Very much in the way a stage curtain is being lifted, as it uncovers an opera’s impressive props, a building under construction occupies the entire length of the opening shot. Dawn or twilight – who knows? – the workers’ noise from far away makes up the soundtrack. Here it is: the film’s instruction manual, which the enigmatic title was already pointing to, is given away: for their first film, Luciana Foglio and Lujan Montes have decided to connect dwelling and causing things
to resonate, home and music, walls and rhythms, rooms and chants, echos and façades, etc. If this film goes through all these different scenes of contemporary music, post-punk, noise and so forth in Buenos Aires today – doing so with strict attention to their factories – it is not all a matter of a comprehensive guide addressed to specialists. What we are asked, instead, each and every time, is to experience the discovery of actual sound production in specific places. A magic
moment comes, and in that respect it is no doubt exemplary, with the ballet of two metal chairs waltzing together, letting their feet screech on the ground: a striking sound sculpture evoking domesticity now become ghostly, it is at once the sounds’ and the choreography’s thin literality and a strong metaphorical power at the same time. Through this amazing back-and-forth movement the film goes forward, inviting us to come and fill ourselves the gap between the visible and the audible. An adventure as disconcerting as it is joyful letting us slip from one dwelling to another. (JPR)
Luciana Foglio Luján Montes Lujan
