1968

un archivo ciego

Mario de Vega: Como punto de partida yo le preguntara qu entiende usted por escenofona, para que desde ah regre-semos nuevamente al documento de El Grito, sobre el que estamos trabajando.

Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado: Una defini-cin breve sera el vestido sonoro de un hecho escnico. Eso, sin embargo, genera muchas imprecisiones. Recuerdo que alguien dijo de la escenofona que era el vestido de la escena, por ejemplo, convirtindome con ello en vestuarista. Esta persona no entendi la metfora, pues es un vestido sonoro ciertamente, en este caso un sonido hecho para la escena, para trabajarse como se trabaja la escenografa... de hecho yo parto del concepto de escenografa, que es todo lo visual y corpreo en donde se desarro-lla un hecho escnico: en mi caso es el sonido que tiene que ver con la escena. Fue una bsqueda muy larga. No hace mucho nos reunimos varios colegas y tu-vimos una pltica acerca de cmo llamar a nuestro trabajo, a lo que hacemos en el teatro. Muchos son musicalizadores, otros dicen que son sonidistas, composi-tores, y a mi se me ocurri este trmino

Escenofona, vestigio y transgresin

que me parece ms incluyente, el de escenofona.

MdeV: Cuando te escucho explicar lo que es la escenofona me motiva mucho porque ests tocando justo el punto que a mi me interesa, vaya, porque lo que queremos hacer con este proyecto no es musicalizar un evento visual; un docu-mento visual como tal. En mi caso no estoy intentando musicalizar nada, pero evidentemente ya hay un vestigio ah en la pelcula de El Grito, hay un trabajo que hiciste t y que tiene todo un trasfondo y tiene una forma especfica y creo que lo que debe ocurrir ahora es transgredir eso, segmentar ese vestigio. Para m era importante saber cmo lo entendas t, cmo entendas este principio. Estructu-rar un evento sonoro para un evento vi-sual que no propiamente es musicalizar-lo, no es componer msica para un vide o para un documental. Ahora he visto creo que ms de cuatro veces El Grito, y lo que me interesa sobre todo es que pareciera que la imagen y el sonido son dos cosas aparte. Obviamente viven en un espacio comn, pero no estn ilustrando algo, y ahora lo que intentamos hacer Bani y

[Extracto de la conversacin que sostuvieron Bani Khoshnoudi, Mario de Vega y Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado acerca de la manera en que se confeccion la banda sonora de la pelcula El Grito, conside-rado uno de los nicos testimonios flmicos desde el interior del movimiento estudiantil sobre su propio desarrollo y surgimiento en 1968, y su brutal desenlace el 2 de octubre en la Plaza de las Tres Culturas en Tlatelolco. Un documento colectivo realizado en un contexto de autoritarismo y represin gubernamental emble-mticos en la historia moderna de Mxico. Cul es el lugar de lo real en un material compuesto de tantos fragmentos, huellas y miradas? Cmo acta la imaginacin en la conformacin de un documento poltico de este tipo?]

yo es justamente eso, tal vez radicali-zndolo mucho ms. Cmo puedo partir de tu trabajo, de tu tratamiento sonoro? Bani trabajando el archivo visual y yo el sonido pero con la intencin de que al final se convierte en una pieza que es ms una confrontacin fsica con el espectador. Y yo creo que la escenofona tiene mucho que ver con eso. Es muy bonito como lo dices t: ste vestido sonoro, pero vestido no entendido como una prenda, sino como sta especie de aura o este ter sobre la condicin visual que confronta fsicamente al espectador, que se le impone.Bani Khoshnoudi: Siguiendo lo que dice Mario acerca de este vestido sonoro que se ve como algo aparte o separado de la imagen, y relacionndolo tambin con lo que le sobre tu manera de trabajar para El Grito, con los sonidos que te llegaban de otra gente que andaba en la calle grabando, y cmo con slo haber visto algunas partes trabajaste a partir de tu imaginacin, me gustara que nos habla-ras ms de esto, y si tu imaginacin slo parti de esas imgenes o de experien-cias tuyas o cosas que t viste en la calle de lo que estaba pasando en Mxico en ese momento. Qu fue lo que nutri tu manera de trabajar con el sonido?RSA: Cualquiera pensara que estaba yo muy inmerso en la problemtica del 68 y todo eso... que si lo estaba porque no podas no estarlo... yo en ese ao tuve muchsimo trabajo, trabajo sonoro, tal vez como nunca lo he vuelto a tener. Adems de mi trabajo en Radio Univer-sidad, fue la Olimpiada Cultural, hice un ballet electroacstico con Rafael Elizon-do y bueno, obras de teatro y cine para el comit olmpico, estaba yo plagado de trabajo y entre otras cosas me viene a caer lo de El Grito. Fueron aconteci-mientos muy fuertes para todos los que habitaban esta ciudad, pero el trabajo

vino hasta el ao siguiente, hasta el 69, no tenan un sonido, entonces acudieron a mi, yo estaba en el CUEC, daba clases y me pidieron que lo armara; fue a partir de efectos especiales, sonidos fabrica-dos, una que otra cancin por ah. Algu-nas de estas canciones las grab aparte, no dentro del movimiento, y algunas me llegaron grabadas por ellos mismos que iban a los eventos, yo ni siquiera tuve tiempo porque estaba yo realmente lleno de trabajo, tuve una presin tremenda, estaba durmiendo tres o cuatro horas cuando bien me iba de tantas actividades que tuve, as fue la situacin...Leobardo Lpez, que fue el que coordin todo y tuvo una parte muy significativa en cuanto al levantamiento de la imagen, me llam para ayudarle con el sonido y bueno, pues no haba nada, salvo algunas canciones que haba por ah pero lo dems era inventarlo. Era substituir el sonido que no se pudo grabar y pues inventar, con base en la imaginacin, simulando por ejemplo peleas para sono-rizar las imgenes de pleitos. Hay en la pelcula algunas tomas en un hospital, entonces mand a una asistente a grabar la sala de espera de un hospital, sonidos de instrumental mdico, todo lo tuve que inventar por que claro, los efectos de sonido que yo tena eran muy pobres y adems con el agravante de que estaban grabados en discos de vinilo, eleps, en-tonces tenan mucho ruido de superficie, clics y todo ese tipo de cosas, y con todo eso tuve que batallar. Incluso yo he teni-do la propuesta, la he hecho varias veces a personas amigas de la Filmoteca de la UNAM, en el sentido de que me gustara volver a hacer ese sonido ahora.CPA: Por qu hacerlo, slo por que eras el nico que saba hacerlo o te sentas en cierta forma responsable?RSA: Realmente no haba mucha gente que hiciera sonido como yo. Adems yo

