Marko Ciciliani on his project “Why Frets? 2083”
Watch my interview with new music composer Marko Ciciliani on his project “Why Frets? 2083”. It is a series of three works — a multimedia performance, a performance lecture, and an installation — that illuminate different aspects of this fictional history of the electric guitar from varying angles. The story is based on speculative fabulation — a deliberate re-invention of the past.
Rather than pursuing the idea of creating something new as an envisaging of the future, speculative fabulation and the rewriting of history proceeds from an examination of the conditions of how society and culture arrived at their present state. As an artistic practice of “arrière-art” — as opposed to “avant-art” –, rewriting the past offers a method of imagining what contemporary society might look like alternatively, and thus of creating a vision of a future. Or as Donna Haraway put it: “The open future rests on a new past” (1978). In this way, the three individual works Why Frets? — Requiem for the Electric Guitar, Why Frets? — Downtown 1983 and Why Frets? — Tombstone — complement each other in the sense of a transmedia storytelling. Each of the individual works is a self-contained work, but taken as a whole, the three artworks cast different spotlights on the electric guitar, focusing on aspects such as techno-cultural developments, inscriptions of gender, or social values.
Watch full interview:
Marko Ciciliani is a multimedia music composer and performer based in Austria. Interactive video, light design, and laser graphics often play an integral part in his compositions. His works have been programmed by festivals for post-avantgarde music such as Donaueschinger Musiktage, Wien Modern, Ultraschall Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, or Maerzmusik. He is a Professor for Computer Music Composition and Sound Design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
The book was released a few months ago with “Mille Plateaux” and the “Galerie der Abseitigen Künste”. For inquiries about the book, please contact Marko Ciciliani directly.
Photos from project:
