Influenced by folk music and minimalism, Nino Gvilia sings about forests, bodies, matters that love each other in unconventional ways and hallucinations produced by her music. She combines magnetic tapes, field recordings, voices of women philosophers, and a collection of vintage-looking unusual instruments, intermingled with choral canons, while questioning, in an anachronistic manner, whether folk songs can still convey political and emotional messages while shaping our desires. She shares the stage with the ensemble that worked on the double album Nicole / Overwhelmed by the Unexplained, published by Hive Mind Records (UK) last March: multi-instrumentalists Zevi Bordovach and Pietro Caramelli (harmonium, guitars, keyboards and electronics), Giulia Pecora at the violin and Clarissa Marino at the cello.
Nino Gvilia is a fictional character, as the ones we find in books – no less, no more. According to a biography found online, she was born in Poti near the Paliastomi Lake in Georgia. She has always lived in different places, as told in the pseudo-film Songwriting in times of global crisis. Being fictional, Nino Gvilia is an explicit deidentification of her body from her stage and digital “self”. It’s a way to replace the construction of a consistent artistic self – as imposed by the cultural market and social media – with a completely fake literary construction.
Behind Nino Gvilia is Giulia Deval, singer and multimedia artist whose research has encompassed various formats such as sound costumes, audiovisual installations, performance lectures and workshops for voice and magnetic tapes in futuristic scenarios. Interested particularly in speculative fabulation and fiction, Deval uses the character of Nino Gvilia to analyse the narrative devices typical of songwriting, their apparent anachronism and their impact on our imagination. Deval has presented her works in Europe and Mexico at Hangar (Barcelona), BOZAR (Brussels), Jazzorca (Mexico City), Punctum (Prague), OGR (Torino), NUB Project Space (Pistoia), and Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (Trondheim).
voice, guitar, walkman, harmonium Nino Gvilia
harmonium, keyboard, synth, flute, voice Xavier Zevi Bordovach
guitar, keyboard, electronics, voice Pietro Caramelli
violin, voice Giulia Pecora
cello, voice Clarissa Marino
sound engineer Paolo Bertazzoli
presented at Short Theatre 2024 within the project Eco:frequenze funded by Next Generation EU
ph. Luce Berta