Xing presents:
Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th February 2024
MARK VERNON (UK)
Saturnine Orbit
sound installation & live, première
Casa Museo Giorgio Morandi + Fienili del Campiaro
Grizzana Morandi (Bologna)
A special project for ART CITY Bologna 2024 on the occasion of Arte Fiera in collaboration with MAMbo Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and NEU Radio.
On Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th February, 2024, Xing presents as a special project for ART CITY Bologna 2024, ‘Saturnine Orbit’, a specially commissioned sound installation and live performance by Mark Vernon in the Casa Museo Giorgio Morandi and in the spaces of the Campiaro barns, a privileged subject of the Bolognese painter during his holiday periods in the Bolognese Apennines in Grizzana Morandi. Mark Vernon revisits the life and work spaces of an isolated and meditative Morandi, making the debris of everyday life reverberate through spectral soundscapes and eerie tones: an exercise in modern hauntology.
The project is in collaboration with MAMbo Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and NEU Radio.
For Saturnine Orbit Vernon creates an instant linear tape collage of sounds with a narrative of its own. The tape acts as a chronological sound diary, verbally annotated with the location, time of day and the weather conditions – considerations that might have been important to Morandi as a painter. Alongside field recordings collected on site during the production residency, Vernon will employ Morandi’s objects as sound instruments, using the negative space of bottles, pots, jugs and vases from the Casa Morandi studio as small resonant chambers, while the environmental field recordings of the surrounding countryside will be played from inside these objects with tiny speakers and microphones. Through this process the outside becomes the inside: the world in a bottle. In addition to digital recordings, Vernon will use a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, a sound technology that would have been in use during Morandi’s life time. Excerpts from the only extant recording of the Bolognese artist’s voice will also be included.
All the material thus collected and recomposed will be presented in a sound installation with a more abstract compositional tone, and in a live performance that will have more of a performative visual element focusing on the manipulation of objects and other props, interactions between mics and speakers, the tape player and tape loops. During ART CITY, a daily series of sound extracts from the creation in progress will be aired on NEU Radio; the live sound performance in the barns will also be broadcast live.
Programme:
Saturday 3rd February
11am – 6pm
sound installation
Casa Museo Giorgio Morandi
Sunday 4th February
11am – 6pm
sound installation
Casa Museo Giorgio Morandi
+
4 pm
live sound performance
Fienili del Campiaro
(also streaming live on NEU Radio)
+
From Wednesday 31st January to Saturday 3rd February
3pm + 3.30pm + 4pm
Saturnine Orbit – sound diary
3 minutes daily on air
Where:
Casa Museo Giorgio Morandi
Strada Provinciale di Grizzana SP24, 115
Loc. Campiaro – Grizzana Morandi (BO)
Fienili del Campiaro
Strada Provinciale SP24, 112
Loc. Campiaro – Grizzana Morandi (BO)
Free access
Free shuttle service timetable and reservation:
https://www.culturabologna.it/events/mark-vernon-saturnine-orbit