Agnese Menguzzato / Morgana / Moor Mother / Ecco2K

Undici is a site-specific performance for extended electric guitar and electroacoustic textures by Agnese Menguzzato. Set in the Sala d’Armi of the Arsenale, the piece imagines a serenade to the stars—a dialogue between inner and outer worlds, where sound traverses the windows and fills the space with distant resonance. Menguzzato, draws on her background in Renaissance lute and violin to merge historical and contemporary techniques. Her custom eight-string electric guitar, tuned and processed to emulate the range of the Renaissance lute, becomes a contemporary vessel for a centuries- old tradition—its timbre oscillating between the cry and the sigh. Undici connects to Venice’s deep lute history: in 1507, Ottaviano Petrucci published the first printed lute tablatures here, ushering in a new chapter for the instrument. Menguzzato reimagines this lineage as a spectral presence, evoking the intimacy of the human voice while dissolving temporal boundaries—a new music of stars, stones, and water, shaped in the image of the city itself.

Before Darkness Gated Us is a live performance that explores memory, loss and unstable perception. Unfolding as a living structure, it continually shifts between collapse and recomposition. Through stretched durations, sudden accelerations and spectral decay, the piece moves across thresholds between intimacy and abstraction. Layers of processed texture, melodic residue and dissonant harmonics blur the line between presence and disappearance. Avoiding fixed form or linear development, the performance occupies a space of slow dissolution, where fragments loop, mutate or vanish. It draws the listener into a liminal zone where sound becomes affect, and memory is haunted, leaking and unstable. Blending synthetic and organic materials, Before Darkness Gated Us evokes a suspended state of shared vulnerability and temporal disorientation. It forms part of an ongoing practice concerned with digital erosion, emotional residue and the unstable conditions of listening.

Shinkolobwe is a sonic excavation of trauma, resistance and the residual violence of extractive capitalism. Named after the Congolese uranium mine operated by the Belgian colonial regime and linked to the production of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the multi-artist work traces the material inscription of imperial violence on the process of natural history. Through experimental electronics, spoken word, archival material and ancestral lamentation, Shinkolobwe becomes a kind of disturbed archive which refracts, folds and collapses time upon itself. The performance draws a line from the radioactive soil of Katanga to the enduring environmental and psychological fallout experienced by those still living in the mine’s shadow. The work refracts their stories through layers of sonic residue, refusing closure and inviting listeners into the unsettled aftermaths of colonisation, ecological warfare, and stolen futures. Distortion mimics fracture, silence holds the weight of testimony, and sonic residue becomes a medium for reckoning.

For the closing night of the Festival, Ecco2k presents in Venice an extended and immersive set questioning the relationship between performance and DJ set, specially conceived for the Biennale Musica 2025. A versatile artist based in Stockholm, Ecco2k is the co-founder, along with Bladee and Thaiboy Digital, of Drain Gang, a collective that has gained cult status and amassed a large following in recent years. Ecco2k creates works that span music, cinema, and fashion design, contributing to various creative fields with his multidisciplinary artistic vision. His debut album, E (2019), marked a stylistic evolution from his previous hip-hop productions, embracing a more expressive and experimental contemporary pop, blending elements of rap, electronics, and glitch music. In 2022, he collaborated with Bladee on the album Crest, recorded in the Swedish countryside, which further solidified their creative synergy and expanded the boundaries of their musical style.