Eglė Naujokaitytė & Rogelio Serrano, Tracking the Feathered Snake

2021

Audiovisual poem


In 1982, New York trumpeter Jon Hassell released his innovative and unprecedented album “Fourth World Vol.1: Possible Musics,” giving form to a concept that he’d been working for more than a decade prior. In the words of the artist himself, in the past Fourth World is a musical aesthetic that unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques. Throughout the years it went far beyond, outgrowing its role as a mere musicality. Its mood is comprised by subtle exoticism, psycho-geography, eroticism, mystery and hazy surrealism.

Mexico may be the country that is commonly known to the world for its colourful culture and a desert landscape with flora used to produce unique beverages. Yet a far richer and authentic strata of history dwells in the heritage of its ancient times – especially of the great Tenochtitlan – which has left an everlasting impact on one of the largest and most crowded cities in the world, the capital of Mexico. Moreover, few know about Mexico’s 20th century vanguardist music catalogue.

Eglė Naujokaitytė has been fascinated with the Fourth World concept for various years, and as a lover of music (as well as a music selector and producer herself) and mood-architecture, she has always looked for hints or opportunities to bring the Fourth World mood out of its musical realm and apply it into other forms and mediums of creativity. This film is a collaboration with local Mexican electronic music artist Rogelio Serrano; an audiovisual experience–a surrealist trip–a dream–a Fourth World poem, applying the methods and theory of Jon Hassel’s concept with original gathered and treated video material from the world’s surrealist capital, searching for its pre-Hispanic heritage both in direct and indirect forms (or maybe the consequences of it), accompanied by an original soundtrack composed and performed with analogue electronics.

BIO

Eglė Naujokaitytė is a musician, selector, daydreamer, mood-setter, a fan of analogue sounds, unusual rhythms and frequencies as well as an observer of the intricacies of the machines that make life possible. She's known for her participation in a variety of musical and artistic projects. Her work is usually inspired by the Fourth World methodics, metaphysics, dreams and making tangible the intangible. 

Rogelio Serrano is an electronic musician and expert in synthesizers. His creative work under the scene names Equinoxious and Casagemas is focused on the sound and rhythmic design carried out using analogue and the eurorack modular systems, inspired by landscapes and high-speed vehicle trips, organic and non-organic structures distributed in different social dystopian settings by which Latin America is characterized and shapes that remain when you close your eyes and bring sound imagery that can be modelled through voltage control, filters and oscillators.