There is a strong connection between nations and bodies of people living in those nations. A territorial connection that doesn’t concern a geopolitical confine but the morphology of those territories. The national anthem is a trace of a community, or better, of a state. It represents an auditory morphology. Here, when bodies meet national identities, the body itself transforms the identity. A body, walking into the installation of Felipe Castelblanco, modifies the soundscape in his identity component. A human body crosses fluidly the exhibition space, generating changes in the acoustic space; then the acoustic space becomes a metaphor of the political space. A kinect sensor collects and replies to the proximity of the public, modifying the borders between different auditory sources. The virtual representation of these modifies, takes the shape of differents phisical and acoustic areas; the interaction between these areas modifies the soundscape. Anthem is an affirmation of humanity. It deals with the theme of the spatial and geo-political border. It gets the gist in the man (phisically and intellectually); the man, that thanks to the movement traces different trajectories, composing a trans- national anthem. Anthem underlines the importance of the person in the state system but at the same time pays attention to some controversial questions. What happen when more people moving inside the installation? The source and the soundscape, they change. The alterity manifested in her physical presence, modifies our sensorial space. Thanks to the culture of the other, we discover our culture and we compare. Felipe Castelblanco gives us a chance; we can do an experience, a debordian psychogeography, because by crossing the exhibition space, public finds new trajectories for a research into social, political and intercultural space. While the Leviathan dances on the notes of the national anthem with guard ships and truncheons, the “homo musealis” dances on the notes of Anthem. Maybe the suggestion is to open, as well as the ears, also the borders? Andrea Minuti

 

Felipe Castelblanco – Anthem