Texte en portugais à l'occasion de 6=0 (2009) (traduit en anglais par João Felino).
And no one dared to disturb the sound of silence
António Contador takes as starting point the iconic song "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, for his new project 6=0, a work where the content, container (meaning what it holds) and the context combines, generating a complex articulation of meaning and potential different interpretations.
If Contador seems to refer to Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965) famous work in one hand, on the other by transmuting verbal language into an arithmetic form, transforms the conceptual analytic logic into a postulate deeply rooted in Badiou (key role thinker in Contador’s theoretic training) and in his well known use of mathematics in order to translate philosophical statements.
6=0 the work’s title creates an intricate series of auto referential proposals. The evident tautology shown in an interplay of meanings in which the sung silence ("The Sound of Silence") becomes real silence through the creative gesture. Condemning this song to a forced sound absence as the records stay forever sealed in their envelopes. Besides Contador violates the common sense whilst creating an enunciation that ignores all elemental arithmetic, opening a new era of mathematical incorrect thinking: as Joseph Kosuth’s one and three chairs could be just one (presenting the same object’s three different possible versions) the António Contador’ six records equals zero. The composers themselves curiously had hesitated in calling the song "The Sound of Silence" or The Sounds of Silence, purportedly not knowing well if the silence would emit one or several sounds. Therefore the sound or the sounds of silence equals always zero, in as much as the silence is not audible or does not exist, as John Cage constantly reminds us.
However the artist does not tamper in the area of quotation or the use of erudite references out of our recent past cultural elements. A practice so used nowadays in artistic creation. Contador builds an autonomous and light original display, which relates theoretical thought, popular culture, concrete experiences and a self ironic vision with extreme lightness, as always happens with in his work.
Thus the artist creates an alternative and suspended space which relates philosophical questions (tautology, the one and the multiple, word/content association) to the power of popular music (this song was composed in the sequence of J.F. Kennedy assassination, in an attempt of dealing with the american trauma caused by this event), its cults (the way in recent years the vinyl is being subject to an huge revival) and the way daily commercial exchanges are processed (by post, internet purchase, making almost think in a Dadaist or Fluxus mail art coming back under a post-capitalist reality).
In its simplicity and formal austerity 6=0 presents an endless realm of readings and interpretations. Precisely because it is a non authoritative work or, stretching a little bit the play on the word, silent.
People hearing without listening / People writting songs that voices never share / And no one dared / Disturb the sound of silence...
Filipa Ramos