Martino Nicoletti

Glasgow

An immoral story of ethnic tourism

Multimedia installation by Martino Nicoletti

curated by Embassy of the Cancelled

Martino Nicoletti, ethnologist, photographer, writer and restless traveller; Asia has been the focus of his works for over 20 years. Has written several scientific papers, literary works and multimedia works, interchanging his researches with his art. Lives in Glasgow.

In a village in the extreme North of Thailand, under the deafening light of a tropical sun, a group of tourists wanders around huts and surreal feminine beings: entities out of time, forced into wonderful ethnic costumes and adorned by a brassy spiral of shiny rings enclosing their neck.
These women, who smile, motionless, to the ravenous photographic clicks of the visitors are the famous “giraffe women”, the name that commonly identifies Kayan women. Kayans are refugees who flew Burma to escape the bloody civil war that has torn their homeland for years. These human beings are confined into dreamlike villages, due to a government’s plan to increase alternative tourism in the northern regions of Thailand; they welcome every day hundreds of tourists craving for a pure, supposed authenticity.
Giraffe women. Zoo people. Altered bodies. Fettered beauty. A sharp homage to the most extreme visual primitivism: photographic images taken with vintage analog cameras, a minimal text and a short on Super-8 film, with the reading voice of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and music by Roberto Passuti.

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Alberto Novello a.k.a. JesterN · Flavio Zanuttini

Rotterdam - Cividale del Friuli

Le Retour des Oiseaux. Hommage à Olivier Messiaen

Le Retour des Oiseaux is a “live electronics” with soprano flugelhorn, dedicated to French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992). In the messianic vision of the world two elements are set against each other: time, deep and oppressive, and birds, free musical beings. Humans coexist in between them, constantly seeking freedom but convicted to the oppression of time. The improvisation tries to musically evoke these two entities, to go beyond the messianic vision and create a dialectic reconciliation between humans and time, through rhythm. Along this process there are many messianic influences: the use of symmetrical scales, palindromic rhythmic structures and this unusual duo - computer and soprano flugelhorn - which experiments with unusual timbres, imitating / extending bird songs. The “inspiring material” (birds on the Soca/ Isonzo river, which runs behind the mountain that dominates Topolò) has been collected along an audio / video journey from the river mouth to its source, fully immersed into nature.

Flavio Zanuttini - flugelhorn
Graduated from Tartini Conservatory in Triest. Self- taught on improvised music and free-jazz, mittel-European folk musics and lead trumpet repertoire (which he performs in various ensembles and big bands). Lives in Cividale.

Alberto Novello a.k.a. JesterN - live electronics/laptop
Graduated in physics from Triest University. Has joined his passions for science and music during the Art Science Technologies master degree at Grenoble INP with J.C. Risset. Has taught electronic composition and musical computer science at Ghedini Conservatory in Cuneo and finished a “music perception” Ph. D. at Philips Research Eindhoven with A. Kohlrausch. Has published sciences and arts articles on several international magazines. Lives in Rotterdam where is regularly engaged in multimedia performances.

Tribil Trio

Dolenji Tarbij - Tribil Inferiore

Postaja Crossing

One of the prides of Topolo’s workshop is the chance to make impossible encounters happen. The daily presence of very diverse musicians with very diverse musical backgrounds sometimes creates affinities that couldn’t be theoretically possible. How would you match, for instance, a classical harp player with an oberkrajner trumpeter coming from a jazz background? To make things more complex we could add a double-bass player who only works on improvisation and radical experimentation... This is Tribil Trio; three paths that have happily crossed each other in Stazione di Topolò and that have already come up , after only one year, with a glowing curriculum of concerts and projects for the future.

The Trio is composed by
Marta Hari harp
Sandro Carta trumpet
Michele Spanghero double-bass

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Piccola officina di teatro

Napoli

La voce d’ombra

Lettura in cuffia

It is the voice that leads us.
The voice more than the face.
It is the body. More than body.
Breath.

...concerning the reasons that are taking us to Topolò we think of “chains of events” and encounters, these mysteries that we hear of without questioning, knowing they are inexplicable and powerful forces. We met many years ago, between Deleuze and Neiwiller, and Topolò has been among our desires since, between life and art, someone would say. Then, years later, during a new, tough transforming movement, both personal and artistic, we write to Topolò, we leave to Topolò, we meet in Topolò and it feels natural although it probably isn’t...and so, resistance, these intensities and difficulties, our being small and unknown and secret, this is what takes us far. Topolò was already inside us and this is enough.

