The Composition was premiered on 2 July at CODARTS (Rotterdam) in the context of my Graduation Recital. It is based on a text which I wrote in the Fall of 2020 for the ‘Dopamine Democracy’ Collective. The text takes the shape of an algorhythm’s stream consciousness, or at least how I would imagine this consciousness to sound like. A feeble, binary unit morphing into an unsightly mass of code. A digital life witnessing the miracle of its own existence as it fails – better each time – to make meaning out the data that it cannot help but absorb.

The text explores this topic by inspecting the relation between data, language and meaning. This is done both through content itself, as well as the form and alternative writing techniques. On the level of form, each paragraph is thought of as a separate ‘block’, as if they were chapters of the Code’s existence, so as to impart a sense of forward direction to the work. This is supported by the writing style, which breaks down sentences into short clauses of text. By cutting up sentences into self-supporting statements, meaning is disintegrated, perhaps only so that new meaning may arise. The writing is central in highlighting the similarity of language and data in their attempt to ‘make meaning’: form, meaning and content intermingle to form one single layer. A blob not unlike the one formed by the AI. By putting in a relation of tension language and data the text asks: have we not always been algorithmic? B.Latour entitled his famous work ‘We Have Never Been Modern’. Perhaps we have never been human.

Through the composition, I was mostly preoccupied with the conservation of energetics through gesture ( or precisely the conservation of of this energy from gesture to gesture). How can the forward movement and tension present in the text be conveyed by the voice and how it interacts with prepared piano ? Live electronics come to the forefront as the glue which puts recitative voice, singing voice and prepared piano together into one single layer of gestural expression rather than existing each on their own level.

Voice - Teja Poljansek

Live Electronics - Jonathan Ho Chin Kiat

Piano, Composition, Text, Stage Design, Concept - Filippo Deorsola

M.A.D. Collective

Mutually Assured Deconstruction

What is it ? The M.A.D. Collective aims to create physical and abstract spaces where collaborative, interdisciplinary artistic research and production can take place. Through experimentation in small and big formations and by approaching Music and Art as entities with social repercussions, the collective will create a network of artistic theories and practices which, like culture, are meant to be shared with people and circulate within society.

What’s the pitch ?

One of the great insights of 20th Century theorists (Foucault, Deleuze, etc..) was asserting that mental illness was not simply a personal issue, resulting from biological and chemical imbalances within the brain, but a social issue resulting directly from the dysfunctional relation between subject and (Capitalist) society: Madness is not simply a natural category, but a political one. The constantly fluctuating types of mental illnesses throughout time, as well as the dominance of specific neurotic and psychotic troubles within a given time frame (Anxiety has become endemic, particularly to Western Societies) point directly to the deep connection between an individual, the organisation of its mental energy and the Society in which they exist.

The increasing multiplicity of mental health problems within all categories of age and especially the youth, points, additionally, to the increasing mental stress that Capitalism, as an economic and libidinal structure, is putting on us. Is the madman truly mad or is madness simply a by-product of today’s society ? Is the Madman simply one because it refuses to engage with Neoliberal ideological representations and instead chooses to dwell within its own representation of reality?

 MAD collective highlights the link between madness and the productive potential it can acquire if it is considered within a political and social sphere. By integrating madness within its creative process, the collective aims to unlock the truly miraculous potential of Folly. Indeed what is a miracle if not the social and generalised manifestation of subjective psychosis ? By being M.A.D., we aim to counter the miracle of Capitalism with our own peculiar form of miracle, our own generalised psychotic state. One that would be more sane by being less so. This psychotic state -- induced by a habit of compulsive abuse of multi-disciplinarity --mirrors our belief that a new category of political subjectivity is urgently needed. Whatever this subjectivity might come to mean in the future, we would like to suggest, as its first nomenclature: Monumental-Hysterical Hyperalternative Avant-Garde. or MHHA for short. There is no further meaning behind this name: It simply aims to make the emergence of this new subjectivity possible in the first place.

If socio-ideological processes need a generalised psychosis to protect themselves from scrutiny, is the madman truly M.A.D. ? Or is his madness the only key to keeping himself sane ? If it is indeed the case that social madness has become the new social sanity, then one should aim to be M.A.D. , as it would prove to be the most subversive way to deconstruct society, without destroying oneself in the process. Mutually assured destruction ?

No.

 ¡MUTUALLY ASSURED DECONSTRUCTION!

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Leone/Deorsola is one of the units making up the M.A.D. Collective. The Duo—formed in Rotterdam, in 2019— consists of Andrea Leone (t.sax) and Filippo Deorsola (piano).Influenced by contemporary classical music and jazz, they quickly developed an interplay based on free improvisation. By preparing the piano , the music can take a variety of different timbres and occupy the space that is normally filled by other instruments..

In and out of tonality and with small amounts of written music, the two musicians constantly try to find new methods to connect their ideas in the most sincere of ways.