Hand Clapping
in the area around the symbol.
Listen
to the acoustic
phenomena
that emerges from the energy of your hands.
Eco
Reverberation
Appears and decays
in different configurations
embedded
in the background
noise
of the city.
Stay still, or keep walking.
The symbol indicates an area of observation.
It indicates the presence of particular interactions of light with surfaces.
The invitation is to gradually focus on minimal patterns of interaction that capture your attention by
imposing themselves on the context.
The symbol invites a long-term, time-dilated observation by returning to the area several times, at different times of the day or on different days, within a limited period.
The memory overlaps with the present, defining the changes of the context through the light.
MANICULA
Manicula is an artistic research format by ENRICO MALATESTA and CHIARA PAVOLUCCI. It is aimed at combining practices involving image and sound in relation with the themes of CITY and WALKING, with a CALM DRIFT that connects different URBAN SPACES and TERRITORIES in a common network.
Manicula consists in a collection of ACTIVE LISTENING and OBSERVATION EXERCISES aimed at investigating the acoustic and visual phenomena present in some parts of the city; the areas of activation of the practices are not declared, but indicated by reference symbol. The project is a kind of TREASURE HUNT and it does not require the presence and mediation of a performer/artist/guide. Each individual decides how to undertake the search for symbols and how to use the available scores to investigate, on the one hand, the relationship between SOUND AND SPACE through the use of the body and, on the other hand, the observation of VISUAL PHENOMENA related to the movement of light and its interaction with surfaces/layouts of the city. Manicula also invites people to continue the exploration by enriching it with their own personal research. No specific knowledge or skills are required to try the proposed exercises.
Manicula is an OPEN PROJECT that also includes live performances, workshop as well as a visual and
textual JOURNAL that documents the research and the WALKING PATHS carried out in situ by the
authors.
www.manicula.it
All
photos©Chiara Pavolucci
percussion
[actions for surfaces and found objects]
Percussion is an open project, aimed at broadening my personal research on percussion instruments and their surfaces, that will be used in order to explore the relations between sound, space and body, touch-based perception and the vitality of materials to percussive acts. "Percussion" comprises multiple trajectories of research whose final output revolves in and around percussion music: from writing texts to the realization of scores/instructions for solo and percussion ensembles, from the practice of listening exercises, to the development of an audio recordings archive in which the surface of skin instruments is documented as field of action. (field recording)
annotazioni superficiali
Annotazioni Superficiali is an ongoing collection of listening exercises, scores and texts. It consists
in the transcriptions of my personal journal, revolving around my experiences in the field of performing
arts, music/musical instruments and sound ecology. LINK
Locations: 1st ph_Pialassa della Baiona, Ravenna IT // 2nd ph_Riserva Naturale Speciale
della Bessa, Biella IT
Occam Ocean - Occam XXVI is an exceptional project, the result of collaboration between
Eliane Radigue, French composer, pioneer of the exclusive use of continuous sounds, and Italian
percussionist, Enrico Malatesta. Composed in Paris, in August 2018, the piece has been presented
worldwide since.
Éliane Radigue stopped producing electronic music and began creating
collaborative works with instrumentalists in 2001. Since then, she has produced over 70 works ranging
from solos and string quartets to works for orchestra. She began creating Occam Ocean ‒ the series that makes up most of this prolific output
‒ in 2011. The individual pieces share a creative process
that relies almost solely on oral and aural transmission: musicians visit Radigue at her apartment in
Paris, often returning for multiple sessions before the pieces are completed. Solo pieces are typically based on a combination of pre-prepared sonic materials from
which Radigue selects sounds and a water-based image that guides the form of the piece.
Enrico Malatesta's repertoire within the Occam Ocean series:
• OCCAM OCEAN XXVI – for percussion [2018]
• OCCAM River XXV –
for viola and percussion [2021]
• OCCAM River VIII –
for violin and percussion [2022]
• OCCAM Hexa IV – for
violin, viola, cello, trumpet and percussion [2022]
•
OCCAM Hexa VI – for clarinet, tuba, trumpet, saxophone and percussion [2022]
• OCCAM River XX – for
trumpet and percussion [2023]
E SôNA
"Farmer, blood of the servant,
your plow is left without music"
E SÔNA
(“it sounds” in Romagnolo dialect) is a project by sound artist Enrico Malatesta. Using sound as a means
of knowledge and linking elements of Romagna's folklore and its rural rituals with the territories
and communities encountered at each stage of the project, the work investigates the relationship between
rural, magic–technology and local beliefs. The research is based on a long-term investigation held my
Malatesta on the CAVÉJA DAGLI ANËLL, a shaking sound instrument equipped with tuned metal rings and used
in agricultural work and in multifunctional ritual practices, and on the BRONTIDE, an unexplained acoustic
phenomenon, similar to the sound of a landslide or an explosion in the sky (in English as skyquakes),
nowadays no longer audible, and of which memory has been lost. Malatesta's intent is to overlap the
energy of these instruments and phenomena on the sound characteristics of the encountered working field
and community: the final aim is to go beyond the conceptual boundaries of local culture and transfer the
vitality of identity and popular sound habits and beliefs in the contemporary fields of music and
performance.
