Art Starts From Listening
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCES
From the Harmonic Listening Labs and the Harmonic Circles, site-specific performances came to life.
These are impromptu circles of interaction with complex systems such as forests, abbeys and cathedrals, ruins, caves, monuments and archaeological sites, which thanks to an articulated and dense architecture, convey information capable of becoming polyphonic chants through the voices of the circle.
In site-specific performances, architecture and landscape take on a central value and the ritual deliberately shifts to a tension/attention on the peculiar voice of the space-time that surrounds us.
IMPORTANT The audio in the videos is part of the original material recorded on site during live performances. We therefore recommend listening through headphones or earphones, for higher audio quality and a more immersive experience.
WOODS CAN SCREAM
One of the site-specific performances is Woods Can Scream, an interactive concert in the woods that aims to give volume to the voices of the trees, abused and ignored guardians of the earth system.
Through a spontaneous process of sound mimesis, the present aligns itself in resonance with the landscape. Ambient sounds are an integral part of the voicescape that emerges from the interaction between all the elements involved.
Every place, just like every living being, has a voice, a print, a sound identity imprinted on the environment that expresses itself.
Woods Can Scream​ performances are expressly conceived for forests, woods, mountains or vegetal environments, to give voice to the unheard elements we live with, like trees, stones, soil, dew, bugs. Each listener is an active part, a vocalizer, an amplifier of these subtle voices.
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“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.”
― Herman Hesse
Capacity of he performance between 30 and 100 people.
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
In an era of projected forms and two-dimensional silhouettes, the parallelism with the Platonic myth of the cave can be banal.
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Observing ourselves we see semi-blind beings chained in the dark, their eyes fixed on empty projections on a black mirror that does not reflect the viewer.
What I believe may be revolutionary in the myth of the cave today is to subvert the ending.
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"Allegory of the cave" represents the beginning of that unpublished ending.
It is a collective procession inside a cave (or an enclosed environment) immersed in semi-darkness. The word is replaced by the living silence of the place, by sounds and noises, and then by the voices of those present, who are guided on a sound journey in which hearing is the element of contact and observation.
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The subtle listening capacity, rediscovered and sharpened, leads those present to an interconnection of community that is unprecedented in our daily self-isolation.
A sort of exodus with liturgical features, in which individual silence becomes collective listening and gradually turns into song, in harmony, like a wave made up of small drops that cannot help but join together to follow a current.
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The "allegory of the cave" performance really begins at the end of the performative act: the action wants to be the expedient to sow an internal germ in each present. This germ of rebellious curiosity that pushes the face to turn towards the “outside”, towards the light, turning its back to the screen, can and must be transmitted upon returning to one's own “cave”.
A virtuous contagion is possible to the extent that it is truly pursued.
Capacity of he performance between 15 and 30 people. The duration of the performance is about three hours.
THE PROCESSIONS
In Verdigris' choral works, both listening to vocal landscapes and observing physical places move without discrimination, in an inclusive way very similar to the Dérive theorized by Debord. It is a game of random encounters and fractal joints that nature perpetually implements and that we humans often call by the name of harmony.
This itinerant site-specific performances are firmly anchored to the shape of traditional Italian processions.
White robes, a slow walk on a fragrant carpet of petals and herbs, the silence, the murmur and then the chants. An itinerant liturgy is recreated to celebrate the landscape.
The grass and the soil, the trees and the stones, the ruins and the buildings: these are the elements we celebrate.
Through a deep listening, the humans can connect and even give voice to them, channeling their essence and their latent sounds to create a symphony of unheard voices.
In my improvisation performances, the figure of the medium is the cornerstone of an impossible dialogue. And the medium is the one who builds bridges between the islands. Therefore, not only the performer, but everyone present is invited to experiment and experience the catharsis of a non-auditory listening and a vocality not devoted to mere performance.
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It is a ritual. And in it the singing becomes unanimous, solemn, extemporaneous.
Thanks to the architecture and the stories of the places, the choir conveys the information hidden in the places to transmute them into complex polyphonies and into real chants.