Fondazione ICA Milano presents the appointments part of the international tour of the project Ritratto di città (Portrait of a city). 20/20.000Hz  by MASBEDO, curated by Cloe Piccoli. The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (11th edition, 2022), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.

Ritratto di città by MASBEDO takes its name from the first sound composition by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna that inaugurated the experimental practices of the Studio di Fonologia RAI in Milan in 1954. The project is the reenactment of the innovative experience that, starting with electronic music, broadcast by radio, expands into a broad vision involving architecture, art, design and literature as elements of civil and democratic rebirth.

MASBEDO's project takes the form of a video, a volume published by Marsilio Arte, with a design project by Leftloft, and an extensive programme of projections, installations, sound performances, conversations, and public programmes aimed at involving international professionals in an artistic and cultural exchange that lies at the heart of Italian Council's mission.

An integral part of the project is the wide and significant network of international institutions, which contribute to developing the research, production, dissemination and communication of the work. The project partner is SODA (School of Digital Arts) in Manchester, with whom a collaboration has been set up to create an exhibition and public programme. In addition, Soda will provide the project with cutting-edge video and audio technology and professionalism. A prestigious network of Cultural Partners including SODA (School of Digital Arts), Centre Pompidou-Metz,  Museo del Novecento Milano, Triennale Milano, Castello Sforzesco di Milano, , Fondazione Merz Torino, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo and CCA Tel Aviv - Yafo will contribute to the development of the project with specific screening, performance and public programmes.

IL TOUR

25 March – 30 April 2024  | SODA Manchester
3 April 2024  | Centre Pompidou-Metz
9 April 2024  | Triennale Milano | performance
10 April – 30 June 2024  | Museo del Novecento, Milano | mostra Ritratto di città
13 April 2024  | Fondazione Merz Torino
23 April 2024  | MAXXI Roma
May 2024  | Triennale Milano e Castello Sforzesco

IL PUBLIC PROGRAM

May 7, 2024 - 6.30 pm
Context Specific Il ritratto aperto di MASBEDO
Triennale Milano Spazio Lab | Talk

Speakers: Carlo Antonelli, journalist and art director; Damiano Gullì, curator for Contemporary Art and Public program of Triennale Milano; MASBEDO, artists; Cloe Piccoli, art critic and curator; Alberto Saibene, historian of 20th century Italian culture; Alberto Salvadori, director and founder of Fondazione ICA Milano.

May 14, 2024 - 6.30 pm
20/20000Hz. Suono, radio e città
Triennale Milano Spazio Lab | Talk

Speakers: Delia Casadei, musicologist; Damiano Gullì, curator for Contemporary Art and Public program of Triennale Milano; MASBEDO, artists; Manuel Orazi, historian of architecture and the city; Carlo Pastore, art director; Cloe Piccoli, curator and art critic.

May 28, 2024 - 6.30 pm
Riattivare l’Archivio. Arte, Architettura e performance
Triennale Milano Spazio Cuore | Talk

Speakers: Lucia Aspesi, curator Pirelli HangarBicocca; Luca Cipelletti, architect; Damiano Gullì, curator for Contemporary Art and Public program of Triennale Milano; Pierluigi Ledda, Director of Archivio Storico Ricordi; MASBEDO, artists; Maddalena Novati, President of NoMus Association; Cloe Piccoli, curator and art critic.

June 4, 2024 - 6.30 pm
Display as Social Act
Castello Sforzesco Sala della Balla | Talk

Speakers: Cristina Baldacci, historian and contemporary art critic; MASBEDO, artists; Fiorella Mattio, Conservator of Applied Art Collections of Castello Sforzesco; Cloe Piccoli, curator and art critic; Tim Power, architect; Andrea Perin, architect; Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, architect.

 
The first encounter with Ritratto di città is on Monday 25 March 2024 in Manchester, where SODA (School of Digital Art) and MODAL (SODA Art Centre) will host the premiere of MASBEDO's video Ritratto di città (20/20,000Hz) and a talk focused on the project. The video installation of the work will welcome the public until Tuesday 30 April 2024.
 
Contextually, the project will involve the city of Milan, with a double meeting during the Milan Art Week 2024. From Wednesday 10 April until Sunday 30 June 2024, Museo del Novecento will present the exhibition Ritratto di città by MASBEDO curated by Cloe Piccoli with exhibition design by Milan-based architectural practice ONSITESTUDIO. Tuesday 9 April 2024 Triennale Milano will host a monumental new video-installation animated by a context-specific live sound performance conceived for the institution's Salone d'Onore.
 
The project continues with a full programme of screenings, talks and performances, realised in collaboration with cultural partners according to the following schedule: Sunday 3 April 2024 Centre Pompidou, Metz; Saturday 13 April 2024 Fondazione Merz, Turin; Tuesday 23 April 2024 MAXXI, Rome; Wednesday 24 April 2024 CCA Tel Aviv - Yafo. In May, Triennale Milano and Castello Sforzesco will host a rich international public programme.
 
At the end of the production and international promotion, the video work Ritratto di città will be included in Museo del Novecento’s collection in Milan.

MASBEDO's project curated by Cloe Piccoli aims to reactivate in a contemporary perspective a fundamental experience for the creation of a new language and a new cultural identity with an international and avant-garde scope. Ritratto di città develops, today, with images, sounds, words, books, and a comprehensive public programme, that experience in a context of international exchanges. This is how the open, fluid, unencoded, unwritten language of the Studio di Fonologia's electronic music, broadcasting from the RAI studios in Milan to the city by video and via airplay, becomes a vehicle for a reinterpretation and an innovative, experimental, radical vision of the culture of the project.