estaba en el CUEC, no recuerdo si ya daba clases ah pero tena muchos compaeros y conocidos como Alfredo Joscowicz, Jos Rovirosa, Leobardo mismo, varios que fueron alumnos, algunos maestros y todos compartamos un cierto sentimien-to moral. Si los dems compaeros se haban ido incluso a la crcel por filmar, claro que yo senta el compromiso de hacerlo, y bueno, no haba quien hiciera sonido en ese entonces de esta manera. Lo que se empezaba a hacer era sonido directo, el cual era inexistente en esas tomas, si acaso un porcentaje mnimo de esas imgenes tenan sonido directo. Al-gunas cosas tuve que recrearlas o volver a grabar. Ahora bien, todo lo dems fue lo que recogan, porque s tenan casete-ras de audio que les servan para ir a las manifestaciones, algn discurso por ah, pero no sincrnicamente con la pelcula, claro. Por ejemplo las balaceras. Recuer-do que me dieron dos balaceras, que no s quin las grab...

MdeV: No lo grabaste t, eso te lleg despus?

RSA: Casi todos los materiales que me dieron eran tomados por aqu y por all, y se saba que tenamos que tener ciertas precauciones y bueno, se los digo con toda sinceridad: yo no supe jams quien hizo las grabaciones de las dos balaceras que hay ah, vaya, que us. Una desde luego se nota que son periodistas que estn hablando, que estn comparando, hacen comentarios por ah en la gra-bacin que yo tengo. Y en la otra da la impresin de que es alguien muy cerca-no, demasiado presente, as que no s si es un soldado o bien es alguien que descolg un microfonito desde alguna ventana, no s realmente y sinceramente ni siquiera quise preguntar quin la hizo por que ciertamente haba temor de que

nos descubrieran o nos preguntaran, y yo ni siquiera quise tener en mi persona el dato de quin haba hecho esa grabacin, as que tuve esa precaucin o el miedo, llmese como se quiera, pero el caso es que no quise saber quin fue.BK: Justo era una pregunta que me haca, sobre el miedo cuando uno est trabajando con materiales de ese tipo en un momento tan difcil polticamente, socialmente. Y tambin miedo de dar tanta fuerza, tanto poder a un archivo visual con el sonido que estabas hacien-do. Cmo sentiste la pelcula una vez que la viste al final? RSA: Te soy sincero, yo he visto dos tres veces la pelcula, hace mucho que no la veo, Ahora no tengo una imagen clara, algunas cosas recuerdo que si me impac-taron, pero no tengo una memoria global de ella. Con todo esto que estamos platicando me dan ganas de volver a ver la pelcula... digo, qu fue lo que hice? Necesito verla de nuevo y revalorar todo lo que est hecho ah no?

MdeV: Lo que dices a mi me motiva mu-chsimo, hablando un poco de la forma en que he intentado abordar esto y segn lo que hemos empezado cada quien por su lado; tanto Bani con su tratamiento y seleccin de secuencias, pienso que funciona ms bien como una interpreta-cin. Gran parte de los sonidos que he estado generando ahora son completa-mente antagnicos incluso, no intentan ilustrar una imagen. Creo que el reto y lo interesante para nosotros es posible-mente lo mismo que hiciste t: tener un documento que es audiovisual, es decir que evidentemente t ves una imagen, oyes un sonido pero no corresponden al cien por ciento. O sea, que hay una antagonismo. Lo interesante para m es: cundo ese antagonismo se vuelve unidad, en que momento esa diferencia

unifica ambas partes. Por ejemplo, ahora generando el sonido slo digitalmente sin tener ningn tipo de grabacin de nada, ni usar ninguno de los sonidos que estn dentro de El Grito y que t mon-taste, sino con secuencias de arreglos de frecuencias, o modulacin de tal o cual cosa que en su origen no corresponden a la imagen, no responden al princi-pio esencial de cmo est pensado el documento, pero al escucharte de pronto me parece que la aproximacin es muy similar. Por eso para mi era esencial es-cuchar cmo fue el proceso de montaje. Me motiva mucho saber que t no fuiste a las manifestaciones con micrfono en mano arriesgando la vida, porque tal vez no estaras aqu contndonos esto ahora, posiblemente, sino que eso lleg por otros lados y bueno, se monta y de pronto tienes un resultado.

BK: Yo quisiera preguntarte qu pas con los sonidos que no utilizaste. Yo por ejemplo, cuando he trabajado cosas similares grabando y filmando yo misma y luego editando, me sent con la responsabilidad de no estar slo con mi material, sino de ver todo lo que los otros haban grabado y que pusieron en Youtube y que eran miles de videos y bueno, luego, de alguna forma yo empec a catalogar todo. Para m eso fue una parte del trabajo que sirvi para darme cuenta de que exista ya todo un archivo. El dilema fue si deba compartir este archivo y cmo hacerlo. Recuerdo que poner o no poner tal cosa no slo represent una duda, sino tambin una responsabilidad, adems reconocer qu me daba miedo poner y que no, borrar o no borrar los rostros de las personas que aparecen para proteger su identidad. En El Grito no se hace nada de esto, pero quera saber qu hiciste con ese mate-rial... las voces de los soldados y todo lo

dems y qu significa este archivo para el Mxico de hoy, que no s si existe o no, de materiales que no se usaron.

