Sergio Zevallos, a Peruvian artist based in Berlin, has been active since the 1980s, when he was a member of the Chaclacayo Group, one of the most radical artist collectives in Peru, dedicated to performance art. Since then, Zevallos has been interested in composing his own soundtracks, writing scores with invented notation, working with recitation of texts and recordings of people talking, elements that he later used as raw material for his compositions.
Zevallos' work has been developed in a multidisciplinary field, between drawing, performance and sound art, with a clear interest in setting iconoclasm and nonsense against the languages of power. Sergio Zevallos – ATEM: Pieces for actions and installations (1999-2019) compiles, for the first time, works in the field of sound, both soundtracks for various performances such as “Fragmentos” and “Atem”, which are based on the montage of vocal sounds and noises, and “Cello”, a musical composition for that instrument. In them, dissonance alternates with melodic work and experimentation with loops and recordings. "CHTP No. 3" is a work akin to the experiences of sound poetry. "Callejón Oscuro", on the other hand, documents the complex vocal sound textures achieved by Zevallos, in the manner of Radio Arte's compositions, for his sound installation of the same name.
Sergio Zevallos – ATEM: Pieces for actions and installations (1999-2019) is released in LP vinyl, edition of 300 copies, and includes photos, drawings and notes written by Zevallos himself. This album is released by Buh Records with the support of Proyecto AMIL, who have joined efforts to develop a collection dedicated to presenting fundamental Peruvian works that operate at the borders of visual and sound art.


A1 - Fragmentos (6:18) (2002)
A2 - Atem (8:25) (1999)
A3 - Cello (7:13) (1999)
B1 - CHTP N°3 (5:27) (2019)
B2 - Callejón Oscuro Pt1 (6:54) (2013)
B3 - Callejón Oscuro Pt2 (10:06) (2013)


A1 is taken from Fragmente, Sound for a performance by Uta Gebert, produced and presented in Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2002).
A2 and A3 are taken from Natura Morta, sound
for a performance by Sergio Zevallos, produced and presented at El Reservorio, Berlin (1999).
B2 and B3 are taken from Callejón Oscuro, Sergio Zevallos sound installation, produced and presented at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Lima (2013). B1 produced in Lima.
A2 voices by Evelyn Arndt and Sergio Zevallos. A3 cello by Mischa Lentz. B1 voice by Sergio Zevallos. B2 voices by Solange Jacobs, Domingo de Ramos and Frido Martin. B3 voice by Verónica Zela, Isabel Zevallos, Frido Martin, Domingo de Ramos and Tabris Morissette.


MY SOUNDTRACK by Sergio Zevallos
I would have liked to be a musician, or a dancer, but the circumstances ended up boycotting my intentions and I ended up drawing, as well as writing. But all was not lost, because at some point that need for rhythm infiltrated the visual again. It is as if the immediate time of sound introduced a certain dynamism in the images or texts, as they are both enclosed in final forms, in a time of memory.
At the end of the 80s, already with several years of professional practice as a visual artist, I worked as part of a collective in a series of public performances in which we incorporated what in cinema is known as the soundtrack. In practice, we used cassettes of classical music and of commercial songs which were introduced spontaneously at certain moments in the action. The intention was the same as in cinema, to accentuate the emotionality of a scene by relying on the sentimental memory of spectators.
Hence my need to compose the soundtracks myself. I went as far as writing scores in an invented notation that never got to be performed. Then I did some sound editing work for performances by
other artists. As I never learned to play a musical instrument or trained my voice for singing, I worked directly with recited texts, recordings of people talking or producing sounds, which I processed as sound material.
ATEM, one of the oldest pieces in this album, expresses in a nutshell my way of working with sound. ATEM means breath. The composition consists of a rhythm constructed from modulations of inhaling and exhaling. Sounds emitted through the throat and through the mouth are located between two frontiers. On the one hand, they never become true moans; on the other, they never formulate a phoneme. Neither animal nor human.
At the same time, I composed other rhythms from the fragmentation of recorded material. The original sound could come from a cello, broken glass or operating machines. The fragmentation consisted in isolating sound particles smaller than one second, and reordering them by building melodies. The micro-fragment as a phoneme of noise. By then interspersing children's and adult voices in the compositions, voices with messages, these entered into a dialogue with the rhythms
and melodies.
The Callejón Oscuro [Dark Alley] project is the soundtrack of an installation in which a series of recordings of texts, songs and marches are played at different times by 52 speakers. The speakers
are distributed in a corridor 10 meters long and 2 meters wide. The sound experience depended on the temporal and spatial position of the observer in the alley. The different voices were chosen according to the texts they read: young, adult, male, female voices. The texts form discursive groups in semantic counterpoint, that is, they complement each other in their contents. There are excerpts from military speeches, statements by a man convicted for human rights crimes and critical
texts about heterosexuality that make up a group. In another group there are popular texts on nationalism and identity. Finally, a third group is made up of purely subjective texts, such as a list of insults in the local language with discriminatory sexual expressions and short stories of amoral content.
Suddenly, in this composition, what is said and understood, that is, language, is preponderant. From there I can imagine readings, talks and performative recitals, with variations and modulations of speech.
The most recent project, however, has followed another path. CHTP is a sound deconstruction of phrases according to the principle of syncopation, both in its musical and linguistic meanings. The
musical syncopation creates a rhythmic contradiction by displacing the accent in speech.
Linguistically, it involves the removal of phonemes from the inside of a word. The phrase thus intervened is fragmented into non-semantic sound elements, but these fragments arranged in sequence do begin to reveal a meaning eventually. This stumbling reading generates associations that diverge from the usual understanding of what is being said.
Once again, I went back to the fragmentation technique. It is as if by separating something into parts, in the emptiness that remains between one part and the next, meaning is generated. You could then continue listening in any direction. The dismantling of the voice in discontinuities and cyclical times, by breaking the usual logical reading chain, generates meanings that clash with the contents of the mind in its functional state. All compositions finally have in common this kind of use of communicative language as a disability of the spirit, seeking meaning in the sonority of the voice.



