Tanja Baudoin

Natalia Dominguez Rangel's WatSpinoza? performance

My Name is Spinoza opening

During the opening of the My Name is Spinoza manifestation at Mediamatic, on May 8 2009 at 17:00 hrs, Natalia Dominguez Rangel presented her WatSpinoza? performance. Natalia is a composer with a BA in musical composition from the university in Colombia and the Conservatorium in Amsterdam. She is currently taking MA courses in contemporary music at the Conservatorium. For her MA research project Natalia is writing an opera that incorporates linguistic elements.

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Performance WatSpinoza? - My Name is Spinoza opening - De opening van de My Name is Spinoza manifestatie bij Mediamatic. Alice Bodanzky

Natalia's music is slow and haunting. It invokes a dreamy atmosphere that sometimes turns into a sense of danger. Her music can be listened to on MySpace.

In the past, Natalia has written pieces for the Nieuw Ensemble and the ASKO Ensemble that premiered at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, composed a score for a film by artists Ruchama Noorda and Brian McKenna and curated evenings for DNK.

For the opening of the My Name is Spinoza manifestation at Mediamatic Natalia created a new work. In the following weeks, Mediamatic will spread sixteen questions throughout the city of Amsterdam. These questions have been formulated with the help of writer Dirk van Weelden and are all based on the body of thought of philosopher Spinoza. Natalia composed sixteen micro-pieces of about 30 - 45 seconds for each question. To add several musical layers to the questions all 16 micro-pieces employ a variation in pronunciation, breathing techniques, singing in the style of a Baroque chorale and noise.

Two actors and two singers (a soprano and bariton) are situated at four corners of the space with a speaker behind them. They perform each piece in a random order. The centre of the room is the place where the diagonals of sound meet in a quadraphonic composition.

The ideal position for the listener is therefore the centre of the space, but depending on where you walk, the sounds come to you in different ways. This perspectival effect is something that Natalia's WatSpinoza? performance has in common with Parallax. Parallax is a performance by Zhana Ivanova that will be on show at Mediamatic on May 13, 14 and 15. It consists of two autonomous performances that take place simultaneously on the same stage. Their combination forms a third performance that results from the viewing angle of the audience. Reserve for Parallax here.

WatSpinoza? performance by Natalia Dominguez Rangel, on May 8 at 17:00 hrs at Mediamatic. With: Mariangela Tinelli, Nat Miller, Martha Bosch and David Witczak