VISIONAIR-07 (Paolo Piscitelli: Footage - Texas 2007)

Visionair-07 is the seventh edition of an annual initiative that e/static began in 2001 with EXIT-01, a series of live performance events of various types by Italian and international artists. Past participants include such names as Akio Suzuki, Arnold Dreyblatt, Luca Vitone, Loren Chasse, Patrice Carré, Rolf Julius, Miki Yui, Werner Durand, Dominique Petitgand, Carlos Casas.
Each edition has featured a mix of music, image and multimedia-based works, and this year is no exception with two events by two very different Italian artists, Paolo Piscitelli and Giancarlo Toniutti, the former working primarily in the field of visual media the latter in sound and experimental music, but both renowned for the variety and complexity of their work.
Paolo Piscitelli, who was one of the participants in EXIT-01, with his first sound work, cores mix 1, could be defined as a sculptor though the variety of media he uses permits him to escape such a reductive definition, having made works involving video, photography, sound and 3D animation, each time stretching the boundaries of the medium in question.
He is also one of the few artists on the Italian and international scene to consistently incorporate elements of scientific research into his work, which becomes 'something' that exists on the border between these two supposedly incommensurable territories.
Giancarlo Toniutti (another artist involved in theoretical and scientific research) is first and foremost an explorer of the possibilities of sound, with a particular interest in the relationship between sounds and their context, specifically their 'provenance' - geological, anthropological and historical – also considering aspects connected to legend and folklore. Toniutti was the only Italian artist to be included in Brandon Labelle and Steve Roden's seminal survey of sound art "Site of sound (of architecture and the ear)", published in 1999, where he appears alongside such names as Alison Knowles, Philip Corner, Christina Kubisch, Leif Elggren, Rolf Julius, Max Eastley and Christof Migone.
Paolo Piscitelli will open the series on October 25 at 9 pm at blank, via Reggio 27, presenting "Footage - Texas 2007", a selection of new, previously unseen audio-video material documenting the artist's recently begun residence at Texas A&M University, an experience which seems to be opening new vistas for Piscitelli and has already produced some interesting results.
Then, on November 22, again at 9 pm in the large space of via Parma 31, Giancarlo Toniutti will be presenting "ádzyja ryjts'a zykh'qj'áz" (the origin of lake Rits'a), the fourth of a series of Quadrophonic Concertos for Field Recordings as the artist himself defines them: "a quadrophonic articulation of field recordings of mountain bells, forced water courses, echo-sites, surface loam studies, hydrophone recordings of the lake itself, and percussive accelerations of wood and metal". The concert, which is about 60 minutes long, will be performed in semi-darkness and diffused through four speakers positioned around the room.