IN SHORT⟶ An immersive sound performance that acoustically invokes imagery of the “anguane”, monstrous figures from popular mythology in the Venetian pre-Alps. The sound of karstic cave walls oscillate between human and more-than-human, suggesting an analogy between the human mouth and rock cavity.
AGANIS is an immersive quadriphonic performance for two voices and live electronics conceived by sound artist and performer Chiara Cecconello. It starts from the study of stories from the Venetian pre-Alps, which refer to caves inhabited by “anguane”, monstrous figures from local mythology. The popular narrative portrays them as protean presences connected to water sources. Sometimes beneficial, sometimes evil, the anguane are characterised by their emission of cries considered inaudible for the human ear.
AGANIS connects to the indecipherability of the monsters’ vocal clamour, tuning into the unheard and the unlistenable, where the ignored as well as the imagined collide and intertwine. By scratching the surface of these viscous margins, just as with the walls of karstic caves, an acoustic utopia is activated – one that passes between humid sounds and mineral reverberations, captured through environmental sound samples. The analogy between mouth and rock cavities becomes a space for the appearance of these more-than-human presences. The spectator’s skin becomes a membrane of transference for the unseemly voices of the anguane to emerge.
Chiara Cecconello was one of the artists supported in the frame of SPORE 2023, a residency project promoted in collaboration with ATCL – Associazione Teatrale fra i Comuni del Lazio and IUAV – Università di Venezia.
Chiara Cecconello will hold a workshop within the RECIPROCITY section entitled cicalecicale.
Chiara Cecconello is a sound artist and performer. She trained in both Italy and Germany, combining performance, musical studies and theoretical research at Iuav University (Venice) and the Hochschule für Kunste (Bremen). In 2021 she trained with the Societas group at the Corso di Ritmo Drammatico. She works with Italian and international artists, including Ari Benjamin Meyers, Josephine Baan and Isabel Lewis. She has presented performances in different contexts, such as Errant Sound (Berlin) Festival Catalysi (Teatro Comandini, Cesena), Radio That Matters (Rome), Ocean Space (Venice), BASE (Milan), Musik Installationen Nürnberg (Nürnberg). In her practice, the body is an acoustic territory, an extended ear as well as being a vibrant matter that seeks ways to inhabit the world through the immediacy of sounds. Her works range from performances to sound installations in which the relationships between sounds and places are explored, triggering polyphonies between the audible and the inaudible.
a project by Chiara Cecconello
with Chiara Cecconello, Margherita D’Adamo
sound design and live-electronics Franco Conte
light design Elisa Bortolussi
outfit Isabella Marsella
technical care Rachele Cominella
with the support of Live Arts Cultures, Argo16, SPORE, C3
presentato a Short Theatre 2024 all’interno del progetto Eco:frequenze finanziato dall’Unione europea – Next Generation EU
