In Progress: Clarissa Tossin, Before the Volcanoes Sing
Clarissa Tossin
Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing
Work-in-progress (forthcoming 2021)
An introduction to Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing, a new EMPAC-commissioned moving image work by Clarissa Tossin that is currently in production at Sowden House in Los Angeles and at EMPAC/Rensselaer in Troy, NY.
Clarissa Tossin’s Before the Volcanoes Sing is scored by Brazilian composer Michelle Ágnes Magalhães and performed by Mexican flautist Alethia Lozano Birrueta and Guatemalan Maya poet Rosa Chávez. The film takes a sonic approach to the articulation of architectural borrowings by Western architects of indigenous cultural motifs, utilizing 3D printed replicas of Maya wind instruments from Pre-Columbian collections held in US and Guatemalan museums. In this video Tossin and her collaborators, including the director of photography Jeremy Glaholt, discuss the production of the flutes, the composition of the score, and approaches to the film’s cinematography, as well as demonstrating the prototypes Tossin has produced in collaboration with anthropologist/archaeologist Jared Katz, the Mayer Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow for Pre-Columbian Art at the Denver Museum.
This video is also available with closed captions at: youtu.be/XfAHH-_Q_3I