AGAINST NATURE IS AN AUDIOVISUAL STORM
Against nature is 55 minute audiovisual performance, a storm of sound, video and lights perfectly synced that splash everywhere. The sound mixes philosophical, physics and political discourses readed by an artificial voice with primitive techno, rock guitars pictched and minced inside crooked granulators, dubstep with trap echoes. The visuals lead into a bipolar world, enchanting and impulsive, hypnotic and disturbing that captivates people in a kind of hypnosis where videos coming from the main social networks, just as if we were scrolling continuously, some footage shot with camera 360, and generative patches are mixed in a sphere, in a sort of perceptual bubble. Against Nature is a collective ritual that pushes bodies to break passivity in which we are immersed and activate minds to define ideals and utopies.
An artificial voice reads texts from various authors, famous speeches (Bernie Sanders, Greta, Assange), Symposio assemblies and internet junk.
It’s quite weird to hear complex speeches, which may concern philosophy, physics or politics in a powerful musical environment
Scrolling videos from social networks, shot 360,and generative patches in a kind of trance where the images are mixed in a sphere, in a sort of bubble.
BODY PERCEPTION MIND WORK LAZINESS TECHNOSTRESS ISOLATION COMMUNITY TRUST JUSTICE IMAGINATION ADDICTION DESIRE
For over a decade, transmedia artists Saverio Villirillo and Gregorio Comandini have been exploring the relationships between humans and machines, producing works ranging from installations, exhibitions, and social practices. After founding NONE collective, the duo of architects and A/V artists continues their investigation into the threshold between perception, consciousness and imagination with artistic practices that induce the audience into a liminal state.
Through the language of new media, the artists aim to guide participants in their works into ecstatic states where the boundary between reality and imagination dissolves. Mental journeys are generated by overstimulated bodily senses, assuming a condition of permanent change between present and future, fiction and reality, possible and impossible.
The liminal state of altered consciousness arises from speculative narratives where the artists activate a liminal rite in which the audience takes on the central role of enchantment generator, thus constituting the fantastical substance, the magical matter that frees itself from a disenchanted world overwhelmed by a cynical realism. The duo defines a transmedial aesthetic characterized by dark environments, where light, video and sound construct cyclic patterns, sudden glimpses, suspensions and hypnotic crescendos that become disruptive energy and lead to an unexpected rupture.
Their installative and performative works resemble collective rituals where participants find themselves in a liminal state on the threshold of consciousness, identity and time, where social constraints can be temporarily dissolved and future perspectives can be questioned. The dissolution of order during liminality creates an ambiguous, fluid, and malleable situation that allows for the establishment of new customs and an individuation process.
Saverio and Gregorio’s works have been exhibited at Light Art Museum (Budapest/HU), Somerset House (London/UK), Fukuoka Science Museum (Fukuoka/JP), Farol Santander (Sao Paulo/BR), GresArt 671 (Bergamo/IT), Design week (Milan/IT), K11 Art Space (Guangzhou/CN), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome/IT).
They designed and realized historical and scientific outreach exhibitions including “Copernicus and the Revolution of the World” at the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum (2023, Rome), “Classico Pop” at the National Roman Museum (2018, Rome), the Italian Museum of Audiovisual and Cinema (2019, Rome), the Roman Museum of Santa Giulia (2023, Brescia).