Lasse-Marc Riek

The Nodar Artist Residency Program for 2010 centered on a single unifying theme: the Paiva River. Throughout the year, from winter to autumn, several multidisciplinary artistic projects, with sound as a key element, were developed in a contextual approach tied to various geographical areas of the river, from its source to its mouth. One of these projects, developed during the third cycle of artist residencies, is "Riparian" by German field recordist and sound artist Lasse-Marc Riek. The project comprises two segments of audiowork, with a focus on listening, writing, and walking, integrating text and sound.

Walking into Sound – A diary of two soundwalks along the banks of the Paiva River.

Example:

11:55 stop
came across a fisherman
cross the inflow, shoes off!
hear the paiva in front of me
it runs directly into me
an engine top left, birds straight ahead
getting my feet dry, ants all over me
12:10 walking on

The written work "Walking into Sound" was later published in the book Sonic Thinking - A Media Philosophical Approach (New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2017).

"Riparian" – Recorded soundwalks to chapels located along the Paiva River.
As part of his fieldwork, Riek recorded silences inside churches and chapels situated along the river's course, between Castro Daire and Nodar. This section was the same path that the artist traversed on foot during the first stage of his residency. These recordings followed earlier church recordings that Riek had made in Germany and other European countries since 2004. (Luis Costa)

The works were showcased at the PAIVASCAPES - Paiva River Sound Festival in Aveiro, Portugal, in 2011, and later at the group exhibition Still Spot, Skylight Gallery in New York, USA, in 2012.