At the beginning of the 1990s, Gavin Bryars challenged the visual artist Juan Muñoz to collaborate in a series of pieces for radio. The idea was to create a work with a sculptor for an exclusively sound-based medium, which gave rise to a number of stimulating conversations about the invisibility of the project and the potentialities of the listeners’ imagination when faced with something immaterial linked to the description of actions. They created ten pieces of exactly five minutes each, in which they describe card tricks, with Muñoz narrating excerpts from the book The expert at the card table — a kind of essential guide for illusionists and tricksters ever since it was first published in 1902 — while Bryars created a sinuous soundtrack that sensually embraces the words, silences and technical instructions of the Spanish artist’s voice, idealising, in his description, an “imaginary space” for the nocturnal listener, full of games with mirrors and illusions that sustain an unrealistic magic.

We have already displayed this work as part of the Invisible Exhibition, but now we bring you the original version, composed solely for a string quartet, in which the Quarteto Lopes-Graça and the voice of Juan Muñoz will bring life and substance to one of the rare performances of this piece in concert form.