RSA: Realmente no hubo mucho material, y te confieso que lo nico que conservo y que soy conciente de que lo tengo archivado son las dos balaceras que hay ah, eso es lo que recuerdo, seguramente hay algo ms pero la verdad no lo tengo presente. Y mucho de lo que produje y de lo que me pasaron lo vaci en carretes como me pidi Leobardo. l me dio tam-bin una lista por rollos como se maneja en cine, no s cuntos rollos eran, una docena o ms de pelcula, y entonces me deca en esa lista: en el rollo 1 necesito tales y tales sonidos; en el rollo 2 tales y tales otros.., con esto quiero decir que yo hice el sonido... cmo decirlo.... muy a ciegas. Vi imgenes aisladas pero nada armado, no recuerdo al menos haberlo visto armado, entonces el trabajo que hice fue de verdad muy a ciegas, muy desconectado... por que hay otras cosas de cine en donde estas viendo la imagen, en sincrona...

BK: Bueno, o al menos si ests editando algo que es muy diferente a la intencin sonora, tienes la pelcula como referen-cia...

RSA: Exactamente, y ahora con la com-putadora es muy fcil meter la imagen y estar trabajando sobre ella, pero no, yo estaba absolutamente a ciegas, slo con la referencia de las experiencias perso-nales, de lo que se vea en los noticie-ros, o de lo que se platicaba, pero yo no trabajaba contra imagen para nada, slo era la relacin, la lista de sonidos que me dio Leobardo donde me indicaba en qu parte de las secuencias necesitaba un sonido de manifestacin, un sonido de balacera, otro de trfico, cosas por el

estilo... y bueno, los iba consiguiendo poco a poco conforme los iba necesitan-do. Recuerdo que una cosa que me pidi Leboardo fue un sonido de sepelio, de un entierro, y tuve que grabarlo atrs de mi casa, en el jardn, los sonidos de una pala cavando... los montones de tierra... fabricarlos, porque no tenamos ese sonido, entonces haba que fabricarlo, y eso es a lo que me dedico, a fabricar sonidos para la escena, para el teatro, en un momento dado los invento, los tengo que inventar. De la misma forma, cuando hice el sonido de El Grito, con mucho menos experiencia, con muchas menos herramientas, tratando de ser lo ms pulcro posible, valga el trmino, porque pues no tena las condiciones. Pero aqu me gustara regresar a un ancdota que debo narrarles sobre el sonido especfico de la balacera de Tlatelolco, en la ltima parte de la pelcula. Ciertamente yo tuve dos grabaciones de balaceras, pero eran eso: balazos. No haba el factor humano y no haba gritos, no se perciban gritos en las grabaciones que yo tena y que, por la que supe, provenan de un registro original del 2 de octubre, entonces haba una necesidad de hacer un sonido de pnico; pnico de la gente masacrada ah en Tlatelolco. Estuve buscando y no haba un efecto de sonido que tuviera esta cuestin de pnico, adems no eran tres gatitos aullando, se necesita-ba una muchedumbre, entonces haba que inventarlo, a falta de esta realidad, digamos. Y bueno, por esos das en que estaba yo trabajando en esto lleg a Radio Universidad, donde yo estaba tra-bajando, el cineasta Carlos Velo, a quien yo le grab algo no recuerdo para qu, y me sent con la confianza de pedirle su ayuda, puesto que l estaba trabajando en los estudios Churubusco y era hombre de cine pens que poda ayudarme con este asunto del pnico humano que

necesitaba para la balacera. Y entonces le pregunt: Maestro podra pedirle un favor, sera posible que me grabara un sonido de multitud en pnico?. Y me dijo: cmo no, yo se lo consigo, se lo mando, cuente con l. Y bueno, yo su-pona que haba un stock de sonidos all en los Estudios Churubusco, supona un profesionalismo tremendo no? Y cierta-mente me cumpli esplndidamente, me mand un carrete con un asistente, pero cuando lo escuch era verdaderamen-te lamentable. Por que si, eran gritos de pnico, pero de apenas un par de actores, justo lo que yo estaba evitando, podrn imaginarse los sonidos ridculos: eh, uh, ah, eh, eh ah, ah!. Una cosa absolutamente burda y pues definitiva-mente lo tuve que desechar. Entonces opt por pedirle a Hctor Mendoza, con quien estaba trabajando en una obra de teatro, y en donde s haba una docena de actores, que me ayudara. Y como estbamos completamente imbuidos de este espritu por hacer algo por lo que haba ocurrido me apoy. Entonces me llev mi grabadora y grab a los acto-res, se les pidi que hicieran los gritos. An as, cuando lo o, no era suficiente, entonces les met por ah un fondo y reverberacin pero bueno, yo no tena filtros, no tena ecualizadores, cmaras de reverberacin, nada absolutamente; la reverberacin que hacamos en ese entonces era el delay que se produce de la cabeza de grabacin a la cabeza de reproduccin, de tal manera que todo lo que hicimos fue, como ya lo he dicho en otras partes, con las uas.

BK: Y cmo fue la colaboracin? Haba una idea muy fija de Leobardo sobre la pelcula, tena fechas para estrenarla, lanzarla pblicamente?

RSA: No recuerdo que hubiera fechas l-mites, era lo que se pudiera hacer, l iba planteando necesidades para el sonido y sin decirlo me daba el tiempo de hacerlo como pudiera y en el tiempo que fuera necesario tomarse, l tambin esta-ba trabajando lentamente en lo suyo, montando las imgenes. Todo fue estar entregando pistas parciales de audio... y bueno, la verdad es que nunca hubo una entrega global, final, los sonidos se los iba entregando conforme los iba acabando.

BK: T sabes qu pas con la pelcula una vez que entregaste todo?

