Réquiem, 2013
Composition by Edu Comelles for the project The Mine and its sound. A project by LABoral, coordinated by José Manuel Costa in collaboration with Juanjo Palacios, in coincidence with Aprendiendo de las Cuencas, project curated by Nacho Ruiz Allén and Sara López Arraiza, de Zon-e Arquitectos y coproduced by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial and SabadellHerrero.
Image: Edu Comelles
Composition created from field recordings and interviews with miners in the Sotón and María Luisa coalmines in San Martín del Rey Aurelio (Nalón valley, Asturias) in August 2013.
Réquiem is a sound composition which summarises the experiences, stories and sounds recorded in two coalmines during four consecutive days. The composition touches on all the issues affecting the mining industry in Asturias and the end-of-cycle feeling that hangs over the coal mining areas like the sword of Damocles.
Réquiem portrays sounds on the brink of extinction, acoustic environments undergoing a lingering death and threatened with an unknown hazy future Réquiem is about this moment of uncertainty, doubts and fears and about a vanishing way of life. Requiem is, if you will, an ode, a tribute, a last waltz dedicated to mining.
Acknowledgments: dedicated to all the miners from the Pozo Sotón and Maria Luisa coalmines who showed me their world and accompanied me on this descent into the belly of coalmining.
