KATE RESIDENCIES | OPEN LAB
Friday 3 December, 21.00 hrs
Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Via Val Di Marina 15, Florence
Tempo Reale is presenting the results of two artistic projects that in 2020 have benefitted from the KATE Residencies programme, aimed at promoting and supporting contemporary creativity. Research trajectories aimed in different directions, but united by their interest in the exploration of the most intimate and at the same time evocative facets of sound, on the border between the public dimension and the private sphere.
TRANSIENT MOBILES
Sound art work
Stefano De Ponti
The Transient Mobiles are monophonic listening devices in Pietra Serena containing unrepeatable compositions. A simple push is sufficient to activate a sound flow, which propagates through a bone diffuser into the listener’s skeletal system, exploiting its conduction and resonance properties. This fruition mechanism, picks up from the legacy of the Handphone Table, created by Laurie Anderson in 1978, expanding its philosophical implications and potential, attempting to answer the question that sparked the whole project: how does one trigger a careful and intentional involvement in a new sound project, in a present time so characterised by an accumulation of content that favours partial and distracted consumption dynamics? As for Laurie Anderson’s work, the suggested action is to exert the pressure of an elbow on the sensitive surface of the object. By maintaining this pressure, it becomes possible to hear the sounds from the palm of the hand on which the ear chosen for listening rests. A qualitatively different listening experience for each person, modified by individual physical peculiarities. The ear’s openness to the environment and the transportability of the device underline and promote the importance of the dialogue between the user and the surrounding world of sound. There is no other output, nor additional adjustments, and no possibility to move within the time of the playback, which is ready to start over from the same point upon subsequent contact. Once the track is over, the duration being unknown and not even the author owning a duplicate, it will not be possible to listen to it again. The connection between user and author is thus entirely fulfilled: at the end of the experience the object and its ephemeral contents, created in such a way to make any kind of extractive intervention unsuccessful and destructive, will remain with the participant, while the author will only have the eventual free exchange with the listener on what the work will have evoked in them. Therefore, everything takes place in an unrepeatable present, where the modality and the choice of the listening place intervene dynamically in the use of the device, stimulating an immersive and all-encompassing experience. In a future diffusion of the devices, the collected intermediary testimonies will constitute the tangible representation of the relational instance stimulated by the entire trajectory, prefiguring possible new points of relaunch. The first two prototypes of Transient Mobiles were created thanks to the contribution of Tempo Reale’s Kate Residencies project and represent the fourth and last landing place of “La natura delle cose ama celarsi” (“The nature of things loves to hide”), a reserch process in perpetual flux that began in 2019 and is still in progress within the Licheni project curated by NUB Project Space.
Photo © Andrea Berti
HO UNA VOGLIA DI ANDARE A PARIGI
Nocturnal for voice and electronics on Amelia Rosselli
By and featuring Maria Caterina Frani and Simone Faraci
It’s a rhythm, an accent, a concert, a dance. It’s a desire. It’s an exhibition. This work stems from the musical suggestions in the poetic work of Amelia Rosselli. A Poet, editor, and music scholar, she was born in France and lived in England and the United States before once again settling in Italy. With no mother tongue, she writes guided by musical sounds and her research in the metric structure, creating a new form for poetry. She uses her writing to investigate the variables of language, a trilingual practice where language is liberated from the wear of habit and contamination rules the world of sound that emerges. Starting from this context, “Ho una voglia di andare a Parigi. Notturno per voce e elettronica intorno a Amelia Rosselli” (“I have a longing to go to Paris – nocturnal for voice and electronics on Amelia Rosselli”) experiments a dialogue with true musical composition where words swerve and explode, opening up to new landscapes of sound. Within this flow, the scenic presence is total and the vision that emerges is the result of a blending of elements. Just like a concert. And it is precisely from the form of a concert that the poetic extracts are revealed as if they were songs in a setlist, and as in a concert the focus is not on a single album but on various appearances from the entire work of the author. This way there is no dramaturgical construction connected to the poet’s biography, instead the work adopts a pace that adapts to the rhythm without dwelling on the meaning. The literary components blend with the sound environment, and the result fuses into the composition of musical scores giving life to a different body of voice. What it means is less important than the act of saying, and furthermore the private experience of poetry delivers itself to the public in a sonic, mundane, and profane manner.
Voice: Maria Caterina Frani
Live music: Simone Faraci
Director: Maria Caterina Frani
Created thanks to the contribution of Tempo Reale’s KATE programme and the kinkaleri artistic residency | spazioK.prato Centro di Residenza Regionale
Photo © Giulia Lenzi
Tickets 5€
Pursuant to Legislative Decree 105/2021, access to the shows is allowed only to subjects with the Covid-19 green certification (Green Pass).
