ABYSSAL CREATURESFRANCESCO CAVALIERE
The Museum as Performance
Installation / Performance
Installation
04 and 05 NOV – 10AM to 7PM
Performances
04 NOV - 3.30PM | 05 NOV - 6PM
ABYSSAL CREATURES (2023)
Installation and Performance, 30’
[World Premiere]
'Abyssal Creatures' is a project by Francesco Cavaliere following the narrative of a group of creatures from his fantasy writing about Peoples of Glass, that develops in a new saga inspired by the images of the marine flora of the abyss, hybridized with archetypal figures of the human unconscious. These creatures, coagulated on glass, in the form of sound sculptures blown by Murano masters, manifest themselves for the first time in Porto, at the Serralves museum, in an installative and performative dimension. An opportunity to look out onto this artist’s ethereal and fluctuating universe, suspended between alchemy and science-fiction, which relocates knowledge about matter and nature - from botany to crystallography - in a poetic dimension, which goes beyond measured thought.
Abyssal Creatures are an ensemble of Murano glass sculptures, in blown glass, designed to represent other beings, assembled like communicating vessels that form a sounding body, non-bipedal and far from any human representation. These abyssal bodies expand their life through sound and vitreous resonances. The music that flows inside them is like an abstract vascular form, drawing inspiration from the Xylem and the lymphatic systems that some plants possess. The Sound, as an invisible sap makes them alive, lights up their presence. Here is their physiology according to Cavaliere: “The Abyssal Creatures are at the same time musical instruments (both idiophones, such as bells, and aerophones, susceptible to air vibrations) and sculptures that seem to live and sweat noise. The creatures are in different colors, and their cavities, holes and openings are points for a musical cascade. They are like taps to open and close, with which create musical compositions. The floral elements of the sculptures and the curvilinear shapes constitute a set of conical-cylindrical sound resonators, which host sound reproduction and diffusion systems.”
Project supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2023).
Produced by Xing.
Support
Production
Related
Francesco Cavaliere is a visual artist, writer and sound producer born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1980. He lives and works between Berlin and Turin. His works are capable of enlivening his listeners' inner states through a polymorphic activity that combines writing, sound, voice, drawing, sculpture, which together stimulate the imagination, undertaking long journeys crossed by ephemeral presences. He writes sound stories and music based on particles of sound, noise and language, often integrated with installation and scenographic elements or live performance, showing a particular taste for the most diverse forms of exoticism. Over the years he has developed a veritable dictionary to catalogue the metamorphic beings that inhabit his own abstract fantasy universe: hybrids of objects, animals, plants, planets, trails, cosmic objects and physical and perceptual phenomena generated by glass, minerals and voices, recorded and performed with analog technologies. "I am a talking scribe ... my voice is a cloud, my pen hisses."
From 2011 to today Francesco Cavaliere has produced series of performances, light and sound actions, concerts, radio and audio-visual works, audio stories, readings in the visual and musical field, Augmented Reality stories. His work has been shown in museums, art centers and international festivals including: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli; Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Milano; Ti con zero, Xing/Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma; Una Cosa Mostruosa, Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo; Triennale Teatro, FOG, Milano; LUFF Festival, Lausanne; Ambient Festival, Cologne; Live Arts Week/Xing, Bologna; Terraforma Festival, Milano; RIBOCA1 Riga International Biennial, Riga; Issue Project Room, New York; Cafè Oto, London; Helicotrema Recorded Audio Festival, RAI radio 3, Milan; INFRA FESTIVAL, Tokyo; BOZAR, Bruxelles; 3HD Fest, HAU Habbel am Ufer, Berlin; Empty Gallery, Honk Kong; 7TH Berlin Biennale; Les Urbaines Festival, Lausanne; Museum of Contemporary Art di Tokyo; CTM festival Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Warsaw: QO2 Bruxelles; Kraak Ghent; ART Brussels.
Solo exhibitions in the visual field include: Prodigy Kid (2022), MAR Museo d'Arte della Città di Ravenna; La Lince d'Ombra e Pietra Sponga (2021), Una Boccata d'Arte, Fondazione Elpis e Galleria Continua, Vallo di Nera ; Anubis vs Baboon (2019) Gluck 50, Milan; Soffio Che Scotta (2015), Xing/Marsèlleria, Milan; Lancio Meta Meteo (2014), Grimmuseum, Berlin.
Group exhibitions include: Raymond et des Palmes (2018), part of Manifesta 12, Palermo; Green Music (2017) Yamamoto Gendai Gallery, Tokyo; The Glowing Glove (2014) Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde; Volta di Lame di Lune (2012), Liverpool Biennale.
Francesco Cavaliere, also known as Francis Knight, has released, amongst others, the double LP Gancio Cielo (Hundebiss records - for which he also curated the on-line project Musica Virtuale), the LPs Etrusca 3D (Discrepant), Zoomachia Disc 1 (Fantom Dischi), Sijuaq il Chiurlo veggente (Poole music). He also released on cassette and digital the sound works Volta di Lame di Lune, Alata Onda, I films fan venire gli occhi rossi, IATO (self productions) and ENERGIA NUVOLA (Troglosound), Xylomania (CN), Doro Bengala (Presto!?). In duo with Leila Hassan as Sea Urchin, they released the albums Yaqaza (Kraak rec), Tahtib (Bokeh versions), Natal Uranus (Commend see, RVNG), and in duo with Tomoko Sauvage the LP Viridescence (Marionette). Forecoming releases: Popoli di Vetro (Xing >< Xong Collection), the tape + booklet L'arco Infra le Nubi (Canti Magnetici). He published the books Gancio Cielo DNA CLEPSYDRA (NERO editions), Anubis vs Baboon (Lombardelli Ed, Gluck 50) and Il Grillo Minerva (ViaIndustriae). He has collaborated with visual artists, musicians and choreographers such as Marcel Türkowsky, Elisabeth Kirche, Ignaz Schick, Ghédalia Tazartès, Invernomuto, Lievens Martens Moana/Dolphins Into The Future, Ruben Spini, Annamaria Ajmone, Spencer Clark, Leonardo Pivi, Christopher Kline, Amy Franceschini.
www.instagram.com/cavaliere.circles7
francescocavaliere.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/f-cavaliere