Rakta: performance at the opening of Oriana, by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

The Brazilian band Rakta will perform live the soundtrack composed especially for the film Oriana, by the artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1972). The performance will have a single presentation, at the opening of the artist’s solo exhibition at Pivô, on Sunday, September 5, from 1 pm to 7 pm. This is the first time the Puerto Rican artist presents her work in Brazil. The exhibition is curated by Fernanda Brenner, and is part of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, which can be visited free of charge at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park from September 4th to December 5th, 2021.

Oriana is a film in chapters based on the novel Les Guérillères (1969), by French feminist writer Monique Wittig. In the book, a tribe of women articulate an attack on language and male bodies. Over the course of several years, Santiago Muñoz visited Wittig’s novel and worked on articulating a kind of visual translation of the extremely free and poignant environment created by the French author. At the artist’s invitation, the band Rakta composed the original soundtrack for the film, a piece of climatic modular music, of expanded dynamics with a strong expression of materiality. The music works as a kind of narrative thread for the work, which will be distributed by screens of different formats spread throughout the Pivô space, in a single audiovisual multi-channel installation. “I was happy when Bea proposed the collaboration, both for her beautiful work (which until then I didn’t know) and for the book Les Guérillères”, says vocalist Paula Rebellato, “Beatriz pointed out her wishes regarding the soundtrack and also gave us a lot of freedom to create, thus making the whole process very light and wrapped in mutual trust”.

At the opening, September 5th, Rakta will perform live music based on the film’s soundtrack, in an improvised and continuous performance, from 1pm to 7pm. The band, formed by Carla Boregas (bass and synthesizer), Paula Rebellato (vocals and synthesizer) and Maurício Takara (drums and electronics) will also be arranged discontinuously throughout Pivô’s architecture, in order to respond to the fragmented structure of the film and the exhibition space itself. “We sought to create a modular space where universes meet again, that of Beatriz and that of Rakta,” explains Carla Boregas. “Since we did not watch the film before composing the soundtrack, Oriana was an imagined presence that ‘wasn’t there yet’, but now sound and video will meet and I hope they can create a present moment that will make Pivô’s space pulsate,” she concludes.

Rakta’s performance is part of the public program Respiração, which is co-sponsored by Beck’s. Oriana is a co realization of Pivô with Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and is part of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo program. The artist also takes part in the 34th Bienal, which can be visited free of charge at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park from September 4th to December 5th, 2021.

About the band

Since the release of their first self-titled album in 2013, Rakta has experienced dizzying growth. In a particularly rare way for a band from São Paulo’s DIY scene, the band has garnered immediate international attention. Rakta’s genre-bending intensity, coupled with the narrative complexity of their live performances, builds particularly deep sonic dimensions, creating a “captivating atmosphere that seems to draw people in,” as the British magazine The Quietus describes it. The verse and chorus format is subverted so that each composition ceases to be a song and becomes a process, the translation of an emotion into overlapping and arranged rhythms and sounds navigating the edge of chaos. Since 2014, Rakta has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America, as well as Japan, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and major festivals Brazil and worldwide, such as CTM Festival (Germany), Donau Festival (Austria), Roadburn (Netherlands), NRMAL (Mexico), Primavera Club (Catalonia) and Pop Montreal (Canada). Besides the sold out shows, the band was also featured in several Brazilian press vehicles such as Folha de São Paulo, Rolling Stone, Estado de São Paulo, FFW, Bravo!, and internationally, The Wire, The Guardian. Rakta is composed of Carla Boregas (bass and synthesizer), Paula Rebellato (vocals and synthesizer) and Maurício Takara (drums and electronics), who joined the band in 2018.