“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect[s] decay.” – Ernst Fischer

This is a research project that materializes as improvised, collaborative processes in which I propose written music to be taken apart and expanded musically by a group of musicians in real time. Both the musical language and the instruments (acoustic, classical instruments and Baroque aesthetics in general) date from the era when humans were beginning to celebrate the explosive potential of fossil fuels and didn’t yet realize the horrific consequences. The approach embraces an aesthetics of care which requires listening together with one’s instrument as a non-human companion, with whom the musical event will emerge through deep, iterative exploration of tones and timbres. Aesthetically “painful” overdrive and highly-sensitive microtonalities encourage us to joyfully grieve the decaying, binary norms of traditional European culture. In this way, the process resembles that of a compost pile whose enzymes are left to work their magic, creating energy and enabling new, rhizomatic flora.

Recording of Decomposition Study for microtonal Arciorgano and six players available on INSUB. Records

Experiments in decomposing Frescobaldi for amplified harpsichord