As part of the 2024 programme focused on the voice in the various meanings of the term, the Dello Scompiglio Cultural Association presents the exhibition “Appunti dal mare” (Notes from the Sea) by Anna Raimondo (born in Caserta, 1981, lives and works in Brussels).
The Campania artist’s research explores listening as a political and aesthetic experience, using sound as a device to build relational environments from a transfeminist perspective, amenable to opening up new fields of investigation in which transdisciplinarity and transmediality can coexist. Through voice, language and sound walking, between performance and sound art, her work pitches a negotiation between verbal and non-verbal communication, activating and encouraging public participation. In this sense, dwelling on the border area of intimacy and intimidation of sound, the presence of otherness becomes crucial in questioning the notion of identity, while listening becomes the catalyst for relationship and exchange.
The exhibition sees the confluence of two works in which the voice becomes the sounding board for the migration problem that grips the current socio-political configuration around the Mediterranean. A situation in which the nations concerned believe they can resolve the problem by building insurmountable limits, borders in which human rights cease to exist or are directly cancelled, or limbos in which the migrants remain trapped, without having the right to move forward or the possibility to turn back. In the video “Mediterraneo”, an empty glass placed in the centre of the frame is slowly filled by an uninterrupted succession of drops of water dyed blue, while the off-camera voice of the artist incessantly repeats the word “Mediterraneo”. The hypnotic image of the slowly rising water level contrasts with the clear voice that, after a few minutes, begins gradually to tire and then breaks, suffocates and finally drowns. An obsessive vocal rhythm that becomes a vibrant lament and is swallowed up by the same water that ends up overflowing the limits of the container and the horizon of vision. On the other hand, in the sound installation “Derrière la mer”, a space completely painted blue contains a selection of memories and interpretations of the sea, by a series of people from different cultural and geographical contexts that are put in dialogue with Koranic and biblical passages dealing with the same presence of the sea. The result is a sound composition based on a graphic score in which the registers of the spoken world and that of opera converge. The score, performed by Edyta Jerzeb and Jérôme Porsperger, is conceived in three parts that address as many facets of the sea: the first movement, “Toward the sea”, recalls sensual perceptions and relationships, the second “Crossing the sea”, evokes the dangers it can represent, while the third and final “Beyond the sea” offers visions and reflections on the symbolic end of the sea itself. A vocal journey through culture, languages and multiple visions of the sea in which this emerges as an element impossible to crush and not destined to divide.
The exhibition thus becomes a poetic denunciation, focused on the symbolic and experiential role of the sea in the collective imagination, which takes the form of notes on the need to take measures in the face of the obvious failure of the narratives built up to now. An attempt to lay the foundations of a new paradigm in which even the voices that until now have been silenced, submerged, swallowed or ignored can be welcomed.
Biography
Anna Raimondo lives in Brussels and works internationally. She is currently pursuing a doctoral research on listening and its relationship to urban geography from an intersectional feminist perspective. Raimondo has participated in numerous local international exhibitions and festivals, including the first Malta Biennale (2024); “Fluxus” at the McaM in Shanghai in 2023 (Cuneo, Italy); the collective exhibition “Sound without music” at the Casino Forum d’Art Contemporain in 2022 (Lucca, Italy), manifesta13 in Marseille in 2020 (France), the solo show “Fronte Nazionale Naso Partenopeo” at Albumarte in 2020 in Rome (Italy); the solo exhibition “Nada que declarar” at the Centro Cultural Matienzo in Buenos Aires in 2019 (Argentina, curator: Tam Ciai Painé); “Bienal Sur” in Buenos Aires in 2019 (Argentina); “Seremos serias de la manera más alegre” at the CAso- Casa del Bicentenario in Buenos Aires in 2018 (Argentina, curator: Florencia Curci); the collective exhibition “Invisible” as part of the Dakar Biennale in 2018 (Senegal, curator: Alya Sebti); the collective show “Africa is not an island” at the MACAAL in Marrakech in 2018 (Morocco); “Nuove frontiere del benessere dell’ecosistema vaginale” at the Ex Elettrofonica gallery in Rome in 2017 (Italy, curator: Lucrezia Cippitelli); “Nous serions sérieux de la manière la plus heureuse” at the Cube – independent art room in Rabat in 2017 (Morocco); “Mi porti al mare? ” at the MAAC in Brussels in 2016 (Belgium, curators: Nancy Casielles and Nancy Suárez). Her radio works have been broadcasted in various countries and in different languages on stations such as Kunst Radio, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, RAI, RTBF, etc.