Beside the historical-political debate, the performance tries to bring back the spectator to live the primary emotions connected to this great event that has changed the history of the country and is changing the Arabic world.

Alessandria Buio Luce is the result of a year-long investigation into sound and its relation with social issues and political crisis in Egypt. An investigation by Claudio Curciotti in conjunction with the Goethe Institute and the Institut Français in Alexandria.

The authors, Claudio Curciotti and Eleonora Trani, have lived a year in Alexandria of Egypt, an experience that has influenced their artistic work. The music, which is characterized by melodic and harmonic chromaticism, express the feeling of hope; long drones are used in order to increase the expressive power of field recordings.

The poetry Alexandria Darkness Light recalls a personal experience of the author Eleonora Trani. She found herself facing difficult but meaningful moments in a improvised shelter in the district of Al Attarine, downtown Alexandria, during the days of greater violence.

The video is composed mainly from a collage of photo and clips alternated with moments of darkness. The relation between sounds and images generate a strong emotional involvement in the spectator, thanks to a particular use of the audio/visual synchronization.

CAST:
Claudio Curciotti – Audiovisual
Eleonora Trani – Poetry

My soundwork Revolution Tuned has been selected for the event To the Field and Yonder! An examination of phonography and field recording in what it can be by stretching its meaning or simply formalising.

The event curated by Soundfjord has been part of the Gorey Arts and Film Festival (GAFF), Gorey, Ireland.

PERFORMANCE MULTIMEDIALE: 17 Settembre 2011

Sala cinema ore 21.30

Brancaleone, Via Levanna 13, 00141 Rome, Italy

Alessandria buio luce è una performance multimediale inspirata agli eventi accaduti in Egitto dopo il 25 gennaio del 2011.
Attraverso musica elettronica e registrazioni d’ambiente, poesia e video, la performance rievoca le emozioni legate all’esperienza della Rivoluzione egiziana.
La paura e la speranza sono gli elementi principali di questo lavoro, realizzato da artisti che hanno vissuto in Egitto durante i giorni della caduta del regime di Mubarak.
Al di fuori del dibattito storico-politico, la performance cerca di riportare lo spettatore a rivivere le emozioni primarie collegate a questo grande evento che ha cambiato la storia del paese e del mondo arabo, con ripercussioni globali – basti pensare alla recente Spanish Revolution, le cui piazze hanno preso ispirazione da El Midan el Tahrir in Cairo.
Gli autori, Claudio Curciotti e Eleonora Trani, hanno vissuto un anno ad Alessandria d’ Egitto, un’esperienza che ha influenzato artisticamente il loro lavoro. Da una parte la musica, composta da aperture melodico-armoniche che esprimono il sentimento di speranza e da lunghi drone utilizzati per aumentare la potenza espressiva delle registrazioni d’ambiente. Dall’altra, la poesia Alessandria Buio Luce, da cui proviene il titolo della performance, che rievoca un’esperienza personale dell’autrice, ritrovatasi a vivere difficili ma significativi momenti in un rifugio improvvisato nel quartiere di Al Attarine, centro storico di Alessandria, durante i giorni di maggiore violenza. Il video, composto principalmente da un collage di foto alternato a momenti di buio, è in continuo dialogo con la musica, grazie ad un lavoro di sincronizzazione in cui suoni e immagini generano un forte coinvolgimento emotivo nello spettatore.

CAST:
Claudio Curciotti – Musica e Video
Eleonora Trani – Poesia e Recitazione

TRAILER

ALESSANDRIA BUIO LUCE TRAILER from Claudio Curciotti on Vimeo.

www.fieldabuse.com

Falling Bodies (waiting for the event) by KAAF Dance Company in Nasiem el Raqs Festival (Alexandria)
DANCERS : Mirette Mechail, Hossam Abd elhameed, Ehab mostapha, Stephanie Dujols, Mohamed Fouad, Raafat Elbaiumy
PHOTOGRAPHER : Elenora Trani
MUSIC BY: Claudio Curciotti
CHOREOGRAPHED BY : Mohamed Fouad

Design: David Vélez (release and pdf)