RSA: Fue todo muy aleatorio, aunque yo estaba empezando a trabajar en cine realizando grabaciones y sonidos directos, pues sta pelcula se hizo ms que nada, cmo decirlo?, como algo fuera de todo. Porque nos rebasaban yo creo que a todos estos hechos, y ms que algn mtodo era el entusiasmo por dejar plasmado el testimonio, de alguna manera, lo que nos gui, y ya pasaron muchos aos, para m estn muy borrosos esos recuerdos.

CPA: Es muy interesante cmo se hace visible este carcter abierto y en proceso de la pelcula y en el que participaste; de algo que luego soltaste todava estando abierto el proceso.

BK: Creo que lo que estamos intentan-do hacer es intervenir el material para revelar a nivel muy perceptual cmo la poltica y los movimientos estn basados en ilusiones, en imaginaciones. Yo me considero alguien bastante politizada pero al mismo tiempo quiero poner en cuestin el impacto de la imagen y del sonido, porque cuando los dos estn juntos son muy fuertes y tienen un poder

inmenso... pienso que documentos polti-cos como El Grito, por un lado, pierden su valor histrico y en tanto archivo porque son revisitados de la misma manera cada vez; homenajes acerca de las mismas cosas. No digo que hay que dejar de ver foto s de Tlatelolco otra vez, del 2 de octubre, pero hay que ponerlas en otro contexto y hacer una colisin entre imagen y sonido; entre evento y momen-to. Yo creo que esto puede permitir hacer una excavacin ms honda y ver si esas imgenes nos habitan o estn fuera de nosotros, cules son nuestras percepcio-nes, cmo nos afectan, y qu podemos hacer con ellas y con nuestro propios cuerpos.

Xalapa, Veracruz, febrero del 2014Transcripcin de Carlos Prieto Acevedo.

Mario de Vega: As a starting point I want-ed to ask you what you mean by scenoph-ony, in order to then come back to El Grito, the document that we are working with.

Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado: A quick defi-nition would be to call it a sound costume for a scenic act. Nevertheless, this is very vague. I remember that someone once said that scenophony is the costume of the stage, for example, which would make me a costume designer. He didnt really get the metaphor; well, its a sound costume in this case, sound made for the stage, to be worked with like set design In fact, I start from the concept of set de-sign, which is all that is visual and corpo-real and the site of dramatic development. In my case it is sound in relation to the stage. It came out of a long search. Recently I got together with various col-leagues to discuss in depth about how to give a name to our work, to our contribu-tion in theatre. Many of them make music for the set, others say that they are sound engineers or composers, and it occurred to me to use this term that seems more encompassing, scenophony.

Scenophony, vestiges and transgression

Mario de Vega: When I hear you explain what scenophony is, this is even more motivating because you are touching ex-actly on the point that Im interested in, since what we are interested in not at all placing music on a visual event; on a vi-sual document like this one. In my case, Im not trying to make music at all, but there are clearly the remains of the film El Grito, there is the work that you did that has a background and a specific form, and now I think that what has to happen is to transgress this, to fragment these remains. For me it was important to know how you understood it, how you under-stood the principle. To structure a sound event for a visual event that does not necessarily mean placing music on it. Its not composing music for a video, a docu-mentary. Now that Ive watched El Grito about four times, what interests me above all is that it seems that the image and the sound are two separate things. Obviously they live in a common space, but they are not illustrating anything and now, what Bani and I are trying to do is precisely that, maybe even making it more radical. How can I depart from your work, from

[Excerpt of a conversation between Bani Khoshnoudi, Mario de Vega and Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado about the way in which he made the soundtrack for the film, El Grito, considered one of the only filmic testimonials from within the student movement, and which is about its own development as a movement in 1968 and the brutal end of it on October 2 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco. A collective document made within a context of authoritarianism and governmental repression, which has become emblematic in Mexicos modern history. What is the place of the real within material composed from so many fragments, imprints and visions? How does imagination work in structuring a political document of this type?]

your sound treatment? Bani, whos work-ing with the visual archive and I, with the sound, but with the intention that in the end it will be converted into a piece that is more of a physical confrontation of the spectator. And I think that scenophony has a lot to do with it. Its very nice the way you put it; a sound costume, but a costume that is less of an article and more of an aura, or an ether on the visual condition that physically confronts the spectator or imposes itself.

Bani Khoshnoudi: Following what Mario is saying about the sound costume as something apart from or separate from the image, and in relation to what Ive read about the way you worked on El Grito, with sounds that were given to you by others who had recorded them on the streets, and how after only having seen some parts of the film, you worked from your imagina-tion. I would like you to talk to us more about this, and to know if your imagina-tion was based mostly on those images or also on your own experiences and things that you had seen in the streets during that time when so much was happening in Mexico. What was inspiring the way you worked with the sound?

Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado: Many people thought that I was very immersed in what was happening in 1968 and all that which I was, because it was not possible not to be but that year in particular, I had a lot of work, sound work, maybe more than I have ever had after that. In addition to my work at Radio Universidad, I was working in cinema and theatre. It was the Cultural Olympiad and I made an electro-acoustic ballet with Rafael Elizon-do and well, theatre and cinema pieces for the Olympic Committee. I was completely consumed with work, and then the project El Grito fell into my lap. The events were

very intense for everyone who lived in the city, but my work on the film didnt hap-pen until the year after, in 1969. They didnt have even one sound and so they came to me. Back then, I was at the CUEC (University Center of Film Studies) giving classes, and they came to me and asked me to do it; I did it from special effects, made-up sounds and a song here and there. I recorded some of those songs in a different context, not within the movement, and others were brought to me by the people who had recorded them at the events. I didnt even have any time because I was working so much. There was enormous pressure on me and I was sleeping three to four hours a night, thats how the situation wasLeobardo Lpez, who was the person who organized the whole thing and who played a major role in bringing the images together, called me to help him with the sound and well, there was nothing, except for a few songs that already existed, but the rest was to be invented. The idea was to substitute the sound that was not recorded and to invent it -there was no other choice- based on sound effects and imagination, for example simulating the fights in order to put sound to the im-ages of disputes. There are some shots in the film taken in a hospital so I sent an assistant to record in the waiting room of a hospital; the sounds of the medical instruments, and all that I had to invent because, of course, the sound effects that I already had were not very good and also there was the aggravating fact that they were recorded on vinyl, LPs, so there was a lot of superficial noise, clicks and those types of things, and I had to struggle with all of that. Even now I have offered, and Ive said it many times to people I know at the Filmoteca, that I would like to go back and redo the sound so that the quality is more decent

Carlos Prieto Acevedo: Why did you do it? Was it only because you were the only person who knew how to or because you felt responsible in a certain way?

Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado: There were not many people who were working with sound like I was. And at the same time, I was at the CUEC; I cant remember if I was already giving classes there but I had many friends and acquaintances there like Alfredo Joscowicz, Jos Rovirosa, and Leo-bardo himself. Many who were students and some who were professors; all of us shared a certain moral sentiment. If some of our colleagues had gone to jail for film-ing, of course I felt some responsibility to them; and well, also, there was no one else really who was working with sound in this manner. People were just starting to do direct sound, although there was none for the images I had, except for maybe a very small percentage of the images. So I had to fabricate them myself or recreate them or return to record them, in the case of some of the songs for example. The rest of it was what others were gathering, because there were cassette decks at the time that they were taking to the demon-strations; a speech here or there, but not synchronized with the film, of course. For example, the gun shots. I remember that they gave me two gunshots, but I dont know who recorded them.

Mario de Vega: You didnt record it you received it later on?

Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado: Almost all of the material that I was given was record-ed here and there, and it was known that we had to take certain precautions, and well, I will tell you sincerely, I didnt ever know who had recorded the two gunshots that I used. In one of them, you can tell that they were journalists because they

are talking, comparing and making com-ments in the recording that I have. And in the other one, it gives the impression that they are really close, too close, and I dont know if it was a soldier or if some-one hung a microphone from a window or something. I dont really know and sin-cerely, I didnt even want to ask who did it because Im sure I was afraid that they may ask us or find out, so I didnt even want to have that information on me, and so I was careful or afraid, call it whatever you like. The fact is that I didnt want to know who recorded it.

Bani Khoshnoudi: That was precisely a question that I wanted to ask; about the fear one has when working with materi-als of this kind in a moment that is so politically and socially difficult. And also, the fear of giving so much force, so much power to a visual archive with the sound that you were creating. How did you feel about the film when it was finished?

RSA: I will be honest with you. Ive watched the film two or three times and it has been a long time since I saw it. Right now I dont have a clear image of it. I remember some things that made an impact on me, but I dont have a global feeling of the film. With all that we are discussing, it makes me want to go and watch the film, to see what Ive done. I need to go back and see the film again and re-evaluate everything that has been done there, no?

MdeV: What you say motivates me a lot. Speaking a little about the way in which I have tried to approach this and how we have started to work, each one on our own. Like Bani with the sequences that she has selected and the way she has worked with them, I think that it func-tions like an interpretation. A big part

of the sounds that I have been making are even antagonistic; they dont try to illustrate an image. I think the challenge and what is interesting for us is possibly the same as what you did: to have an audiovisual document, I mean, its obvi-ous that you see an image and there is a sound, but which does not correspond to it 100 percent. I mean, that there is an antagonism. The interesting thing for me is to know, when does this antagonism become a unit; at what moment does this difference unify the two parts? For example, right now while Im producing the sound only digitally without having any type of recording and without using any of the sounds that are in the film that you edited, but using different se-quences of frequencies, or modulation of this or that sound that do not come from or correspond to an image; they dont resonate with the basic idea of how the document was made, but while I hear you talk it seems that the approximation is very similar. Thats why it was important for me to hear you talk about the editing process. It is inspiring to hear that you did not go to the demonstrations with a microphone in hand, risking your life, be-cause maybe you would not be here today to tell us all about it, but that the sounds came from others and well, you edited them and now we have the result.

BK: Well, and I wanted to ask you what happened to the sounds that you didnt use. For example, when I have worked on similar projects, recording and filming on my own, and later editing, I have felt the responsibility of not only consider-ing my own material, but to go and see what others have filmed and put on You-tube. There are thousands of videos and well, later, in a certain sense, I begin to catalog all of that, and this is a way for me to realize that there already exists an

archive. The dilemma is then to share that archive and how to do it. I remem-ber that putting this or that thing in the edit was not only a thing of doubt, but also a responsibility. And to also recog-nize what I was afraid to put in and what I wasnt, to blur the faces of people in order to protect their identity or not to. With El Grito this was maybe not the case, but I wanted to know what you did with the material the voices of the soldiers and all the rest. What would that archive, from the materials that you did not use and if it even exists, mean for todays Mexico?

RSA: There was really not much material, and I will confess that the only things that I kept and that Im conscious that I have archived are the two gunshots; that is what I remember. Surely there is more but the truth is that I dont have it clear in my mind. And so much of what I pro-duced and what people gave me, I later put onto reels that I gave to Leobardo, as he asked me to. He had given me a list of reels in the way they are used in cinema. I dont know how many reels there were, like a dozen or more, and then there was a list that would say: In reel 1, I need this and that sound; in reel 2 this one and that one, so I want to tell you that I did the sound work how should I say very much blindly. I saw isolated images, but nothing put together. I dont even remember having seen the film ed-ited, and so my work was really very much a blind one; very disconnected because there are other things in cinema where you see the image, synchronizedBK: Well, or if you are editing something that is very different from the intentions of the sounds, then you at least have the film as a reference

