Patti Smith and the Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli) decided to pay tribute to the poets Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Arnaud and René Daumal with Perfect Vision, a project on three successive records: Mummer Love, The Peyote Dance and Peradam, respectively. Building on a shared devotion by Crasneanscki and Smith, recognising that the three poets had each undertaken a journey to a mountain made geography an increasingly important starting point. As a result, Soundwalk Collective went through each of these routes, attempting to recapture this space imagination.

The basis of these records was constructed from the sound collected on the Abyssinian plateau (Ethiopia), the Tarahumara mountain range (Mexico) and the Devi mountain range (India), plus Smith’s music and poetic performance. Among the purposes of this spiritual journey was to achieve a sense of immersion in the place, a sense of eremitism, an undisturbed comprehension, with certain elements of human presence. The focus on three mountains implied utter solitude and isolation.

This musical format later led to the exhibition Evidence, for the Centre Georges Pompidou, now adapted for the Centro Cultural de Belém, concentrating on the places visited. Earth, wood, stone and objects were brought from these to provide materiality to the experience. Mostly sonic – there are 59 audio moments mapped in the room, accessed through headphones -, there are noises like a fire crackling, a bell ringing, water running, a wind chime dwelling in the space, and the prevailing wind: the power of an element predating language. Some speeches are in unfamiliar languages that render them incomprehensible, like an exercise in contemplation, told but not written down. Patti Smith occasionally reads verses into our ears. The landscape is colourless and the projected photographs are black and white, remaining as close as possible to barrenness.

The choice was to use subdued lighting, emphasising the room corners, the screens and the small benches; the sound and the silence.

There is a new sound installation in each exhibition niche, matching the geographical changes as we move around the room. An individual visitor experience is thus created which itself requires isolation, introspection, since the three sites melt together in our footsteps. The proposal is to experience desolate places without spectres, spaces to which we have no access but which we dream of: something Stephan Crasneanscki describes as “waking worlds”.

Besides materiality, sound and image, there is only one wall, the research wall, containing records of places and faces – not only from the journey, but from the artists’ archives, fitting in with the aesthetic reminiscences brought about by the venue, the creation, the fusion of voice, instrument and noise. There are nearly two hundred works, including photographs, drawings and portraits, translating this artistic route into a different language.

There is also an innovation in comparison to the exhibition in Paris: Mário Cesariny’s travelling table, offered to the artists and which they took as an exhibition “friend”, is leaning against this unique wall. The duo consider this to be an ever-changing exhibition, related to the space in which it is resurrected. The intertwining of Anglophony, Francophony and Lusophony runs in tandem with the project’s ambitions.

The shift in medium, from an album to an exhibition, is not detached, but fuses the work and its journey. By sharing the process, places are packed into the suitcase. The infinite meets the intimate. All that remains is the original creation, the albums synthesising the experience.

The exhibition Evidence by Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith, curated by Chloé Siganos and Jean-Max Colard, is at MAC/CCB until September 15, 2024.