Headphones reading is a unique theatre happening, conceived by Piccola officina di teatro (Annalisa del Vecchio and Guido Ciccarelli). Its strength is a great sensorial/emotional absorption, caused by the casual encounter between reader and listener. Since 2000 headphones reading has been experienced by hundreds of people, in very diverse ways and places. Using headphones and a microphone, the reading creates a unique chance of encounter between a reading voice and one listener.

Gian Luca Favetto

Torino

Le radici davanti

Appunti di geografia esistenziale da “Se dico radici dico storie”

Roots are towards the future. They have a past, they dig the present but exist for the future. They are memory and future at the same time, memory of the future.
They are frontier outposts. Roots don’t stay, they go. Living and moving coexist in them, the resident and the traveller, the wanderer and the sedentary. They are destiny and destination. This is why they are forward and not behind. They are our fingertips, our eyes, our first contact with the other. They are the lens through which we read the world. Now, make roots into frontiers, a border land.
Horizontal, not vertical. Not walls but passages. Hybrid passageways, curious ones, possible and practicable horizons. Temptations to be inhabited.

Gian Luca Favetto as a writer has published essays, poems and novels. He’s journalist, theater critic, radio anchorman for Radio RAI and regular goalkeeper in the “Italian writers” soccer team.

The You Know Sextet

Topolò - New York

Variazioni e sovrapposizioni su TopoloGigio di Al Margolis

Dear friends
(…)here is a question/thought/idea(?) - i have (finally) come up with a version of Topolo Gigio that works for me as a backing track (it sort of stands alone as well)...
it was the piece behind the second piece we did for TBContinued... if I send that to you, would it be of interest to possibly play with any of the You Know Sextet that might be at Topolo this year? sort of me being there from afar? we could play it again next year when (I hope) I come again…
best Al

Last year, American musician Al Margolis created, together with some other musicians of Stazione, the piece Topolo Gigio, based on re-edited environmental sounds recorded around the village. The official version of this piece, which is the product of a later re-work in a NY studio during autumn, is now brought into question and used as the base for a new , “superimposed” composition: a live piece to be performed by Antonio Della Marina, Sandro Carta, Marta Vigna, Michele Spanghero and Veronika Vitazkova: The You Know Sextet...

Gian Luca Favetto

Torino

Le radici davanti

Appunti di geografia esistenziale da “Se dico radici dico storie”

Roots are towards the future. They have a past, they dig the present but exist for the future. They are memory and future at the same time, memory of the future.
They are frontier outposts. Roots don’t stay, they go. Living and moving coexist in them, the resident and the traveller, the wanderer and the sedentary. They are destiny and destination. This is why they are forward and not behind. They are our fingertips, our eyes, our first contact with the other. They are the lens through which we read the world. Now, make roots into frontiers, a border land.
Horizontal, not vertical. Not walls but passages. Hybrid passageways, curious ones, possible and practicable horizons. Temptations to be inhabited.

Gian Luca Favetto as a writer has published essays, poems and novels. He’s journalist, theater critic, radio anchorman for Radio RAI and regular goalkeeper in the “Italian writers” soccer team.

Cantiere per i musicisti e i ragazzi della Stazione di Topolò

condotto da Antonio Della Marina

Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra heads for Mars

A warrior planet dedicated to Mario Monicelli’s “Armata Brancaleone”?
I don’t know why I accepted this folly. To perform the first piece of the suite by English composer Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934), entirely dedicated to planets, would be needed around 4 flutes, 3 oboes, an English horn, 4 clarinets, 4 bassoons, six horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, 6 timpani, a whole drum set for three musicians, celesta, xylophone, two harps, a pipe organ and, obviously, two full rows of strings. Not to mention the conductor! Moreover it is definitely not a minimalistic work, which should have kept it away from our repertory. But it is exactly this madness that is tempting me. It is impossible to predict which or how many will be the musicians in Topolò, we’ll find out there. We have the full score. We’ll tear it to pieces, mix them in a hat... (ADM)

Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra is an open and all-changing ensemble created in 2008 with the aim of gathering around the same score musicians from very different backgrounds (classic, jazz, ethno, rock, electroacoustic, oberkrajner, improvisation...), amateurs and professionals, young and “less young”. The coordinator of such utopia is Antonio Della Marina, a very prepared and flexible musician from Udine. During the past year TMO has performed live on the national radio program “RadioTre Suite” from Teatro dal Verme in Milan, in Nova Gorica and on Mount Korada, always with different ensembles.

