What does it mean for you to inhabit a space during a residency period?
It is undoubtedly a multifaceted space that deploys in at least two main directions.
There is a mental space that I question chiefly when it is impossible for me to work in practical terms: on long journeys, in the downtime between one activity and the next, in the moments of idleness which, while rare, nourish the substratum of daily life. At such times I continue to envisage the potential developments of my work, their ins and outs, the invention and manipulation of often raw materials that I want to transform into tangible reality. This dynamic allows a tension to surface between the present moment which is the imaginative level and the urgency of implementing one's ideas in a necessarily deferred timeframe.
Then there is a real, physical space which tends to coincide with my studio but which on these days will be transferred in part to the Mattatoio, thus grafting itself onto a place which, starting with its history, extends the tension of the creative process to include the mass of complex stimuli that it offers to the sensitivity of those living in it. In this concrete space it is not rare to stumble across mysterious objects that closely guard the history of their potential transformations: parts of musical instruments, excepts from compositions, draft projects and fragments of devices that hint at their initial creation. It is in this receptacle of misshapen shaplessness that that tension between idea and production is reproduced on the real level, in the juxtaposition between order and disorder, in an almost instinctive attempt to catalogue materials already formed alongside materials in the making which, by their very nature, defy standard cataloguing; it provides direct access to the many directions of a raw substance tending towards its future transformations.
This dialectic is the essence of my research and the work space in which it is reorganised can only determine these tensions, constantly imparting a new thrust to them while always allowing them to float on a creative and constructive surface.
During this residency I shall endeavour to reproduce these tensional thrusts in my encounter with artists whose life experiences have been very different from my own and whose artistic practices are very distant from my own experience. We will try to harmonise the disharmonious, we will try to insert these tensions into a shared prospect, probably intersecting several shared prospects, through the different groups that are going to spontaneously come into being. The space hosting these processes cannot under any circumstances be seen as a neutral element; on the contrary, it will guide a large part of the work thanks to its architectural constitution and to the quality of the energy circulating in it. The Mattatoio, with its large communicating rooms, conveys a very powerful notion of contamination and convergence, of composite encounter and of the major extension of pathways for recombination; so we have accepted the invitation from the curators of this residency to freely experiment with it, and we have done so in the riskiest way possible, by juxtaposing artistic practices that are still very distant yet that are characterised by the desire to cross-contaminate. The Mattatoio context will provide both the material venue for these transformations and the mental environment in which we will be moving, embodying the crucial bridge between idea and artistic practice, and turning into a sounding board.
How would you define the space of your work and research? What will you investigate on this occasion?
It is first and foremost a practice of renewal: the physical space enlivens and amplifies interior research, forging its character. A new space, an unusual, shared environment in which ever changing energies and people circulate invariably also means a new direction in research. This, because all the participants involved in this residency have thought, in their intentions at least (and I am very curious to see what is going to happen in practice) that they had to impress a change on their artistic habits. And that has happened naturally, without there being any openly stated request either on my part or on the part of others.
Define “care” in three words
care = dedication, sacrifice, surrender
Simone Pappalardo
Composer, performer and artist active in the fields of improvisation, new lutherie, sound art and electroacoustic composition.
His works have been presented in several international festivals, such as: Philharmonie Luxembourg, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Musicacoustica (Beijing), MACROmuseum(Rome), Buenos Aires Globe Theater, MAMbo museum (Bologna), Les Amplitudes (La Chaux-de-Fonds), Ars Electronica (Linz).
He has collaborated with artists such as Mauro Lanza, Andrea Valle, Ensemble Alter Ego, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Mederic Collignon, Jean Francois Laporte, Alvin Curran, John De Leo, Walter Prati, Ra Di Martino, Mario Bertoncini, GIPI, Ascanio Celestini, Valerio Magrelli and many others.
In 2017 Simone was Artist in Residence at the Goethe-Institut of Berlin. In 2016 he won theMedia Art Festival award at MAXXI (Rome).
He is Professor of Electronic Music and Music Informatics in Italian conservatories and also teaches Sound Design at the University of Fine Arts (Rome).