Curated by Cloe Piccoli, the project takes its name from the electroacoustic composi- tion by Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna and Roberto Leydi that in 1955 ushered in the avant-garde practices of the Studio di Fonologia RAI in Milan, a workshop of elec- tronic experimentation of international standing that remained active until 1983. The composition, a hybrid work that melded the characteristics of radio drama, electronic music and musique concrète, marked a fundamental watershed in the search for a new language on the boundary between word and sound, distributed and made accessible for the first time through what was then the most modern and democratic means of communication: radio.
“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,, producer and author Kit Mackintosh, critic Delia Casadei, architectural theorist Manuel Orazi, composer Nicolas Becker and sound artist Leila Rufus, and GUP Alcaro and Davide Tomat, who was assigned the artistic direction of the video’s sound project. 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.