Jez riley French

East Yorkshire

Audible silence... Topolò

Field recording presents multiple opportunities to experience our surroundings; from the scientific to the abstract. me ? I capture moments....pressing record when the time feels right, not pressing record sometimes....there is a very close relationship between the act of listening & the intuitive capture of these moments. My time in Topolò will be spent exploring various spaces - natural or man-made - recording the stillness of these places, the vibrations that are inaudible to the naked ear & the inner sound-life of the village environment.... an intuitive, emotive response to the time & place is my hope, my focus....

Jez riley French is a composer / artist / curator / lecturer & publisher based in the UK. His exploration of extended listening & field recording techniques over the past three decades has resulted in a body of work that has been performed, exhibited & published widely in Europe & further afield. In the last few years Jez has been artist in residence with organizations in Estonia, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, France & the UK. Jez also runs the engraved glass imprint, the seeds & bridges concert series &the tristesse engraved pdf arts magazine

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Renato Rinaldi

Fornalis

During the border

Audio documentario

During the border... keeps saying a lady encountered shortly after departure: because, adds the lady, during the border for seven years we couldn’t go on the other side not even to work in the fields. Then the time came when it was allowed to go mow the lawns, but you had to go the long way and you couldn’t even call. Stay quiet, work, finish on time and go back. There was a timetable.

Renato Rinaldi, musician, actor, writer has collaborated several times with Teatro dell’Elfo and with Radio Rai in the fields of radio documentation. Besides several music CDs has published the book Tiliment-Sound investigation of river Tagliamento. He is author, together with Piero Zanini, of the volum “Durante il confine”, which is part of the work “Viaggio da Topolò ad Abitanti” published by Stazione-Postaja in 2007.

Stories of the people who lived on the border; from socialist Yugoslavia to independent Slovenia, from the entry in the UE to the abolition of the border line, to verify what’s left today. A journey into the personal and collective experiences of who still lives on the border between Italy and (today) Slovenia. Because the border still exists, and is there, as a trace in the bio-graphy of these people.
During the border. Because yes, a border lasts, has its own time, its own duration and it is also harsh, makes a stand and is resistant...

Per Platou - Signe Lidén

Oslo - Bergen

Notturno Prosobranchia for Topolò

During our stay we’ll be collecting objects and sounds in and around the village. As holistic and mythical containers of a fragile and dramatic history; every little juxtaposition of these objects could possibly alter our perception of time and space.

Signe Lidén is a Norwegian artist making sound installations and performances that are dealing with resonance of objects and spaces. Her installations are often sonic and spatial examinations of social and cultural phenomena through an experiential form of research. Lives in Bergen.

Per Platou is an artist and curator, educated in London and Oslo. He co-directed the art group Motherboard (1995- 2008) with Amanda Steggell, who created a number of works and activity connected to live/media art and net culture. He has produced a number of sound works for theatre and film, as well as art installations. Since 2007 he has been working as director for PNEK (Production Network for Electronic Art, Norway).

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Guido Scarabottolo

Milano

The angel of forgotten stories

A sculpture, a shadow, on the trail between Topolò and Livek

Guido Scarabottolo has arrived in Topolo the first time on a sunday afternoon, in 2008. He came back in 2010 to open the PUT (Universal Picture Gallery of Topolò), visitable in the Hisa Juljova and on the website. This year he donates an angel to the village and to memory voids. Guido Scarabottolo has an architecture background, is illustrator by choice, graphic designer by necessity, designer for fun, reserved by nature, lives and works in Milan.

