Weekdays from 25 March - 30 April, 2 - 5pm

Location: School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University

Event Type: In-person

Price: Free

Ritratto di città
20/20.000Hz
by MASBEDO
curated by Cloe Piccoli

Opening times: Weekdays from Monday, March 25 to Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 2pm – 5pm
Location: Screening Box, by reception on the ground floor of the School of Digital Arts (SODA).

Fondazione ICA Milano presents the international premiere of Ritratto di città (Portrait of a City) 20/20.000Hz by MASBEDO, curated by Cloe Piccoli – in collaboration with MODAL gallery, at the School of Digital Arts (SODA).

The screening is the first leg of an international tour of the film project, which will go on to visit the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Triennale Milano and more. Visitors can watch the film installation in the wooden screening box in SODA’s foyer on the ground floor, which is open to the public on weekdays from 25 March – 30 April, 2 – 5pm.

Ritratto di città (20/20,000Hz) is inspired by 1954 film, Ritratto di città by Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna and Roberto Leydi, a synergy of actions that recreates that powerful short-circuit between radio and city, in which avant-garde research and public service converge. The film delves into the history of the Studio di Fonologia RAI in Milan, founded by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna in 1955 and opened in 1956. This was a crucial point in time for electronic music, ‘concrete music’ and for phonology, an experience that – placed in a contemporary perspective – reactivates new processes and visions today.

Taking inspiration from the history of electronic music, in which radio played a fundamental role in avant-garde research and its return to the public, MASBEDO creates a layered and multimedia project. Ritratto di città is an itinerary in stages that takes the form of the creation of an unedited multichannel video, an immersive installation, a series of sound performances, a public program, and a volume published by Marsilio Arte, design by Leftloft.

Ritratto di città is an image journey through urban space and tells its story through a harmonious combination of creative languages. In the first chapter of the video, images of the Rai Studios in Corso Sempione, designed by Gio Ponti, alternate with the rooms of the Civic Museums of Castello Sforzesco, interweaving with sound fragments captured by microphones installed on the twenty-seventh floor of the Torre Velasca and reworked in the studio.

In the second part, however, Ritratto di città becomes an ecosystem, a dense program of interventions and insights made by a large selection of artists, musicians, performers and experts in the field, which contributes to building the multifaceted image of a city – Milan, crackling with energy and in constant transformation.

Participants include Swedish performer and vocalist Stina Fors, artist Martina Rota, actors Camilla Semino Favro and Adriano Di Carlo, historic RAI Radio 3 anchorman Pino Saulo head of the radio broadcast “Battiti”, biologist David George Haskell, ethologist Federica Pirrone, producer and author Kit Mackintosh, critic Delia Casadei, architectural theorist Manuel Orazi and composer Nicolas Becker. Drawing inspiration from the many creative contributions that have made the Phonology Studio a unique venture, MASBEDO’s video narrative alternates between sound restitution and performative interpretation.

This project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian
Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (11th edition, 2022), which aims to
promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.