RSA: Exactly and now with the computer it is very easy to have the image in front of you when you are working, but no I was working completely in a blind way, with my own personal experiences as my reference, or with what I was seeing on the news, with what people were talk-ing about, but I didnt work with the image in front of me at all. There was only the relationship, the list of sounds that Leobardo gave me, where he would tell me in which sequence he needed the sound of a demonstration, the sound of a gunshot, another one of traffic, stuff like that and well, I would go and find them and put them together with what they needed. I had to invent some things, or use some sound effects. I remember that one thing that Leobardo asked me was the sound of a burial dur-ing a funeral, and I had to record it behind my house, in the garden, the sounds of a shovel digging. mountains of dirt to invent them because we didnt have that sound. And this is what I do; I make sounds for the stage, for theatre, and at a certain point I invent them, I have to. It was the same when I made the sound for El Grito, although I had a lot less experience and fewer tools. Thats how I had to do things, trying to be the least picky as possible, its worth using that word because, well, I didnt have the right conditions. But I would like to get back to an an-ecdote about the specific sound of the gunshots from Tlatelolco, in the last part of the film. I had two recordings of gun-shots, but that is just what they were: gunshots. There was no human factor, no screams you couldnt hear screams in the recordings that I had. Based on what I knew, these were from a general record-ing of October 2, so there was a need to have the sound of panic; the sound of people panicking during the massacre in

Tlatelolco. I was searching but I couldnt find a sound effect that had this panic factor in it. And were not talking about three little cats crying out, we needed a mass of people, so we had to invent it, for lack of the real thing, lets say. And during that time, the film director Carlos Velo came to Radio Universidad, for whom I recorded something, although I dont remember what, and I felt in confidence with him so I asked for his help. Since he was working at the Churubusco studios and was a man of cinema, I thought that he could help me with this issue of human panic that I needed for the gunshot. So I asked him: Maestro, could I ask you a fa-vor; would it be possible for you to record the sound of a multitude in panic? And he told me: Why not, Ill do it, Ill get it for you; count on it. And so I thought that he had a stock of sounds in the Churubus-co Studios and imagined great profession-alism, no? And of course he splendidly did what he promised and sent me a reel with his assistant, but when I listened to it, it was really lamentable, because although there were panic cries, there were only a couple of actors doing them, and this was exactly what I was trying to avoid. The sounds could seem ridiculous: eh, uh, ah, eh, eh ah, ah!; something completely makeshift, and so I definitely had to get rid of that. So I ask Hctor Mendoza who was working on a theatre piece and where there were a dozen actors who could help me. And since we were all imbued with the spirit to do something because of what had happened, he helped me. So I took my recorder there and recorded the actors, whom we asked to do the screams. Even then, when I listened to them, it is not enough so I put a background sound of reverberation but well, I didnt have filters or equalizers, reverberating cham-bers, absolutely nothing. The reverbera-tion that we would do back then was delay

that is made from the start of recording to the start of replaying; so much so that everything we did, as Ive said before, we did with the tips of our nails.

BK: And what was the collaboration like? Did Leobardo have a fixed idea for the film, was there a date when he wanted to show it, to put it out to the public?

RSA: I dont remember there being dead-lines, it was just being done however it was possible. He would outline what was needed in terms of sound and without even saying it, he would give me time to do it however I could, and whenever it was necessary, would come to retrieve it. He was also working slowly on his part, editing the images. I was always just delivering partial tracks of audio and well, the truth is that there was never a global or final delivery; I was giving him the sounds as I was making them.

BK: Do you know what happened with the film once you had delivered every-thing?

RSA: It was all really random, although I was starting to work in cinema doing recording and direct sound. And this film was made, how should I put it, on the margins of everything. Because these events had overwhelmed us all, I think, and more than having a method, we had the motivation to capture the testimony. In some way, this is what guided us, and now many years have passed and those memories are very vague.

CPA: Its very interesting how you make visible this open character, in process, of the project that you participated in. Something that you eventually let go of while still being open to the process.

BK: I think that what we are trying to do is to show how politics and social movements can also be based on illusions and the imagination. I consider myself someone who is quite politicized but at the same time I want to put into ques-tion the impact that image and sound can have, because when those two things are together they are much stronger and have an immense amount of power I think of political documents like El Grito, and I think that on the one hand they some-how lose their historic and archival value because they are revisited in the same way every time; an homage to the same things. Im not saying that we should stop looking at photos of Tlatelolco, of October 2, but that we have to put them into a different context, to make a colli-sion between the image and the sound, between the event and the moment. I think that this can allow us to do more excavation and to see if these images in-habit us or if they are outside of us, what our perceptions are, how they affect us and what we can do with them and with our own bodies.

Traduccin: Bani Khoshnoudi

Dos asuntos llevaron en primera instancia a la creacin de este proyecto: la inexistencia en Mxico de una reflexin sobre el documen-to sonoro como artefacto social y cultural; y en segundo lugar el acceso al testimonio vivo de quien realiz la banda de sonido de la pelcula El Grito. Nos referimos a la figura indmita pero olvidada de Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado, un ingeniero de audio que median-te una exhaustiva praxis sonora desde los aos cincuenta del siglo pasado hasta la ac-tualidad, elabor por cuenta propia la teora de la escenofona, fuertemente inspirada en la msica concreta y basada en su propia re-lacin emprica con las mquinas de sonido. Obligado por su oficio a inventar estrategias y soluciones sonoras para su uso escnico, radiofnico y cinematogrfico, Alvarado fue quien confeccion el documento inexisten-te de un acontecimiento aural silenciado por el estruendo totalitario del Mxico de las Olimpiadas, en el ao funesto de 1968. A estas dos motivaciones se adhiri una tercera inquietud, de orden poltico y que impregna todo el proyecto: qu constituye al documento en tanto archivo de lo irrecupe-rable, de lo que fue?, eso que es imprescin-dible para la conformacin de otro presente, distinto a ste de la implosin comunicativa, que aspira a neutralizar la diferencia sensorial que conforma nuestra experiencia esttica? Qu subsiste del documento ms all de las diferentes normalizaciones artsticas a las que se ha prestado, ya sea como potica de la memoria o como fetiche autobiogrfico?

Documento de lo inexistente: el sonido de El Grito

Intentar un arqueologa es siempre asumir el riesgo de poner, unos junto a otros, fragmentos de cosas sobrevivientes, necesariamente

heterogneas y anacrnicas debido a que proceden de sitios separados y de tiempos separados por lagunas. Ahora bien, ese riesgo tiene dos

nombres: imaginacin y montaje.

