Un giro con Toto (e Mario)
Sonic art performance
Manifiesta Biennale
Liminaria Residency project
Palermo – November 2018
In collaboration with Fernando Godoy, Toto, Raffaele Mariconte and Beatrice Ferrara
For the 12th version of the Manifesta biennale in 2018, I was invited together with frequent collaborator, Fernando Godoy, to create a piece based on a ethnographic residency in Brancaccio, a neighbourhood in Palermo which historically has been affected by corruption and violent actions of the palermitan mafia. After a few days into our field research we met Toto, a tourist guide who knows Brancaccio and Palermo very well and associates this area with anecdotes and stories. For this biennale we conceived a performance in which we will connect Brancaccio and the audience through the deep and warm voice of Toto using cellphones as sound transmitters. A giro con Toto e (Mario) transmission started in the heart of Brancaccio where we were waiting for Toto with two cell phones that were on call with another two cell phones connected to the PA in Kaoz gallery where the spectators had no idea what they were about to listen to. The concert began in the tram station of Missori where we embarked with Toto on a tram on a journey to the gallery where his narration began while many kilometers away the audience listened to Toto’s stories full of visuality and evoking words. The acousmatic sound of Toto’s voice distorted by the mobile signal and compression began to infiltrate the room while Toto and the creative team approached the inadvertent audience. Finally, and unexpectedly, after 30 minutes, Toto arrives at the gallery and finishes his narration in front of the astonished audience who never expected that the stories narrated through a distorted and delayed voice would actually enter the gallery as a body, as a person, as Toto.
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