“Tawa_” by Patricia Cadavid Hinojosa

Title:

Tawa_

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Composer, Director, Choreographer:



• Patricia Cadavid Hinojosa -
  • University of Art and Design Linz

Symposium:

• ISEA2022: 27th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

• CCCB: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona , Barcelona , Spain

Artist Statement:

“walking toward the future always with the past ahead.”***

In the Andean cosmogony, “Tawa” (four in Quechua) symbolizes two opposite balances that complement each other and reach harmony. Dichotomy and contradiction, stillness, and chaos, that in the year that summed up four (2020) knotted acceptance among uncertainty.

The Andean Khipu is an information processing and transmission technology used since pre-colonial times. This tangible interface is one of the first textile computers known, consisting of a central wool or cotton cord to which other strings are attached with knots of different shapes, colors, and sizes, encrypting different information. The system was widely used until the Spanish colonization, which banned and destroyed many of these devices.

In the performance is played the Electronic_Khipu_an instrument inspired by the traditional Khipus made for the interaction and generation of live experimental sound by weaving knots with conductive rubber cords. Their sounds are embraced with textures reminiscing about the Andes from a prepared charango and immersive rhythms that bring back the present moment.

From a decolonial perspective, Tawa_is an homage to the Andean technologies, continuing the interrupted legacy of this ancestral practice in a different experience of tangible live coding and computer music. The artist takes the place of a contemporary *khipukamayuq* (Khipu knotter), weaving four sound Abstractions that knot the past with the present, creating the balance to face the future.
Tawa  is the live performance of the eponymous album released in January 2021 by Vienna-based netlabel Smallforms. https://smallforms.bandcamp.com/album/tawa

_{^{***The Quip Nayra (future – past) notion comes from an Aymara aphorism divulged by the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA) refering to the re-actualization of the past as future through the present actions.
Rivera, S. (2015). Sociología de la imagen Miradas ch´ixi desde la historia andina. Tinta Limón.}}