A co-commission from 180 Studios and Fact.
‘Broken Melody’, the 2nd single from Caterina Barbieri’s brand-new album Spirit Exit, is accompanied by a stunning visual from director Iacopo Carapelli and artist Ruben Spini, which sets sensational, slow-motion videofootage of levitating bodies versus Barbieri’s similarly transcendent synths and haunting vocals. Picking up the thread of ‘Knot Of Spirit’, a cooperation with “futurist folk” artist Lyra Pramuk and the veryfirst release on Barbieri’s justrecently introduced label platform, light-years, ‘Broken Melody’ showcases the author’s customized modular synth rig, which she established over the course of the making of Spirit Exit in her house studio in Milan.
Spirit Exit marks the veryfirst album Barbieri hasactually composed completely in this studio and was tape-recorded throughout Milan’s two-month pandemic lockdown in2020 The follow-up to 2019’s Ecstatic Computation and 2017’s Patterns Of Consciousness sees Barbieri checkingout internal worlds, illustration impact from St. Teresa D’Avila’s fundamental 16th century magical text The Interior Castle, theorist Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman theories and the esoteric poetry of Emily Dickinson.
“I madeup Broken Melody and most of Spirit Exit throughout the veryfirst lockdown of 2020 in Milan, when Milan was one of the darkest hotspots of the pandemic,” Barbieri states. “During this time of severe self-isolation, music endedupbeing for me like a portal to transcend a state of confinement and sensorial deprivation. It was the just method to travel in time and area when motion in the outside world was not possible. During this time, I idea a lot about the spatial measurement of confinement as a strong archetype of the woman condition in the past and how it shaped the visionary, magical vein of woman idea. Female poets, artists, mystics were typically living segregated lives – observing the world from a window, a gate, a filter. As they couldn’t easily relocation in the outside world, they were frequently rerouting their own energy towards the inner world, hence cultivating a cosmogonic technique of idea. The friction inbetween the constraint of their physical lives and the cosmic flexibility of the inner world and power of the mind is at the extremely root of visionary female thinking. It’s pioneering, feminist sci-fi. It’s the “interior castle” of Santa Teresa D’Avila. It’s Emily Dickinson’s “The Brain – is larger than the Sky (…) The Brain – is muchdeeper than the Sea”.”
Elements of the video taken for the ‘Broken Melody’ visual function as part of ‘Vigil’, a multimedia setup from Caterina Barbieri and regular partner Ruben Spini, recently commissioned by 180 Studios, which is now on displayscreen as part of Future Shock, a significant exhibit of 14 leading global artists and collectives working at the innovative of audiovisual innovation.
“The video for Broken Melody checksout some of the styles of the tune: love, loss, compassion and melancholy on a ghost world. There is a dystopian ambiance however there is likewise a strange sense of love linked to it, like a love tune to the end of the world,” states Barbieri. “The video takes motivation from the iconography of woman topics represented in uncertain sensorial states, suspended inbetween reflection and death, euphoria and annihilation. Slow-motion images of singular figures in extraordinary, desolate landscapes illustrates a series of tableaux vivants instilled with magic realism and melancholia.”
“Unlike anything else, music can channel the complicated, stunning spectrum of sensations that natural landscapes stimulate in humanbeings. In our audio-visual cooperations, Ruben and I have frequently utilized noise and vision to checkout that spiritual, happy connection to nature – a type of experience endingupbeing more and more unusual in late commercialism.”
“In our previous partnerships, Caterina has constantly been framed as a main subject, acting as the gravitational pole around which her tunes, my images, and eventually the attention of the public orbit together,” Spini states. “It is a fragile balance capable of developing a rather distinct connection inbetween her own efficiency and our understanding: when this channel is opened, we experience the exactsame lively sensations that orient her practice, through rapture and catharsis.”
“With the ‘Broken Melody’ video we desired to checkout comparable depths of feeling, though this time by stimulating them through numerous topics and points of view. The natural landscapes acts onceagain as a counterpoint to the characters’ sensations, and even however the situations of their stories are hardly hinted at, we relate to their strong universality. In a sense, they represent our cumulative memories, desires of escape and love, experiences of loss, ghosts of our past and our future.”
“As for the analysis of the noise and the words of the lyrics, I anchored myself exactly to the sensation of the principle, attempting to emphasise the contrast inbetween tension and inner motion, inbetween desertion and ecstasy,” states director Iacopo Carapelli. “Together with the director of photography (Giuseppe Favale) we pressed difficult to usage very sluggish movement. Even if it is not easy to produce rhythm with this strategy, we were sure it was the right analysis for the nature of the sounds.”
“Shooting with this kind of equipment is not easy, you requirement a enormous amount of lights to provide simply a smooth glance of light on the topic. We shot all the tableau vivants in a black theatre with some scenographic aspects, insomecases extended with the aid of post-production. The piece has lotsof musical layers and it was not easy to analyze one in specific.”
“The piece has numerous musical layers and it was not easy to analyze one in specific. Sometimes, like in the flying kid scene, the modifying slows down a lot however the scene remains in time with the synth’s entry. In other cases, nevertheless, like the woman who increases from her ashes, the montage breaks the clip in rhythm with the keepsinmind of the bass.”
Barbieri and Spini’s setup at Future Shock, entitled Vigil, functions the Broken Melody video playing on one side of the area, with another video work present behind a gradually melting ice sculpture. “In the exhibit is a landscape scene, represented by the circular LED wall as if it was seen through a telescope lens,” Spini states. “The sun is revealed low over the horizon, however it neverever alters its position – it is forthatreason a matter of analysis whether to thinkabout it a sunset or a daybreak. In this poorly lit space where the passage of time is used as a narrative gadget I desired to leave both possibilities open: a coming day, a falling night. With the muchdeeper sensation that, till we won’t leave this location of withdrawal, the tension won’t be broken.”
“A comparable loss of referral points takesplace at the spatial level, in the ogive landscape that morphs constantly listedbelow the paralysed sun. As it’s frequently real for my video works, it is close in principle to what 18th century painters specified as “capriccio”: a credible scene with no special real-life referral, produced by the juxtaposition and layering of various settings. It’s a picture of the outside world, however has no particular subject. Again, it mainly acts as the representation of a possibility.”
Future Shock, which runs upuntil 28 August 2022, changes 180 Studios’ belowground areas through mesmerising and pioneering digital innovation – from generative and interactive algorith