Envase by Xenia Xamanek

With this dual release of music and marble sculpture, ‘Envase’ unfolds the artistic collaboration between Danish/Honduran composer Xenia Xamanek and Danish visual artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Anyines hosts this collaboration, facilitating a wide palette of souvenirs, available in the form of keychains, t-shirts, cups, iPhone covers, posters and magnets for your fridge.

For Xamanek and Hestelund, ‘Envase’ is an exploration of a common artistic interest in voice, mouth and body as autonomous entities:

“The music deals with voices detached from bodies and how these immaterial voices are somehow seeking other forms of existence. We see the sculpture as a body wherein the bodiless voices can take temporary habitat. The souvenirs are copies of this body, so you get the image of the original - an image that is replicated and replicable and thus accessible for all. The origin of the sculpture becomes unclear and the souvenirs become simulations of something that may or may not exist. They have a circular lineage, without a starting point, as a never-ending repetition.”

‘Envase’ is the Spanish equivalent of the English word ‘container’, ‘carrier’, or ‘a thing that holds something else’ as described by author Ursula Le Guin when arguing how the container should be the real hero in the story of evolution. ‘Envase’ contains recordings of Xamanek’s deceased grandfather whose acapella love songs appear throughout the album. With this symbolic embrace between loved ones, artists and art forms, the title of the release also points towards more care-full times.

Xamanek’s insistent and haunting vocal experiments inhabit the minerals of the marble sculpture, which is equally human and humus; embryo and larva. The form is familiar, smooth and it seems to come alive and linger with you along with the chanting voices. ‘Envase’ is a creature of both immaterial voice and solid body, always evolving into new forms and never stable.

Copenhagen based label since 2017

anyines.com
SoundCloud
Instagram