In music, a pause for the participant may be indicated by a caesura, generally known as “railroad tracks”. Caesura can be the title of a brand new collaborative graphic musical rating by the artists and composers Raven Chacon and Guillermo Galindo that shall be carried out on 1 February on the Albuquerque Rail Yards in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Caesura is a reimagining of the practice routes that formed the American West, centring an nameless traveller as conductor and utilising discovered practice fragments as devices, a rating as a performative path and hobo graffiti for notations.
The rise of business capitalism after the American Civil Battle resulted in hundreds of individuals travelling to search out work. Many averted costly practice tickets by making the unlawful and harmful option to trip between or on prime of practice vehicles. Within the e-book Marginal Folks in Deviant Locations (2022), Jeff MacGregor writes that the hobo inhabitants consisted largely of migratory staff mythologised as wandering romantics. Hobos truly did the roles nobody wished to do, corresponding to agriculture and building, usually in areas removed from healthcare and regulation. The “hobo code” was the inner communication system that loosely linked this neighborhood. The code’s pictographic graffiti warned of hazard, corresponding to a city hostile to guests, whereas different symbols shared the writer’s vacation spot. Galindo and Chacon’s analysis on the markings discovered some elements of the marks documented as historic truth, however many meanings stay elusive and open to interpretation.
Devices and notations by Raven Chacon and Guillermo Galindo for Caesura Chapter 1 at Union Station in Ogden, Utah Photograph by Austin Luckett, courtesy Ogden Up to date Artwork Middle
Caesura accommodates parts of sound, motion and visible expression as a part of the exhibition The Different Aspect of the Tracks at 516 Arts in Albuquerque (till 8 February). Printed on a rain poncho within the gallery is a musical rating that appears extra like a map, with branching limbs as a substitute of the normal bars and measures. Punctuating pathways are hobo symbols mixed with Western musical notations. For instance, the fermata is as an arch over a dot, which resembles a recognized hobo code. Because the fermata signifies a relaxation, Chacon says that when contemplating the angle of a traveller, the image may very well be an interruption, each bodily and audible. “The rating is a information that gives a collection of choices,” he says. For the upcoming efficiency Chacon, Galindo and visitor percussionist Alan Zimmerman will traverse the rating, which can exist as a path on the bottom.
Chacon and Galindo have been associates and colleagues for over a decade. “We work with classical devices and chamber music, however the work additionally extends to a visible artwork observe,” Chacon says. “There should not lots of us that work throughout these fields, so it was a matter time earlier than we collaborated.”
Guillermo Galindo and Raven Chacon, Scores on Rain Ponchos, 2024 Courtesy of Magnolia Editions
Jorge Rojas, the curator of the exhibition and founding director of Materials, an artwork gallery in Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, commissioned Caesura with the help of the Nationwide Efficiency Community. The piece’s uniquely formed rating and site-specific engagement reiterate parts of Chacon’s observe seen in works corresponding to Vertical Neighbors (2024) or Storm Patterns (2022). For Galindo’s Borders Cantos (which premiered in 2014), the artist collected objects left behind by migrants on the border between Mexico and the US together with a pink comb, baby’s tennis sneakers and a toothbrush, which grew to become devices he plucks and rolls.
Caesura’s composition accommodates three actions of which the primary was carried out in Ogden, Utah, and the second in Denver. The Albuquerque efficiency would be the final and most expansive. The nomadic sounds of the practice are constructed via devices of metal and iron practice detritus Galindo retrieved whereas exploring practice tracks in Utah.
Raven Chacon and Guillermo Galindo performing Caesura Chapter 1 at Union Station in Ogden, Utah Photograph by Austin Luckett, courtesy Ogden Up to date Artwork Middle
“We spent two full days on deserted, previous, historic railroad websites,” says Rojas. After Galindo discovered the primary rusted spike, he knew what he was on the lookout for. Finally they uncovered sufficient discarded rail materials to fill Rojas’s automotive. Galindo says every object is exclusive and may be dropped, rolled and rattled to create rhythms and textures.
Caesura reminds audiences that the hobo and the practice signify a cloth rupture in our data of US historical past. There was a collective effort required for the trains to interrupt via to new territories. The unmoored determine of the hobo was a friction and foil for railroad firms. Summoning that rigidity at present, via sound and sight, evokes conflicting impulses towards isolation and the need for neighborhood on the perimeters of an unknown tomorrow.
Raven Chacon and Guillermo Galindo’s Caesura, 1 February 3-4pm, Albuquerque Rail Yards, Albuquerque, New MexicoThe Different Aspect of The Tracks, till 8 February, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico
