Blank Forms at Phonetics

Blank Forms participates in the second edition of Phonetics, a festival and fair organized by Paint It Black bookshop in Turin, Italy, bringing together an international array of like-minded experimental platforms and publishers working across books, sounds, images, texts, and video. Alongside its participation in the fair, Blank Forms presents two programs in collaboration with Villa Lontana.

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Riccardo Sinigaglia
Friday, October 30
7pm

Riccardo Sinigaglia first made his mark in Milan’s experimental underground in the early 80s as a member of Walter Maioli’s Futuro Antico, providing the futurist counterpoint to Maioli’s primordial arsenal of winds and ancient instruments. Since then, Sinigaglia has pursued an idiosyncratic path spanning tape music, synthesis, improvisation, and computer music, from his first cassette, Watertube/Ringspiel (ADN, 1985), and subsequent LP Riflessi (Auf Dem Nil, 1986) to later work with the Doubling Riders and multimedia collective Correnti Magnetiche. Moving between Farfisa organ, Moog Sonic Six, EMS Synthi AKS, Fender Rhodes, and live electronics, Sinigaglia’s sound fuses jazz, minimalism, and electroacoustics across a shifting range of solo and collaborative settings.

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Ellen Arkbro and Judith Hamann
Sunday, November 1
11am

Ellen Arkbro has developed a singular body of work centering the perceptual effects of sustained, closely voiced harmony. Drawing on her studies in just intonation as well as jazz, blues, and experimental composition, Arkbro works with organ, voice, and myriad acoustic instruments to build slowly unfolding harmonic structures, in which small shifts in interval and resonance take on an almost physical presence. These concepts find a close counterpart in Arkbro’s ongoing collaboration with cellist and composer Judith Hamann, whose practice is characterized by vibration, instability, and an acute sensitivity to the relation between instrument, body, and space.

Together they present selected reworkings of jazz standards and popular music, as well as other highlights from their years of collaboration. Familiar melodies are sung by Arkbro and suspended within long-duration organ chords, while Hamann’s cello enters as a further sustained voice, stretching these songs into open harmonic fields in which recognition gradually gives way to resonance.