About Me
PULSE COR!
(1977, Portugal) Along with a background in Film Studies and Sound Engineering for Film, Hyaena Reich (Iana Reis) is a contemporary artist, performer/experimentator and composer. She has developed various solo projects and has presented her work in Portugal and in the USA. Following an interdisciplinary approach in her work (composition/experimentation, writing for film, photography and poetry) as well as a logical sequitur of the transposition of this work into life - life as art - she uses conditions of real living isolation to create and develop her projects (for more on this consult Jan Fabre: Umbraculum). Recluding alone for large amounts of time in Trás os Montes - North Portugal - a land of untouched nature and great silences - as well as other places contributes for a purity of approach to the creative act rarely found in more social(ized) mediums.
The adventure started back in 1996 when Hyaena Reich entered Film School to graduate as a Sound Engineer. It started with her carrying a Nagra recorder half of her weight, immersed in seawater to her knees, capturing the sounds of the waves. It evolved to borrowing the recorders to do field recordings in places as strange as the under corridors of a dam under river Dovro, to create the Pantheovox effect many years later in reclusion. It is all about being permanently in love with the sounds that surround one, capturing each small detail, and getting them recorded, and working them digitally in order to compose soundscapes that could be heard among the great spaces between the stars and the planets, just like composing an endless soundtrack to a film that has no end; having spent a whole childhood at her parents' film sets [filmmakers Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis], near the sound directors making their field recordings and later studying Film were experiences which gave HR a very particular view of sound on cinematic space - the great work which is Life, Burning Life.
Field recordings of chance happenings are a great part of Hyaena’s creative process. The moments, which are the unmeasurable unities of time, carry within them always different sounds, which are, ultimately, a soundtrack to life, to the world and to the universe.
Strange sounds caused by the percussion and manipulation of odd metal and wood objects are also part of Hyaena Reich’s experimentation and improvisation. After the recording these sounds are digitally treated and edited like a soundtrack to a film, this way, creating a living action of sound in cinematic space.
Experimentations with the voice are done out of a playful relationship with this natural organic instrument, also as a means of emotive self expression. Voice can be used to sing, scream, whisper, murmur…HR has been exercising the natural instrument that is the own voice, to render it into the Pantheovox effect, with a repertoire of songs from the Spanish Civil War and the portuguese 1974 Revolution, among others.
These elements contribute to what is called in film language “bruitage†which is the composition of actual noises and sounds inside a scene. While these noises tend to have an ascending nature, it becomes Cosmobruitism; while the digital arrangements of amplified decays and voice tend to create a deep, spiritual atmosphere, it becomes Soul Noise.
Hyaena Reich holds the projects ZLKNF, Arraial, Satnorte, Imbolc and the experimental collective Sabotage en Masse whose line-up is constituted by friend musicians in a rotative way. In collaboration, in the past Hyaena Reich has worked with projects such as Karnnos, Wolfskin, Urdraum, Choronzon 333, Nigredo, Matt Howden, Barcos, and played by projects such as Sleeping With the Earth, Variable Geometry Orchestra, Sparagmos, Nequaquum Vacuum, Phoebus and Vitor Rua's experimental collective Os Ressoadores.
The adventure never stops!
HR live @ Casa Viva, Porto 12.01.2008
HR/ZLKNF live @ ZDB gallery, Lisbon 2005; image courtesy of JPROSA
Field recording, North Portugal 2004: laptop, various metal and wood pieces used as instruments.
“Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.â€
Wilhelm Reich
"The voice of my soul welcomes thee"
"For I am out in the heights, each day closer to thee" - me, years ago - and now.
"The eyes listen" - Paul Claudel, mentioned by François Bayle.
"I remember incredible love" - Suicide