Georges Didi-Huberman

Basta saber que algo ha sido recuperado en un documento, que ha sido archivado, para abandonar cualquier esfuerzo por implicarnos con ello? La conservacin de los archivos desde la perspectiva patrimonial del Estado y sus instituciones ha sembrado la indiferencia y ha roto el carcter crtico que el documento potencialmente aporta al presente, median-te un manejo burocrtico y fastuoso de los acontecimientos. En este contexto institu-cional y espectacular de la memoria, El Grito es una anomala. El carcter fragmentario del film, con sus fotografas, retazos de pelcula, secuencias, facsmiles de peridico, ruidos fabricados y voces en off (todos ellos mate-riales que ignoramos cmo llegaron ah, a la sombra de la persecucin, la tortura sistem-tica y la erradicacin de la evidencia), cons-piran contra cualquier reconciliacin entre el espectador y aquello que ve y escucha. Ese aspecto monstruoso del collage colectivo y la fabricacin de los sonidos que le dan vida nos muestran que antes que la preservacin y la fidelidad del registro, es la constitucin del documento en el montaje donde se configura un posible reconocimiento del espectador como construccin textual y corprea de su memoria histrica.

Aunque estrechamente ligadas, no es obvia la relacin que se establece entre el documento y la voluntad de resistencia. Es verdad que algo ocurre ah que lucha, que se resiste a la desintegracin, al desvanecimiento, a la des-aparicin, a la no-existencia. Pero de quin

o quines depende esta lucha?, quines la sostienen a lo largo de la historia, en las pro-fundidades genealgicas de la oralidad y los archivos personales? La particular manera de permanecer de esto que se resiste, en la su-perficie de ese objeto de dudoso estatuto ontolgico que es el documento, es lo que hoy debe ser puesto en cuestin. Es amplia-mente conocida la ecuacin simplificadora de la propaganda en este asunto. En ella se da por un hecho seguro sta relacin entre resis-tencia y documento, eximiendo a la persona de cualquier tarea de produccin de sentido, de alteracin de sus sentidos. Por otra parte se nos obliga a desear las promesas de la alta fidelidad: esa excrecencia tecnolgica de la metafsica de la presencia combatida por la deconstruccin desde hace aos. Sorpren-de que no sucumba an el documento en tanto objeto paradjico frente las aberrantes variaciones de la retrica verit. Tanto en la propaganda como en las dems variantes que aspiran a documentar lo que es de una forma irrefutablemente verdadera, se le exime al espectador de incorporar este documento (esa cosa que ah vive y que sufri), en las urgencias respectivas de su tiempo, ms all de toda sntesis o de toda nostalgia. En lugar de desestabilizar el presente y nuestra relacin con l, estaramos consolidndolo como objeto controlado por una subjetividad adiestrada en la hermenutica de la sobre informacin, despolitizndose. Sabemos que el mejor y ms oportuno de los recuerdos, es decir, de las seales que nos llegan del pasado desde distintos lugares a travs de fragmentos de muy diversa ndole y consistencia, son aquellos que tienen lugar en los momentos de peligro: cuando el pasado irrumpe en el presente para cimbrar-lo y no para confirmar su trayectoria. Aqu la huella del pasado puede alterar el curso establecido de las cosas que el poder busca consagrar, sustituyendo al documento por el monumento (ya sea escultrico, cinema-togrfico, arquitectnico, musical, pictri-co o literario). Esos objetos reaccionarios

conjuran la irrupcin de eso que resiste en el documento, y que podra auxiliarnos en momentos de emergencia, de amenaza. Y tal vez el arte, con sus capacidades de disociacin de los materiales y de inscribir la paradoja en nuestra sensibilidad, hoy tenga, entre otras, la tarea de sustraernos a la sublimacin del conflicto en la experiencia audiovisual. Mediante esta operacin el acto artstico nos enfrenta a la realidad artificial de nuestra memoria histrica, y a la tarea que nos aguarda en el documento, permi-tindonos resistir a la inercia ergonmica de la empata. El arte nos ayudara entonces a entender que lo que ocurre con esta emocin que se desencadena en nosotros pero que se nos transfiere gracias a las grabaciones, fotos, pedazos de peridicos, historias con-tadas; es ms un salir de s, para entrar en contacto con ese Afuera que nos constituye tambin. Ese espacio transversal y avasalla-dor del acontecimiento. Ms que reconciliar-nos con la historia, el arte nos pondr en conflicto con ella, revelando la paradoja que habita sus documentos.

1968: un archivo ciego busca plantear desde las nociones de saturacin y repeticin un choque entre las dos dimensiones poderosas del sonido y la imagen, tomadas de El Grito. Reinscritas en el soporte cinemtico que nos permite ambas experiencias, tanto la em-pata ilusoria como la des-idealizacin de la huella. Ese trazo que con frecuencia se consi-dera habitada por la presencia privilegiada e irrefutable de algo que resisti. Es posible resistir desde la huella? Tal vez eso que instiga a la resistencia en la pelcula El Grito nos toca a nosotros inven-tarlo. Para ello tenemos al montaje y a la imaginacin. No cabe duda de que estamos en tiempos de peligro y que debemos tomar ese riesgo.

Carlos Prieto Acevedo

Document of the nonexistent: the sound of El Grito

To invent an archeology is to forcibly assume the risk of putting together fragments of things that have survived, which are necessarily heteroge-neous and anachronistic because they come from separate places and

times, divided by lapses. Now, this risk has two names: imagination and montage.

