CANTOS: performing arts and their notation in relation to the book arts: a creative research project for un-common convergences

The word Canto means so many things, but they are all related either to a praise to something that deserves a vocal or poetic form, or the edge and cut of an object. A book, most of the time, contains the poetic and the cut, and sometimes, as monks and reciters know, the voice.

This research/creative process compares, confronts and mixes performative and book-like communication and representation. This has been part of my artistic practice for a long time but was in an unperceived and quiet stage. In this research and the body of artwork resulting in it, I explore some limits and possibilities of the removal of the line that divides the book arts and the performance arts. From the perspective of a book artist, I introduce performative elements to my book works and their relationship with the audience; from a performative perspective, I introduce book-like elements in staged acts as objects necessary to meaning. Books can be tools for performative acts and vice versa. They help each other to fully communicate.

This need to have these two different — at least on the surface — kinds of artistic representations together, comes from my passion for both books and vocal music production, and more specifically, from the importance I give to music and reading out loud as communication and aesthetical tools. The use and need for writing, painting and sculpturing throughout the history of both performance arts and ritual based cultures, shows the need of a visual trace to instruct and preserves actions outside their “moment” time, like scores or objects that aid storytelling in oral tradition. With Cantos, I seek to show some of the performative potential of the book arts objects, as they are, in nature, interactive and adaptable. I seek not just to register performance instruction in these objects, but to make them part of the performance using their visual, mechanical, material and linguistic qualities.