For three months, New York artists Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith are transforming La Capilla Azul into a listening room for a new work of collaborative sound poetry, using compositional and participatory techniques they have developed together since they began creating performative works a decade ago with small groups of active participants, in Chile and abroad. For this occasion, Navarro and Smith have created a work, titled Vid Vida Vidajena, to be performed inside the chapel. The collective composition, performed over two consecutive days in live public gatherings, were then recorded, edited and mixed, with the resulting composition played continuously for the duration of the exhibition.

Smith and Navarro name these small group activities carried out collectively and collaboratively as Konantü. The artists “imagine an art that can only be fully realized by its public participants, an art that is simultaneously created and consumed by its willing constituents.”

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Each collaborative performance was performed with the participation of eight vocalists. It was not a requirement, or even a preference, that any of the vocalists have training or experience in music, poetry or art. Each briefly rehearsed alongside the others and was then randomly assigned a personalized score, consisting of a detailed set of words from the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, many of which were obsolete or fallen into disuse. All Vid Vida Vidajena scores differ from each other, and the composition took the form of a ronda that moved clockwise from one participant to the next, with occasional interim passages by guest artist Enrique Millán on accordion.

text byDan Cameron and Ramon Castillo