Georges Didi-Huberman

In the first place, two issues brought us to create this project: the lack of reflection in Mexico on the sound document as social and cultural artifact, and secondly, having access to the testimony of the person who made the original soundtrack for the film El Grito. We are referring to the indomitable but forgot-ten figure, Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado, a sound engineer who through an exhaustive sound practice that started in the 1950s, developed his own theory of scenophony, very much inspired by musique concrte and based on his own empirical relationship to sound machines. Forced by his profession to invent strategies and sound solutions for use in theatre, radio and cinema, Alvarado was the person who fab-ricated a document of an aural event silenced by the totalitarian clatter of Mexico of the Olympiads, in the fatal year of 1968.

In addition to these two motivations, a third, political concern pervades the whole project. What constitutes this document as an archive of the irrecoverable, of what has past, of what is essential for configuring a different present; different from this com-municative implosion that tries to neutralize the sensorial differences that make up our aesthetic experiences? What survives of this archive after so many artistic banalizations of it, whether it be as poetics of memory or as autobiographic fetish? Is it enough to know that something has been recorded in a document that has been archived, and

thus allowing us to abandon any efforts to involve ourselves with it? The State and its institutions, with their patrimonial perspec-tive on the preservation of documents, have generated indifference and broken the critical character that the archive could potentially bring to the present. This is because of a lavish, bureaucratic way of dealing with events, which results in commemorations and monuments, favored forms that ultimately converge in collective oblivion. In this insti-tutional context of memory as spectacle, El Grito is an anomaly. The fragmented charac-ter of the film with its collected images, pho-tos and fabricated sound, that for the most part we ignore where they come from, denies the spectator any possible reconciliation with what he/she sees and hears. This monstrous character of the collective collage and the in-vention of the sounds that give it life, show us that more important than the preservation and fidelity of the recording, is the construc-tion in the editing of the document, where the spectator can have the possibility to recognize the textual and material fabrication of his/her historical memory, inscribed in the sensorial, and which is ultimately a task or a job for the senses. Although they are very closely tied, the rela-tionship between the archive and the will to resist is not an obvious one. It is true that something happens at the site of struggle, which resists disintegration, fading, disap-

Carlos Prieto AcevedoTraduccin: Bani Khoshnoudi

pearance, and non-existence. But on whom does the struggle depend? Who sustains it throughout history, in the genealogical depths of orality or personal archives? The particular way in which this will to struggle remains, on the surface of this object of doubtful ontological status which is the archive, is what needs to be put into question. Within this issue, the equation of the simplifying rhetoric of propaganda is widely known. The relationship between resistance and archive is taken for granted, exempting people of any task of making meaning or altering meanings. On the other hand, it makes us desire the promises of hi-fidelity, this technological excrescence of the metaphysical of presence, which has been a target of deconstruction for many years. It is remarkable that the archive as a paradoxi-cal object still does not succumb in the face of vulgar versions of the verit rhetoric. In propaganda as in other attempts to docu-ment what is in an irrefutably true way, the spectator is freed of all responsibility to involve him/herself with the archive (that real object that carries life and suffering), in the urgent moments respective of his/her time, beyond all synthesis and nostalgia. Rather than destabilizing the present and our relationship to it, we would be consolidat-ing it as a controlled object by our trained subjectivities in the hermeneutics of over-information, depoliticizing oneself.We know that the best and most timely memories, or let us say messages that come to us from distinct places from the past, by way of fragmented archives of diverse nature and consistency, are those that take place in moments of danger: when the past invades the present in order to shake it, instead of confirming its trajectory. Here the remnants of the past can alter the established course of things, while power tries to consecrate by substituting the document with the monu-ment (whether it be sculptural, cinemato-graphic, architectonic, musical, pictorial or

literary). These reactionary objects conjure up an eruption of that which resists in the document and that could help us in urgent or threatening moments. Maybe art, with its capacity to dislocate materials and to introduce paradoxes into our sensibility, has the role, amongst others, to get us out of our sublimation of conflict when inside the audiovisual experience. By means of this process, the artistic act confronts us with the artificial reality of our historical memory, and with the work that is awaiting us in the document, and in this way can allow us to resist the inertia of ergonomic empathy. So art will help us understand what occurs with this emotion that is triggered in us, but that has been transferred onto us by recordings, photos, pieces of newspaper, and recounted stories. It is more about being enraptured in order to enter in contact with this Outside that constitutes us as well; this transversal and overwhelming space of the event. More than a reconciliation with history, art will put us in conflict with it, revealing the paradox that inhabits its documents.

1968: a blind archive uses notions of satura-tion and repetition in order to establish a shock between the powerful dimensions of sound and image taken from El Grito. Re-inscribed in the cinematic space, this medium allows different experiences: illusory empathy or de-idealization of the remnant; the remnant that is frequently considered inhabited by the privileged and irrefutable presence of something that has resisted. Do the remnants make it possible to resist? Maybe with the document of El Grito, it is up to us to invent that which continues to instigate resistance. We have imagination and montage that allow us to do that. There is no doubt that we are in times of danger and that we have to take the risk.

Hacer un sonido

de pnico

Absolutamente a ciegas

Carlos Prieto Acevedo: direccin artstica y coordinacin editorial Zosim Silva: diseo grfico, formacin y tratamiento de imagen impresa Mario de Vega: diseo y tratamiento sonoro Bani Khoshnoudi: edicin y tratamiento de imagen

Este proyecto fue posible gracias al inters y al apoyo de FICUNAM, Alumnos47 y Centro Cultural Espaa en Mxico. Nuestro especial agradecimiento a Eva Sangiorgi, Adriana Maurer, Ana Tom y Rodolfo Snchez Alvarado.

Esta publicacin es parte de la pieza audiovisual 1968:un archivo ciego, y se sugiere su distribucin cada vez que sea exhi-bida. Est estrictamente prohibida su venta y consta de un tiraje de 1968 ejemplares impresos en Taller Orozco en la colonia Obrera de la ciudad de Mxico, en febrero del 2014. Fu impreso en papel Educacin 75 gramos. / This publication is part of the audio-visual piece 1968: a blind archive, and its distribution is suggested whenever it is exhibited. Its sale is strictly prohibited. The edition consist of 1968 copies printed in Mexico City, in February, 2014.