MI BANDA SONORA (por Sergio Zevallos)
Hubiese querido ser músico, o bailarín, pero las circunstancias terminaron por boicotear mis intenciones y terminé en el dibujo, el escribir. Como no todo estaba perdido en algún momento esa
necesidad de ritmo volvió a infiltrar lo visual. Es como si el tiempo inmediato de lo sonoro introdujese cierto dinamismo en las imágenes o textos, ambos encerrados en formas finales, en un tiempo memoria.
A fines de los 80s, ya con varios años de práctica profesional como artista visual, estaba realizando en colectivo una serie de performances públicas en las que incorporábamos lo que en cine se conoce
como la banda sonora. En la práctica usábamos casetes de música clásica y de canciones comerciales introducidas espontáneamente en ciertos momentos de la acción. La intención era la misma que en el cine, acentuar la emotividad de una escena contando con la memoria sentimental de las espectadoras.
De ahí surge mi necesidad de componer yo mismo las bandas sonoras. Llegué a escribir partituras en una notación inventada que nunca llegaron a ejecutarse. Luego hice algunos trabajos de edición
de sonido para performances de otras artistas. Como nunca aprendí un instrumento musical o entrené mi voz para el canto, hice mis arreglos a partir de textos leídos, grabaciones de personas hablando o produciendo sonidos, que luego procesaba como materia sonora.
ATEM una de las piezas más antiguas de este disco expresa en síntesis mi manera de trabajar con el sonido. ATEM significa aliento, la composición consiste en un ritmo construido a partir de
modulaciones del inhalar y exhalar el aire. Los sonidos así emitidos por la garganta y a través de la boca se ubican entre dos fronteras. Por un lado nunca llegan a ser verdaderos gemidos, por el otro nunca llegan a formular un fonema. Ni animal ni humano.
En la misma época compuse otros ritmos a partir de la fragmentación de material grabado. El sonido original podía provenir tanto de un violoncelo como de vidrios rotos o máquinas funcionando. La fragmentación consistía en separar partículas de sonido menores a un segundo para reordenarlas construyendo melodías. El micro-fragmento como fonema del ruido. Al intercalar luego voces infantiles y adultas en las composiciones, voces con mensajes, estos entraban en diálogo con los ritmos y melodías.
El proyecto Callejón Oscuro es la banda sonora de una instalación en la que una serie de textos, canciones y marchas son emitidas en diferentes tiempos por 52 parlantes. Estos están distribuidos
en un corredor de 10 metros de largo por 2 de ancho. La experiencia sonora dependía del momento y el lugar en el que una se encuentre escuchando en el callejón. De pronto en esta composición lo
que se dice y se entiende, es decir el lenguaje, es lo preponderante. A partir de ahí me puedo imaginar lecturas, charlas y recitales performativos, con variaciones y modulaciones del habla.
El proyecto más reciente sin embargo ha seguido otra vía. CHTP es una de-construcción sonora de frases según el principio de la síncopa, tanto en su acepción musical como lingüística. La síncopa musical crea una contradicción rítmica al desplazar el acento del compás del habla.
Lingüísticamente consiste en la eliminación de fonemas del interior de una palabra. La frase así intervenida queda fragmentada en elementos sonoros no semánticos, pero estos fragmentos ordenados en secuencia sí comienzan a revelar el significado de a pocos. Esta lectura a tropiezos genera asociaciones distintas a la comprensión habitual de lo que se está diciendo.
Nuevamente volví entonces a la técnica de la fragmentación. Es como si al separar algo en partes, en el vacío que queda entre una parte y la siguiente se generase el sentido. Se podría entonces seguir
escuchando en cualquier dirección. El desmontaje de la voz en discontinuidades y tiempos cíclicos, al romper la cadena de lectura lógica habitual, genera significados que desentonan con los
contenidos de la mente en su estado funcional. Todas las composiciones tienen finalmente en común ese uso del lenguaje comunicativo como una discapacidad del espíritu, buscando el sentido
en la sonoridad de la voz.