æs

The Kawésqar culture in western Patagonia has a rich linguistic system to name space and connect ways of inhabiting in relation to various scales of human life, whether through its vast territory, from the fjords and internal channels (Jáutok) to the Pacific Ocean (Málte), as well as from the north (Aqáte) to the south (Seté)). Its complex toponymy transplants terms from the natural landscape (e.g. canal, isthmus, bay), to the naming of parts of the human body (front channel, bay of the eyes, isthmus of the neck). These roots also serve to name various points in the internal space of the Kawésqar house. Thus, the text of the work functions as a vocabulary that navigates through four large levels, generating the sections of the piece: the landscape and the cardinal points; the intimate landscape of the body; the micro-space made up of the location of the house and the more than thirty variations that define the "here" (æs); as well as the position of a speaker inside the Kawésqar house (AT). The timbral palette of the work emerges from voices and instruments that interact with sound objects made of cardboard, PVC, metal, rubber and plastic tubes. The stage movements project the resulting sonority through various positions, including a grand piano used as a mechanical resonator, amplifying, superimposing, repeating and fragmenting blows, clicks, declaimed texts, pitches and percussions to build a sound space modeled from the idea of "inhabiting space and language", taking an expression from the professor and ethnolinguist Óscar Aguilera (1950 – 2024) central figure in the study of the Kawésqar and in whose studies on this language are based on the treatment of the text in æs, which in short, it is a piece that is articulated as a kind of modern ritual of space and the body, of being inside and outside the home and the landscape that shelters it.

Audiovisual production: Panóptico. Video capture and editing: Jazmín Marcoleta. Recording and sound editing: Javier Díaz.

Commissioned by CIMA, Centre for autonomous research in music, Valparaíso. With the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (Germany, Switzerland). Premiered at Sala de Música, Ciudad Abierta, Corporación Cultural Amereida. Ritoque, Chile, 23 August 2025.