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SHANTY TOWNS SOUNDS
Programme > Mapping > Shanty Towns Sounds
 Carolina Caycedo visits shanty towns in Colombia collecting music and ambient sounds and conducting interviews | Shanty Towns Sounds is a sound archive project in which Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo collected interviews, music and ambient sounds from various shanty towns (“Barrios”). The artist moved to the outskirts of Bogotá for four months to engage with local communities in the Barrios and gather sound documents. Barrios are cohesive places in which the local community create their own private and public spaces out of a sense of survival. They are chaotic, energetic and complex. The concept of common space within these social units is the result of both social segregation and extreme poverty. These conditions create a strong counter-culture with its own rules and relationships between what is private and what is communal.
From the experience the artist produced an archive that took the form of a double CD that includes songs by hip-hop and hard-core rock musicians from the Barrios. To produce this, Carolina shared the Venice Biennale funds in an attempt to challenge divisions between what is considered high and popular art. In doing so, she blurred social divisions and created a more inclusive collection of voices to be heard within artistic discourses.
Artist and Project Researcher for LANS, Florencia Guillen, interviewed Carolina Caycedo asking what she thinks is common space in our 21st century:
“...For me art is more about communicating with others, rather than expressing myself. Most of my work takes place in the public space and in real time. They involve people with whom I share the responsibility of producing an idea or an object, even a situation. Thus art becomes the time-space where I interact and share with people who come from different backgrounds. And I think that as an artist I have the ability and the need of generating these common spaces, or interstices in everyday life where all kind of exchanges can take place. In a world where public and common space is more and more controlled and invigilated towards alienation, art can catalyze creative discussion and action around and within the public sphere." | |
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