moved by or be entertained by a piece of art for it to be usueful to the trajetory of our lives. This is what I learned in accordance to my own life after an in person lecture and workshop from Maria Chavez. Having this realisation also allows me to understand that I become more invested in art when I am exposed to the artist’s creative vision and process, what they are trying to portray within their works becomes clear.
Maria’s interest in her practice stems from her observation that “when [she] was a kid, if you gave [her] something, it always broke”. By becoming fascinated by her misfortune, her way of looking at art has been fundamentally altered. I resonate with Maria’s experience of things breaking, as I feel that items, particuarly electronic items, often malfunction when in my posession. Perhaps if I took interest and curiosity in this feeling, that way in which I percieve and create art will be re-wired. Maria’s performance practice is a performance of chance, putting restrictions of the depths of her creativity, which in turn can deepen creativity. As I have become more involved with improvisation, I become fascinated with the idea of a “performance of chance”, and is something I’d like to invest time into researching.
Maria Chavez is a part of a trio of abstract turntablists including herself, Victoria Shen and Mariam Rezzai. I found it interesting that Chavez noted the importance of having a network of people that share similar expereinces to oneself, working within the same artistic realm of oneself.
Chavez is of Indigineous Peruvian heritage, which she is inspired and moved by. She tells us of her interest in “archaelogical sound”. From this, she has discovered her interest in working with stone, and would describe herself as a sculptor, not a sound artist. She also uses this frame of thinking to piece where her love of the turntable stems from- the physicality of the turntable reminds her of stone. She is interested in how sound and information were preserved in ancient times, and notes how foley sound in these periods were not made for musical purposes, but rather for the purpose of science and preservation. Maria’s notes on archaeological sound and its relevance as archaic forms of technology are of interest to me.
What defines technology isn’t its relevence to electricity and mechanical development, but rather its relevence in aiding humanity’s progression via methods out of human control. We can see paralells in ancient technology in the technology we use everyday today, most vividly seen in our use of “the scroll”. Before books, we as human would read written information via the form of the scroll, a paper which had to be unravelled from its tubular form to be deciphered. Today, in our turn to the digital age, the scroll has been repurposed in our digital information recieiving methods, whether that is reading an online PDF or the endless scroll of our social media feed.
Here are some statements and concepts from Chavez that I felt resonated with me:
- “No other device has the stronghold on humanity that the turntable does”
- The turntable as a macrophone: viewing the turntable as a large contact microphone.
- “Sound is the most democratic medium to use as an artist”
- “The body hears, the mind listens” – Pauline Oliveros on listening as being the closest thing to conciousness.
Where Maria is interested in archaeological sound, her work often nods towards this, either through sculpture, re-conceptualising set frameworks for what defines music, and repurposing th eturntable to prove her concepts. Where Maria didn’t like the regularity and normalised experience of creating sound within the music indsutry, she wrote and presented her book Of Technique: Chance Proceedures on the Turntable as a conceptual album. This is a nod to her interest in archaic technologies. Chavez is interested in dissasociating the vinyl record and the turntable from technological sound, using and presenting it in ways that shows how disconnected from technology and / or electrical echanisms the turntable can be.
Chavez’s work , in a way, encourages a “return to nature” through severing our connection with mechanical technology. I myself, however, am interested in deepening our connection with technology in order to embrace a “return to nature”. By familiraising myself with Chavez’s work and concepts, I will be able to construct ways I can present my ideas surrounding technology and nature through art.
Maria Chavez’s practice is not only useful for situating our perspectives on nature, preservation and technology, but also for the development and wiring of our minds. Chavez describes her practice of abstract turntablsim as a way of creating new neural networks within our brains- we should look at her process as a way of adding new methodologies and perspectives to our frameworks when creating art.
When using the turntable, we are physically diaplying and exposing the waveforms which might appear within digitally created sound. When working with abstract turntablism. specifically where one record is being layered atop another, the concept of “chopping” within sampling in loop-based sound making becomes physically depicted.