Hailing from Oaxaca, Mexico and currently based in Brussels, Vica Pacheco has been cultivating a practice that has become a full-fledged artistic multiverse: music, video, ceramics, performance, and robotics (!) are just some of the realms touched by Vica’s tentacular vision. Ahead of her performance in May at Les Nuits, we catch up with Vica to hear more about her current work - always in progress - and how dreams open pathways into worlds ever-expanding.
The last time we sat down for an interview in 2019, you were just starting to play your first shows - a lot has happened since then! How do you feel thinking back on those days?
Well, I feel the same way! Still living in my fantasy world and still chasing opportunities. Maybe a little less so than before, since my reputation as ‘Madame Flute’ consolidated itself and thanks to which more opportunities present themselves to me now. But otherwise, it's the same: dreaming of what’s possible out there, mixing all the interests I have and striving to make something that is not only musical but also visual, atmospheric and even theatrical.
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What can we expect from the show at Botanique?
It’s a new piece called Éclipsis and I’ll work on it during residencies with my three muses [dancers Francesca Mariano, Siet Raeymaekers and Fernanda Soberón] at STUK and Les Halles, after which we’ll perform the piece at Nuits Botanique. It’s going to be a more theatrical show, with three bodies on stage activating the space with precise actions, special lighting, in collaboration with Léa Ware, and live music with ‘magical’ instruments. But while the piece is composed, the composition stems from improvisation and its interpretation is completely free. My goal is to create moments of contemplation like with my flute shows; once someone wrote to me after playing in a church in Barcelona - one of the trippiest shows for me! - to say they’d experienced straight-up religious hallucinations. The fact that people can see things that you're not showing them blows my mind! It nourishes me a lot, knowing that my work triggers memories and ideas in people and that it activates perceptions unknown to me.
It nourishes me a lot, knowing that my work triggers memories and ideas in people and that it activates perceptions unknown to me.
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There's something else that’s new in this piece which is that (screams) I'll be singing live. I've done it for other projects, but it's the first time that my own piece opens with the presence of my voice, not in the usual narrative or textured way but as pure melody and song. It’s been my dream for ages and I'm finally going for it.
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How has the porosity of your practice defined your artistic trajectory?
It’s clearer to me now what I want to do and what I definitely don’t want to do. Having developed this tentacular artistic practice has led me to totally unrelated things, from contemporary art in Mexico to electronic music festivals and projects in specific spaces like churches and bridges. An advantage of that porosity is that it’s led me to discover many beautiful places and people who have very different takes on sound, be it through music, sculpture or performance, mystically or more technologically. There are many blessings that being - sorry for the label! - a multidisciplinary artist has brought me.
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What element - aesthetic or otherwise - would you say is the common thread in your work?
To me, sound is where the little snake bites its tail: it's that connection that closes and opens everything, and all my curiosity is based on sound. Getting into sculpture has been a funny turn of events, and ceramics have become my ally in communicating things that go beyond sound. But all my fantasies originate from sound, even the visual ones: if I create a landscape, my goal is to imagine what the sound of that landscape would be. A lot of my inspiration is also linked to the idea of dreams, where our daily life is mixed into a soup of folklore, memories and experiences. I don't want to refer to something concrete: I want to mix images that have an impact on me, sometimes even subconsciously. There is actually not much mysticism in what I do (laughs)
To me, sound is where the little snake bites its tail: it's that connection that closes and opens everything, and all my curiosity is based on sound.
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Could your art be a way to spiritually bridge the physical distance with your homeland?
I think that everything I do is the reflection of a life that I want to recapture in a certain way, filled with sun, nature, magic and music. Sure, we have that here too, but it's different. I do think there is something very nostalgic that keeps me here, but I feel the parabola is coming to an end. Everytime I go home I have more and more ideas, and there are many reasons why I shouldn't come back here, but there are many reasons why I do. My work tries to capture an illusion that I maintain by coming back, through memories that macerate and become another sound, another sculpture, another new thing to put into existence.
<div class="editorial-banner"> <div class=“editorial-credits”> @la_vica_</div></div>
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