Tania Candiani

The sound installation, produced for the exhibition; Rayuela / El Orden Falso, in the Marlborough Gallery in Madrid, Spain, curated by Octavio Zaya, and which commemorated the 60th anniversary of Rayuela, the iconic novel of the Argentinian Julio Cortazar; is based on the Rayuela’s Cuaderno de Bitácora or Log book as Cortázar called it, a manuscript in which the author noted the construction process of the novel, possible narrative nuclei, proposals for organization and arrangement, quotes and texts related to the work. It is, as Ana María Barrenechea (a critic to whom Cortazar gave the manuscript) points out, the first reading of Rayuela, that is, the one that Cortazar practices while he is writing.

The notebook has 122 white letter-size sheets (28 cm x 21.5 cm) handwritten, covered with crossouts, arrows and drawings; words and phrases underlined or enclosed in square brackets, quotation marks, or parentheses; texts crossed, joined, highlighted or completely eliminated by one or more lines: wavy, straight or zigzag. In addition, there are maps, sketches, bursts from the reader (Cortazar) who reads with pen in hand and leaves his subtle and mark, fleeting at times, intense and vehement at others.

Candiani eliminates the words, all of them. She preserves only the strokes, the imprint of that Cortazar reader/critic, to convert them into a graphic score. The lines of this work become spontaneous and unrestrained notations, like his writing style, without rules or stereotypes. He is pure improvisation, like jazz, his favorite music and which is present in
Rayuela as a source and motif but also as a writing style, without traditional punctuation, with rebellion, with unexpected movements, writing that rambles, that comes and goes, that tries to approach an idea from different angles. 82 of these folios were selected by Candiani to form a score that was then performed by two trumpeters in a “talk and response”, freely executing those recovered strokes. This improvised conversation between both musicians are played on two trumpets placed one in front of the other and with the score in the background.