• ph_Caveja from the collection exhibited at MET – Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente di Romagna, Santarcangelo di Romagna -
Rimini. Fo.Cu.S. Fondazione Culture Santarcangelo – Musei Comunali Santarcangelo.
• E SÔNA has been
supported by Xing, Pollinaria AIR, Q-o2 workspace for experimental music and sound art, Liminaria. Image
edit©Habitatt
Se siamo assenti suonare qui
"My grandfather is a farmer, radio amateur and an accumulator. I can recognize his way to accumulate very common through the people of his age that come from the rural area; the aim of the accumulation is totally functional toward preserving fragments, iron, wood and all the components of electrical and mechanical devices that can be used to fix malfunctions of the machines and tools used in the agricultural field. Nonetheless,I noticed that he has a slight attraction to sounds and sometimes he reassembles things creating rudimental sound-devices that are scattered in the field and that start to be used by my family – and the people reaching home to buy vegetables and fruits – like entertainment and/or sound signals".
Tools:
• TRUCK HORN
• CYMBAL: an old and very cheap cymbal that I bought in a flea market (more than 15 years ago) and that I
had trashed in the garbage. I found this cymbal in the field in the summer of 2016, reassembled with a
system of suspension made with a car belt, two screws and a rusty iron knocker. The cymbal and the
knocker, in that condition, are let free to move on the wind spreading small sounds by touching one to
another. My grandfather hung the cymbal because when he hears its sound he remembers me and the time when
I was playing the drums all the day in his shed. My grandmother, on the other hand, has started to beat it
as loud as possible in order to advise to my grandfather when the lunch is ready: she is tired to shout at
him every time.
• RADIO
LILY
STAR
Lily Star is a selection of modified texts, anthropological annotations, anecdotes, fake names and speech
fragments collected and then assembled by the author during several years of employment as a fireworks
seller. The fieldwork was then expanded through internet-based researches; the aim of the book is to
present a flow of information concerning the socio-cultural and ecological implications, the rhetoric of
trade, the rules, the semantic aesthetics of nomenclatures and descriptions, the aberration of use of
fireworks and the sound & light synesthetic presence of pyrotechnics in different contexts of
celebration and entertainment. Far from proposing a finished project the book is the starting point for a
series of sporadic interventions dedicated to fireworks using different formats: lectures, readings,
listening sessions. Lily Star is a stage for the ephemeral power of fireworks and its transfer from the
sky to the medium of text.
Copies are available from Lorenzo Senni's PrestoRecords.
Graphic
and Layout©Bianca Schick
SOUND SPACE BODY
under contruction
Aural tools
The releases I worked on for Attila Faravelli's AURAL TOOLS are available:
• BILIA
• PIETRA DI LANGA with a text by anthropology Tim Ingold.
Aural Tools uses small runs of simple objects to document the material and conceptual processes of specific musicians' sound production practice. It is a series of devices for relating sound to space, the listener and the body in ways unavailable through traditional recorded media such as CDs or LPs.
i lift
one stone
and i am
thinking
[Robert Lax – new poems, 1962]
Thanks to the permission from the ROBERT LAX LITERARY TRUST I have officially started to work on a new, long-term project, revolving around the beauty of ROBERT LAX's poems. Robert's portrait has been taken at Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, in 1985, by ©Judith Emery.
Nuova Superficie
Nuova Superficie is an electro-acoustic sound project by Giovanni Lami and Enrico
Malatesta is based upon horizontal actions in progress, that slowly change and melt over the course of the
performance. Sound originates from several speakers and – in general – from different diffusion points,
amplified or not, analog or acoustic, in a non-referential movement. The one and only need is to produce a
simple sound-mass, seemingly static but unceasingly evolving through the labour of the musicians. They use
their own instruments (as form and gesture) mainly on the surface, moving objects and working upon the
skin of an amplified snare or directly in contact with the tape of the reel-to-reel recorder, trying to
activate what is already present there but quiescent.
The aim is to realize a complex sound-space
where each listening-experience can be free to evolve and wander and get lost. The sound is made from
several diffusion points and is defined by sounds on the cusp of a dense texture, really homogeneous yet
rich in detail and micro-perturbations. This non-stop negotiation between details on the horizon and the
horizon itself, this lack of balance, and the interaction with the space hosting the performance is the
base of this project, that could be considered as something in between electroacoustic music and
site-specific action.
ELEMENTI
Elementi is a festival dedicated to contemporary music and performing arts whose intent is to present to the public the transversality of contemporary languages in relation to the emotional power of symbolic and uncontaminated landscapes of the Romagna region. The project is curated by MAGMA and MU in collaboration with the Municipality of Cervia, Cesenatico, Faenza and Unione dei Comuni della Bassa Romagna.
Saline di Cervia ph © Chiara Pavolucci
