New, rushing waves are visible along the horizon. They are the tides preparing to touch the shores of the Amalfi Coast.
As part of Culture Moves Europe, a European program that funds the mobility of artists and cultural professionals across 40 creative countries in Europe, we are very excited to announce that the artists in residence in Praiano, on the Amalfi Coast, from January 15 to February 28, 2025 will be Alexi Shell, Alexis Paul, Lorenzo Setti (ATOMI) and Hugo Mir-Valette.
The artists will create a site-specific musical composition or performance combining contemporary experimental sounds with the natural and ambient sounds of the Amalfi Coast in winter. In contrast to the noise pollution of the summer season, when the territory is crushed by the noises of the exploitation of the territory generated by overtourism, the artist's research will start from the exploration of sound and movement connected to the territory, moving between the sea and the mountains, from its magical rituals and the mythologies of the past, making use of listening to the places and ancient cosmologies preserved by the local communities.
Like Echo, a nymph of the mountains that the gods transformed into rock, the Amalfi coast has had its voice stolen. Through the artist's research in residence, it will be possible to give words back to the territory so that it can tell its story with its own sounds, temporalities, and rhythms.
Through the involvement of the resident community as an immaterial source of knowledge and skills, it will be possible to bring out and reclaim the ancestral sounds of the territory, exploring depths whose existence we no longer remember and creating an unprecedented narration and sound mapping of the territory.
At the end of the residency, each artist will present the result of their research to the community, echoing sounds that are sometimes unheard or forgotten so that they can resonate in the poetic and political imagination of the territory and the people who live there.
Echoing is a project funded by the European Union and implemented by the Goethe Institut.
We thank Carol LeWitt, Sandra Belcredi and Elena La Manna for making it possible.
Alexi Shell and the song of nymphs and sirens
The music of Alexi Shell (she/her) will join the song of nymphs and sirens exploring the places between the Amalfi Coast and the Sorrento Peninsula.
Selected for the Inouïs du Printemps de Bourges 2023, she is a DJ, performer, and producer of pop, ambient, and experimental techno music. Like a goldsmith, her enchanting voices and aquatic textures invite us to search for the sea witches, protectors of marginalized peoples. An electronic immersion is a space of struggle, bringing together siren songs, ambient layers, and pure techno.
Alexi Shell navigates between different influences in an aesthetic reminiscent of Arca or Bjork, creating a unique musical and visual journey. In love with Athens, she draws inspiration from the city's rave scene through its mythology to champion #queer struggles through the stories that accompany her music.
With a background in contemporary art after five years at the Fine Art School of Bordeaux, Alexi Shell conceived her music for performance. As her career progressed, music became her primary medium. She has always maintained a visible attraction for performance, lying on her rock, mixing synths and haunting voices, and embodying a creature that is both goddess and sea witch.
She released her first album, #Sirens, in March 2023 and is producing her next project exploring new influences. As a DJ, Alexi will take us into a nostalgic hard dance world with pop influences. She is an iconic figure in the Parisian queer scene, presenting her work in venues such as Rex Club, La Machine du Moulin Rouge and Virage.
During the residency on the Amalfi Coast, Alexi Shell will create a sound performance inspired by the nymphs and sirens connected to the history of our region. She will immerse herself in the places and landscapes, listening to the natural sounds of the territory and focusing on the sound of the sea, one of her main sources of inspiration. The artist intends to create new myths around her music, drawing inspiration from the Land of the Sirens' vibrations between the Amalfi Coast and the Sorrento Peninsula.
«"Being surrounded by the sea and the stories woven in this place will allow me to immerse myself in its depths, inspiring the creation of music or a project that resonates not only with my artistic vision but also with the territory's rich history. I want to connect with the practices of the other artists in residence, to create links between the different projects to give shape to a collective work".».
Hugo Mir-Valette and the Electronic Journey in the Mediterranean
Hugo Mir-Valette (he/sea) will deepen his research on the Mediterranean by listening to the tides, the wind, and the mythologies they spread, actively investigating new definitions of memory.
Hugo's musical and artistic practice is based on deep listening, dialogue, and knowledge of open data. Having lived with a degenerative disease that caused him sleep disorders, he discovered that music and natural vibrations were able to channel and improve his health. He started producing electronic music in the early 2010s with John Beltran's Dado Records (USA) before leaving for Mexico to explore the hybrid possibilities between music and the arts with the project Apolatl (2016-2019).
He has collaborated with cultural actors from eleven different countries. Back to his roots in Marseille, he worked in an audiovisual studio (2017-2021), notably for the Arab World Institute, the Mucem, or the Louvre Abu Dhabi, before becoming independent. His works with Josèfa Ntjam and Aquatic Invasion Productions explore the futurist dimension of music through the liquid data of post-internet and decolonial culture.
Inspired by oral mythologies, especially Occitan culture, he works as a conductor starting from the voices of the South and the Mediterranean Sea, developing soundscapes as interconnected ecosystems.
During the artistic residency on the Amalfi Coast, Hugo will work on the first chapter of the CATHARA project: Mediterranéon, an electronic story from marine patterns. The artist intends to unite different marine soundscapes and the common goods we share through the tides, the wind, and the mythologies they spread as an active search for definitions of intertwined memories.
The project is inspired by the ways of the troubadours, storytellers of the French Mediterranean, who shaped the final linguistic form of the word "amour." The piece is composed as a sonic Sabir, the vehicular language invented by Mediterranean sailors with French, Arabic, Spanish, Occitan, and Italian motifs.
