Manuel Sol Mateo. Sounding bodies, suspended souls

MANUEL SOL MATEOCuerpos sonoros, almas detenidasA walk through the streets of Mexico in the 20th centuryManuel Sol Mateo - voice and stagingMateo Tonatiuh - guitar"Cuerpos sonoros, almas detenidas" is born from the meeting of independent languages that Octavio Paz proposed in the exhibition Instante y revelación together with Manuel Álvarez Bravo: neither the poem comments on the photograph nor the photograph illustrates the poem; between the two arise affinities, oppositions, and correspondences left to the imagination of the viewer.This dialogue now incorporates Mexican song, born and transformed throughout the same century that Manuel Álvarez Bravo traveled with his camera.During this walk through 20th century Mexico, the voice and guitar become sounding bodies capable of bringing these images back to the present during the brief time of a song.In Face to Time, Octavio Paz finds in the photographs of Manuel Álvarez Bravo a suspended time: a transit between the eye, the image, language, sensation, and perception.The song participates in a similar gesture. A fleeting emotion — a night, an absence, a desire, a grief — is held in words and melody.