vibrAXIONES (LIVE)
Domenica 25/2 | Cinema Massimo
Experimenting also means finding something from the past and rebuilding it, giving it new life by taking a different point of view. This is what Seeyousound has in store with the performance vibrAXIONES, which will take place on 25 February at Cinema Massimo, enriching the Rising Sound section. A multidisciplinary performance that links music, cinema and video art, perfectly in keeping with the Festival’s mission, born from the meeting of two Turin collectives that in recent years have been pushing the search for sounds coming from different cultures. We are talking about Salgari Records, a global electronic music label, and Pietra Tonale, an experimental orchestra in the Barriera di Milano district, a place of multiculturalism.
vibrAXIONES will be a journey, or rather a dialogue between two distant cinematic worlds: the contemporary cinema of young director Theo Montoya, chronicling the nightlife of the queer community, and an Italian cinema closely tied to the city of Turin, the shoot – that is, the cut scenes and the behind the scenes – of the 1914 epic Cabiria. “Two different worlds that we want to put into dialogue. A game of improvisation and composition will be created” explains the Colombian Camila Restrepo, who is in charge of the curation. A game made of electronic music and acoustic instruments that provide a live score for previously unseen scenes from the silent film, reinterpreted through video art.
On stage bringing this musical journey to life, which sounds like a cultural exchange between Italy and Colombia, will be Davide Vizio, Jacopo Acquafresca, Beatrice Zanin, Giulia Impache e Alessandro Fara. Sonic cultural exchanges are somewhat the mantra with which the two projects were born, as the protagonists themselves told us, namely Davide Vizio, Camila Restrepo, Beatrice Zanin and Alessandro Fara.
Davide is the founder of Salgari Records, and with Seeyousound he will bring his Migramara DJ set to Magazzino sul Po, sharing the decks with Batida. “Even the name of the label is”, he tells us, “an intuition linked to the city of Turin, our starting point. Emilio Salgari, a Turinese by adoption, is an author who with his novels managed to create an exotic imaginary that has influenced all of us”. It is no coincidence that the label’s symbol is a tiger, a clear reference to Sandokan. “He, however, contrary to what one might think, did not have the chance to travel much: the faraway worlds he tells us about are the fruit of a combination of study and imagination; a bit like us producers working at the label: we sit shut in the dark in front of computers, imagining new soundscapes. The label took its first steps during the Covid period: that is how the need for escape and the desire to travel through music became our mission”.
The Salgari project was born in 2018 and has several productions and collaborations to its name. It is a journey through musical cultures, a listening path that leads towards faraway places and times. Electronic productions, hypnotic grooves and sounds that migrate like flocks across the world’s continents. “We started from the origin of sound, playing with ancestral suggestions. In our releases you can often hear the echo of traditional African or South American music, but electronic sound allows us to rebuild that Salgarian exploratory idea in a modern key, trying to avoid cultural appropriation. Musical experiences are to be lived at 360 degrees, following a discographic path that is also sensitive to contemporary developments in timbre. Connecting to a global network of producers was the stimulus to exist”.
Closer to jazz improvisation and to experimental music is the Pietra Tonale project, which, as Davide again explains, “was born like a meteor falling to Earth on Christmas Day. That would be the true story, but the one we tell is of a young movement linked to the world of jazz which, starting from experimentation, found itself on a path of collective improvisation. A journey that began with live shows, masterclasses and tours, and has now become an association”. Today the Pietra Tonale orchestra has 29 members, among them, besides Davide, Giulia Impache and Jacopo Acquafresca. With vibrAXIONES these two collectives will dare a great deal because, as Alessandro Fara, who during the performance will handle the live video modulation in response to the sound, explains, “it is not the classic live score for a film. In the editing there was also a work of creation, adding my own images shot around Turin, which act as a glue between Cabiria and Montoya’s shorts. We are trying to create new ideas; it is an open direction. We will give room to the audience’s suggestions without a well-defined narrative arc”.
“From our point of view, we want to convey the wonder that Cabiria aroused, a revolution in cinema”, Beatrice continues. “We will bring together the most experimental electronic post-jazz of Pietra Tonale with the music of Salgari Records and its exotic suggestions. I took care of a writing part that uses the sounds of Montoya’s shorts as samples, which will be layered over the images of Cabiria. They will therefore be conceptual layers open to various interpretations. There will be a musical tribute to Ildebrando Pizzetti, the composer whom Pastrone and D’Annunzio initially commissioned to write the music. There will thus be multiple references to the past, “a necessary historical research, albeit limited by our musicians’ brains”, she adds, laughing. “We tried, as pagans, to do a little justice to the history of cinema”.
Camila, a true representative of Colombia in the project, makes no secret of her passion for this union of the cinematic worlds of Cabiria and Montoya. “Montoya’s films are very personal and tied to queer culture. We have created a partnership network for the project which, together with the Archive of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, reaches the Cinematèca de Bogotà. The Colombian encounters had an influence, creating important ties”. An ambitious creative idea, which also wants to radiate the passion and intimate sincerity of the artists. “The paths we take, at times, like leaves in the flow of creation, lead everywhere”.