«While industrial rhythms occupy most spaces around us, a natural background sound often shines through. In English, it is called Hum. Its murmur participates in the living equilibrium much more than it seems to the ear. I want to enhance the colors and textures of this murmur, from the breeze to the storm.
During the Echoing residency, I intend to investigate the natural sound patterns of the Amalfi Coast and the folk stories that describe it to design a soundscape dedicated to its sonic colors. Listening to both the Sun and the Moon, I imagined it on two sides: Mediterranéon / Mediterranéant (Mediterranean / Mediterraneanness)».
Alexis Paul and the poetic adventure among the ancestral sounds of music
From the electronic sounds inspired by the Mediterranean, we move on to the ancestral and timeless sounds of Alexis Paul.
Alexis has been leading a nomadic and poetic adventure around a revisited hybrid street organ for ten years. An acoustic, mechanical organ with pipes that uses punched cards or a digital system to be played, the first form of recorded music and the ancestor of electronic music.
«In my practice, the instrument presents itself at the bedside of the world, at the test of creation, becoming a platform and a channel for a culture that immerses itself in the infinity of forms and possibilities. Collecting the stories of popular culture, I reinvent them to extract a sublime dimension from a renewed perspective. My work fuses folk, contemporary, and electronic music, as well as installations and happenings».
Alexis is also a guitarist, film music composer, and artistic director of several projects, including Voci Dal Mondo Reale and Orgue-passage. A resident of the Cité Internationale des Arts and winner of the French Institute "Résidences sur mesure," he has been invited by institutions such as France Musique, Bozar (Belgium), Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, the Triennale di Milano (Italy), Dar El Nimer (Lebanon), le Palais de la Porte Dorée, The Apocalypse Tapestry, Lieu Unique, Cafesjian Center For the Arts (Armenia) or Al Ma'mal (Palestine).
Starting from the myth of Echo, hidden in the reverberation of the forests and reworked in Ovid's metamorphoses, Alexis Paul will deepen his interest in the nymph during his residency on the Amalfi Coast. This is not only because Echo, condemned to repetition, gave her name to the acoustic effect but also because of its symbolic power. In fact, her connection with nature, the imaginative aspect she carries, the presence/absence of voices, and the idea of repetition are elements that resonate in the work of the French artist.
«In the 1950s, the first echoes on magnetic tape allowed musicians to simulate the natural effect by multiplying the playback heads on a single magnetic tape. Using portable organs and contemporary hybrid systems, my project explores, in addition to pre-existing devices, the possibilities of revealing voices or sounds, generating echoes or repetitions from alternative and poetic perspectives. My wooden pipe organs are here a forest of flutes, a forest of sounds».
Alexis aims to create unique "sound events" from audio elements inspired and shaped by the territory by combining natural echoes, celestial voices, or field recordings to a musical track. These unique fusions modulate and make the music fluctuate by integrating different dimensions, thus creating a "choir of echoes." The word "guetteuse" refers to Echo in the Metamorphoses and his composition process, which consists of collecting voices.
Lorenzo Setti (ATOMI), queerness, and the collaboration with the Lebanese dancer Anthony Nakhlé
From marine sounds to the ancestral sounds of ancient myths, we return to electronics with Lorenzo Setti, who explores ambient-techno music, mystical and cinematic minimalism, with hints of contemporary classical music.
Founder of the lichen label ATME records, under the moniker ATŌMI, Lorenzo has been defined as "an enchanter" by Foxy Digitalis and among "the most original artists of his generation," according to Nicchia Elettronica; his practice converges elements of immersive installation art, spatial sound design, and interactive A/V performance. For the Canadian publication MEFD, ATŌMI "does nothing like the others."
Setti has performed as a drummer in Europe and the United States with musicians such as David August; opening for projects such as Richie Ramone, Man Lifting Banners, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, and David Toop, as well as having participated in theater shows such as: "Warten Auf Godot" directed by Ulrich Rasche and 'Buffalo Gals, won't you come out tonight' directed by Silvia Costa, music by Andrea Belfi / Wojtek Blecharz or having recorded in the studio for Soundwalk Collective. AV's live show of ATŌMI's debut album was nominated as one of the best performances in 2021 by ADAF Greece.
His albums ATØMIA, Little Floating Oracles, and ARMØNIA have been critically acclaimed. He has also been included in compilations and collaborations by VA, such as Creatures 4 (White Forest Records, 2023), Sounds of Solidarity, CLOSE/STARE (Oigovisiones Label, 2022), and WE by Laura Masotto (7K!, 2021).
He has exhibited and performed at various festivals and venues, particularly Mutek.ar, Ars Elettronica Garden NY, MMMAD Festival Urbano de Arte Digital de Madrid, Audra Festival, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Radialsystem, Padiglione Cambiamenti Climatici di Venezia, Lightbox NYC - Creative Code Festival, Graphic Days Torino - Seeyousound.
In the context of Echoing, the project that Lorenzo will develop in residence was born in collaboration with the Lebanese dancer Anthony Nakhlé. The two artists intend to explore the connections between their cultural backgrounds, creating a bridge between Middle Eastern and Western European traditions.
"We will trace and intertwine the historical roots from pre-Christian times to the present day, revealing the delicate boundaries of religion through its taboos, including sexuality and queerness. Using audio and performance as tools, we will explore these themes with a silent, somatic, and resilient approach, emphasizing nature, territory, community, and the unspoken."