Date: 2011

More info about the release

download the release

download the artwork and pdf

Thursday, 7.7. 2011: bik-lecture

Haus der Wissenschaft, Sandstr. 4/5, Bremen, Germany

Sound Culture

Sound, in the widest sense of its meaning, influences our daily lifes, consciously and unconsciously. We remember certain sounds from childhood, we are getting annoyed by special noise during the day, and when we are travelling or conducting research we discover new and exotic sounds. Sounds are constituted by culture, and vice versa people create culture by sounds. Current approaches of the ethnography of sound is part and parcel of anthropological media studies, one reason to focus on the topic in our next bik-workshop on 7th and 9^th of July at Bremen University.

At the lecture on Thursday evening the Italian Sound artist Claudio Curciotti will present two of his multimedia performances documented and created in India (2010) and in Egypt (2011). Claudio Curciotti is the creator of the sound web-archive Field Abuse, a blog focused on the loudness of the contemporary world in relation with religion, ethnic music and traditional cultures. Coming from an electronic music and digital media background, in his work emerges a sensibility towards the acoustic textures, intensities and the rhythmic relationship between sounds and images.

During the workshop on Saturday morning three scholars from Cultural Anthropology will give insight into ethnographic material from their current research projects dealing more or less with questions of sound culture. The whole group of participants will discuss on the material.

Programme:

Claudio Curciotti (Soundartist, Rome):

Presentation and comments on „Loud India!” (2010) und

“Soundscape of Revolution” (Ägypten 2011)

Discussion and afterwards: Dinner

Saturday, 9.7. 2011: bik-workshop: short presentations of research on sound culture and group discussion

University of Bremen, room: SFG 3070

11.30-12.30

Carsten Wergin: Report on a Participant Observation of ‘Sound Culture-making’: The Music Video ‘Voix Mo Pep (feat. Saxophone playing Anthropologist

Discussant: Claudio Curciotti, Rome

13. – 14.30 Cordula Weissköppel: Sounds as background? Doing fieldwork with Copts in Egypt

Discussant: Jochen Bonz, Wien

Claudio Curciotti: Music
Eleonora Trani: Poetry, Reading, Live video
Sara El Hawary: Reading

(Mohamed Abo Elsoud: Shooting
Marianna Massa: Translation)

Event promoted by:

Institut Français d’Egypte

April  2011, Alexandria, Egypt

Event promoted by

Video Editting: Claudio Curciotti

Video Shooting: Mohamed Abo el Soud

Poetry : Eleonora Trani, Mohamed Abo el Soud

The performance focuses on the emotions connected to the events happened in Egypt after the 25th of January. The feelings of hope and fear are the main subjects of this multimedia work that brings together the experiences of both Egyptians and European artists, who lived in Egypt during the days that preceded the falling of the Moubarak regime. Out of the political and historical debate, this performance let the audience go back to the first and primal feelings of the events that made millions of people breath the fresh air of hope, that made people reborn.

Egypt: Reborn is a multimedia performance consisting on music, video and poetry.

The music has been composed by Claudio Curciotti, an Italian artist who use to live in Egypt since 2010. His music is a music of hope, full of melodies and harmonic openness, composed to express the feeling he had sharing time with Egyptian people, after the Revolution.
The video has been shot in Alexandria during the demonstrations by the film maker and theatre director Mohamed Absoud. He was in the front line with his camera during the demonstrations, confirming his long-time activism in politic and art along Egypt. The same days  the Italian author Eleonora Trani, who faced during the Revolution a difficult but meaningful time, wrote a poem called Alessandria, Buio, Luce. The  poem will be recited during the performance, with a multi language interpretation (Italian and Arabic).

The multimedia performance consist in a 50 minutes show where  music and video are in a constant dialogue through a synchronize live set. Sounds and images create the feelings and the emotion connected to the revolution, whereas the poem is a moment of reflection, leading the audience into the personal world of a girl who lived the difficult days of violence in Al Attarine, the central area in Alexandria.

The performance tries to inspire people on using their experience of the revolution (images, words, sounds) in order to create art. Our idea is connecting Europe and Egypt through art, bringing  artists coming from both places, letting them sharing the stage as well as their experiences and their feelings.