Biennale College: Lara Dâmaso - Through wood, through flesh, dancing on a string, attached to nothing / Andrea La Pietra - Thru Extremities

Through wood, through flesh, dancing on a string, attached to nothing is a live sound and movement piece in which the performing bodies are those of artist Lara Dâmaso, along with three classical string instruments: the grand piano, the harp and the double bass.
The piece focuses on the resonant relationship between the human body and musical instruments, bridged by the motion of the voice. The instruments form an architecture of interconnected vessels – receivers, amplifiers, transformers – following a circular choreography of their own, like the cycles of nature, night and day. Together they channel, translate, forward or multiply the voice, whose compositional score echoes a journey of the soul through dissolution, to form and formulation, back into dissolution.

“Calm.
Uproar.
Lights echoing behind, below, beneath, in front of… I am counting numbers.
Suddenly calm again… fireflies in high grass. Can you hear them?
Unpredictable sparkling tones, stretching our faces, spreading expansion, dilatation, extension.
Welcome.
Stuck in clouds, can’t see but can control, can’t control but can hear… fast and slow, through information overload, into digital apnoea, an invisible quest for nothing… for everything.
Slightly out of tune, I can’t focus.
Calm, louder”.

Thru Extremities explores possible and impossible interactions between pure, childlike melodic instincts and overstimulated digital processes of composition, as well as dialogues between orchestral and acoustic timbres and PC music’s electronic playground.