DESAS­TRES

Mar­co Fusinato’s DESAS­TRES, curat­ed by Alex­ie Glass-Kan­tor, is an exper­i­men­tal noise project that syn­chro­nis­es sound with image and takes the form of a dura­tional solo per­for­mance as installation.

Orig­i­nal­ly from the Vene­to region in Italy, Mar­co Fusinato’s par­ents migrat­ed to Aus­tralia where he was born. He cur­rent­ly lives and works in Naarm/​Melbourne. Fusina­to is a con­tem­po­rary artist and noise-musi­cian whose work takes the form of instal­la­tion, pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion, design, per­for­mance and record­ing. DESAS­TRES is a cul­mi­na­tion of his inter­ests in noise/​experimental music, under­ground cul­ture, mass media images and art history.

Devel­oped in Naarm/​Melbourne dur­ing its extend­ed COVID-19 lock­down, the work embraces all the asso­ci­at­ed frus­tra­tions, pes­simism and tur­moil. Fusina­to, who was iso­lat­ed at home and unable to access his stu­dio dur­ing this peri­od, says of the devel­op­ment of DESAS­TRES, ​“I’m inter­est­ed in the ten­sions around oppos­ing forces like noise ver­sus silence, order ver­sus dis­or­der, the insti­tu­tion ver­sus the under­ground, puri­ty ver­sus con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. These bina­ries co-exist and in DESAS­TRES it’s that fric­tion I want to main­tain – not elim­i­nate. I feel like these ten­sions are always rub­bing up against each oth­er and the inter­est­ing thing is how one deals with these agi­ta­tions, with the con­tra­dic­tions. It’s that in-between state that I want to occupy.”

DESAS­TRES is a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence of sound and image that places the audi­ence at the cen­tre of the work. Fusina­to will per­form live in the pavil­ion using an elec­tric gui­tar as a sig­nal gen­er­a­tor into mass ampli­fi­ca­tion to impro­vise slabs of noise, sat­u­rat­ed feed­back and dis­cor­dant inten­si­ties that trig­ger a del­uge of images. The result­ing all-con­sum­ing expe­ri­ence is open for the audi­ence to inter­pret and make sense of.

Fusina­to says: ​“My idea of acti­vat­ing the audi­ence is to remind them that they are alive. That they have a pulse. My work always begins with some­thing I want to experience.”

Glass-Kan­tor says: ​“DESAS­TRES breaks from the tra­di­tion­al exhi­bi­tion for­mat. This is not a sta­t­ic exhi­bi­tion, but an evolv­ing work. We will be live for the entire 200 days of the Bien­nale Arte in Venice and every time an audi­ence expe­ri­ences the work, it will be unique. The inten­si­ty of the con­di­tions in which this project evolved has allowed the work to be ful­ly embod­ied as the com­plete dis­as­ter. The per­for­mance of the work isn’t about the­atre but the act of labour and perseverance.”

For Fusina­to, rep­re­sent­ing Aus­tralia at Venice holds par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance. His first lan­guage, and the lan­guage spo­ken by his par­ents as he was grow­ing up, is a Venet­ian dialect of the con­ta­di­ni from the Vene­to region. Fusina­to says the cen­turies-old oral tra­di­tions, passed down through the gen­er­a­tions, are dis­ap­pear­ing with­in his lifetime.

He says: ​“I’m going back to exact­ly the same place my par­ents migrat­ed from to rep­re­sent the coun­try they migrat­ed to. There’s a col­lapse of time.”

The Aus­tralia Coun­cil is the com­mis­sion­er for Australia’s Nation­al Par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 59^th Inter­na­tion­al Art Exhi­bi­tion of La Bien­nale di Venezia. CEO Adri­an Col­lette AM says: ​“Mar­co Fusina­to has cre­at­ed a pow­er­ful work that is the cul­mi­na­tion of his career of exper­i­men­ta­tion and research. Curat­ed by Alex­ie Glass-Kan­tor, this pre­sen­ta­tion will offer audi­ences an expe­ri­ence like no oth­er – con­tin­u­ing for the dura­tion of the Bien­nale Arte.”

The artist has also cre­at­ed a ​‘Score’ for DESAS­TRES. He says: ​“Cre­at­ing a score was a way to make tan­gi­ble the idea of image as sound; the ​‘Score’ as a propo­si­tion. The​‘Score’ is a selec­tion of images from the archive for DESAS­TRES print­ed full bleed onto man­u­script paper.”

Glass-Kan­tor says, ​“The images for the ​‘Score’ are part of a broad­er archive that Fusina­to has been devel­op­ing for many years. Every day from today till the open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion at the Aus­tralian Pavil­ion, we will release an image of the ​‘Score’ across ded­i­cat­ed social plat­forms as an invi­ta­tion to engage with the project.”

The exhi­bi­tion will be accom­pa­nied by a pub­li­ca­tion fea­tur­ing a new essay by Bran­den W Joseph, pro­fes­sor of art his­to­ry at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and an exten­sive inter­view by Alex­ie Glass-Kan­tor with Mar­co Fusina­to. There will also be texts by crit­i­cal the­o­rist and film­mak­er Eliz­a­beth Povinel­li, AI researcher and author Kate Craw­ford, writer and cura­tor Chus Mar­tinez, and musi­cian­s/outré-gui­tarists Thurston Moore (Son­ic Youth), Stephen O’Malley (SUNN O)))) and Bruce Rus­sell (Dead C). The pub­li­ca­tion is being co-pub­lished by Lenz, an inde­pen­dent Milan-based pub­lish­er and the Aus­tralia Coun­cil. The design for the pub­li­ca­tion is a col­lab­o­ra­tion by Ziga Testen and Mar­co Fusinato.

Expe­ri­ence DESAS­TRES through livestream for its duration.