Interior/exterior: Auscultation as a Mode of Inquiring into the Territory Through the Piece Bosque de Aguas Calientes

Abstract

This article analyzes Bosque de Aguas Calientes, an experimental music piece that forms part of the research, composition, and performance project interior/exterior (2018–2019) by the Alvear/Astaburuaga duo. Through an approach that considers artistic practice as a methodological key, the epistemological scope of the piece is assessed in order to explore the sonic possibilities of its various emerging materials. To this end, the conceptual pair listening–auscultation is examined in light of the philosophical and aesthetic thought of Peter Szendy and Marie Bardet. In addition, the notion of territory is investigated from the philosophical and ethological perspective of Vinciane Despret—mediated by her reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari—to question the existence of an alleged substantial individuality, interior and exterior to the bodies and materials that constitute the place where the music occurs. Based on this, the article proposes that the piece Bosque de Aguas Calientes, within the framework of its realization, operates as an impulse to auscultate—that is, to listen and to interrogate through body-to-body contact—the singular and irreducible territory produced in its unfolding.