There are, amongst the things i draw, some that decide to come along with me.
They return after a while, reappearing amidst other drawings in a discreet, carved out space. Slowly I get used to their presence and, at a certain point, I bring them out to the public, with me. They appear as stains on paper or stamps or, when they decide to become more concrete, as cut-out silhouettes, iron drawings, two dimensional sculptures. Two dimensional sculptures: as if to say defective sculptures (everyone knows sculptures have three dimensions), or drawings on the border line of the drawing realm.
The Angel is one of these.
It’s been called like this for convenience or maybe laziness. Really we wouldn’t know how to define him, or her. A big creature with a tiny head (which could suggest little intelligence or great strength) with two little wings that are just sprouting up or maybe are atrophying. Human, superhuman, inhuman... a figure on the edge of certainties. I believe it will be fine in the woods above Topolò, a place that is a border between countries but also memories. Border lines are the place where differences dare to touch, after all.

Ulay

Ljubljana

Earth Water Catalogue
Water spilled from source to use

Earth Water Catalogue is a compilation of an extensive body of water and water-related works, be it past, present or future, across a variety of media by artists from around the water planet.

Earth Water Catalogue is a growing archive, database, library and platform, be it on-line or in print, available from the very outset to any user or reader; artist, scientist, engineer, civil servant, scholar, student, or simply any water consumer.

Earth Water Catalogue is an artistic initiative to raise awareness, enhance understanding and appreciation of, and respect for water – in people of plenty, and for those in need – by addressing the ethics through aesthetics of this fundamental planetary asset.

Earth Water Catalogue is a stimulus to the artistic and scientific communities to set up exhibitions of and provide publications on works from the catalogue, making an impact on the general public, by also playing a key role in education.

Earth Water Catalogue is an appeal to stop appealing but rather to spur reflection on and stir imagination about water, to redefine its nature and value.

Earth Water Catalogue is, ultimately, about water – the basis of life. Water covers some 70 per cent of the planet surface, and composes about 70 per cent of the human body. Yet only 1 per cent of the planet’s water is drinking water.

Water dissolves but cannot be dissolved. It can be a purifier, and a fuel. It is used in households, agriculture, and industry. Civilization and much more depends on it. Water has intelligence, and a memory. Water is more than H2O.

Initiated and edited by Uwe Laysiepen – Ulay, Earth Water Catalogue is his magnum opus.

Water does not forget. Work for water to have water work. For the love of water.

Ulay, real name Frank Uwe Laysiepen, is a key performance artis t of the 70’s; From 1976 to 1989 has worked together with Marina Abramović. After studying photography has used Polaroid as a preferred medium. Ulay’s work focuses on the relations between body, space and society. Lives in Ljubljana.

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Ulay

Ljubljana

Earth Water Catalogue
Water spilled from source to use

Earth Water Catalogue is a compilation of an extensive body of water and water-related works, be it past, present or future, across a variety of media by artists from around the water planet.

Earth Water Catalogue is a growing archive, database, library and platform, be it on-line or in print, available from the very outset to any user or reader; artist, scientist, engineer, civil servant, scholar, student, or simply any water consumer.

Earth Water Catalogue is an artistic initiative to raise awareness, enhance understanding and appreciation of, and respect for water – in people of plenty, and for those in need – by addressing the ethics through aesthetics of this fundamental planetary asset.

Earth Water Catalogue is a stimulus to the artistic and scientific communities to set up exhibitions of and provide publications on works from the catalogue, making an impact on the general public, by also playing a key role in education.

Earth Water Catalogue is an appeal to stop appealing but rather to spur reflection on and stir imagination about water, to redefine its nature and value.

Earth Water Catalogue is, ultimately, about water – the basis of life. Water covers some 70 per cent of the planet surface, and composes about 70 per cent of the human body. Yet only 1 per cent of the planet’s water is drinking water.

Water dissolves but cannot be dissolved. It can be a purifier, and a fuel. It is used in households, agriculture, and industry. Civilization and much more depends on it. Water has intelligence, and a memory. Water is more than H2O.

Initiated and edited by Uwe Laysiepen – Ulay, Earth Water Catalogue is his magnum opus.

Water does not forget. Work for water to have water work. For the love of water.

Ulay, real name Frank Uwe Laysiepen, is a key performance artis t of the 70’s; From 1976 to 1989 has worked together with Marina Abramović. After studying photography has used Polaroid as a preferred medium. Ulay’s work focuses on the relations between body, space and society. Lives in Ljubljana.

immagini: img1 | img2