Quiet Before The Storm
ABOUT
In Dutch, the expression een klap van de molenwiek, literally a hit by the windmill, is used to say that someone is a little bit crazy. The title of this work, Quiet Before the Storm, refers to the sensation of spiritual enlightenment described by Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, as preceding an epileptic fit, and the notion of numinous sound (sound of divine origin) put forth by the anthropologist Donald Tuzin during his studies of the Bullroarer cult in Papua New Guinea.
In Quiet Before the Storm an ensemble of rotating rubber bands stretched on wooden crosses is used to create a ritual experience in which audible frequencies and infrasound travel through space and around the perceiver, inducing unordinary psychological states. By employing a prehistoric technique of sound production which predates Pythagorean notions of music and mathematics, Quiet Before the Storm addresses cognitive processes concerning perception and transcendence that escape the boundaries of what can be objectively measured, notated or recorded.
Reference: Miraculous Voices: The Auditory Experience of Numinous Objects, Donald Tuzin, in Current Anthropology, vol 25 (dec., 1984), pp 579-596, The University of Chicago Press
AWARDS
Sonic Arts Awards 2015,
sound art category, mention,
residency award Cardelly & Fontana
In Dutch, the expression een klap van de molenwiek, literally a hit by the windmill, is used to say that someone is a little bit crazy. The title of this work, Quiet Before the Storm, refers to the sensation of spiritual enlightenment described by Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, as preceding an epileptic fit, and the notion of numinous sound (sound of divine origin) put forth by the anthropologist Donald Tuzin during his studies of the Bullroarer cult in Papua New Guinea.
In Quiet Before the Storm an ensemble of rotating rubber bands stretched on wooden crosses is used to create a ritual experience in which audible frequencies and infrasound travel through space and around the perceiver, inducing unordinary psychological states. By employing a prehistoric technique of sound production which predates Pythagorean notions of music and mathematics, Quiet Before the Storm addresses cognitive processes concerning perception and transcendence that escape the boundaries of what can be objectively measured, notated or recorded.
Reference: Miraculous Voices: The Auditory Experience of Numinous Objects, Donald Tuzin, in Current Anthropology, vol 25 (dec., 1984), pp 579-596, The University of Chicago Press
AWARDS
Sonic Arts Awards 2015,
sound art category, mention,
residency award Cardelly & Fontana
EXHIBITION HISTORY
Kunstenlab, Deventer, 2018
Opificio Vaccari, Cardelli e Fontana, Santo Stefano di Magra, 2015
Dag in de Branding, Grote Kerk, Den Haag, 2015
November Music, Kruithuis, Den Bosch, 2013
Kunstenlab, Deventer, 2018
Opificio Vaccari, Cardelli e Fontana, Santo Stefano di Magra, 2015
Dag in de Branding, Grote Kerk, Den Haag, 2015
November Music, Kruithuis, Den Bosch, 2013
REVIEWS
“Matteo Marangoni turns your visit into a refined musical and acute physical experience; elegance and brutality, menace and temptation, prudence and playfulness confront each other within you. A siren with a bat.
A challenging work that will stay with me for a long time.”
Jean Klare for Kunstenlab blog
“the irresistible impulse to physically traverse these spaces calls attention to the presentiment of finding oneself within a gigantic resonance chamber: we find ourselves resonating here, traversed by a strange air current. And we are not comfortable external spectators, as we are catapulted at the center of the armonium as never before”.
Francesca Alix Nicoli, Artribune
“What interests me the most in is how a relatively simple phenomenon when inserted into a ritual and aesthetic sphere becomes a vector for transcendence”.
Matteo Marangoni interviewed by Elena Bordignon, ATP Diary
“Matteo Marangoni turns your visit into a refined musical and acute physical experience; elegance and brutality, menace and temptation, prudence and playfulness confront each other within you. A siren with a bat.
A challenging work that will stay with me for a long time.”
Jean Klare for Kunstenlab blog
“the irresistible impulse to physically traverse these spaces calls attention to the presentiment of finding oneself within a gigantic resonance chamber: we find ourselves resonating here, traversed by a strange air current. And we are not comfortable external spectators, as we are catapulted at the center of the armonium as never before”.
Francesca Alix Nicoli, Artribune
“What interests me the most in is how a relatively simple phenomenon when inserted into a ritual and aesthetic sphere becomes a vector for transcendence”.
Matteo Marangoni interviewed by Elena Bordignon, ATP Diary
CREDITS
With special thanks to: Horst Rickels, Dario Bartolini, Willem Wandberg, Massimo Biava, Henrik van Ketwich, Vreeberg Elastic Materials, November Music, Stroom Den Haag, Performing Arts Fund NL